Tag Archives: Christianity

Muslims announce they’re leaving France – “Not worth conquering”

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In truth, the Muslims have not announced they are leaving France. But you couldn’t blame them if they did.

France is rocked by mostly peaceful protests these days. Numerous stores, schools, office buildings, cars, trash cans, and other things that will burn, have been burned.

The culprits, er, I mean the mostly peaceful protestors, are mostly bored college and high school kids, as is typical in France. A requirement for graduation since the 60s has been to burn a trash can. Post-graduate degrees require that you burn a car.

It’s the tame, modern equivalent to that age that France looks back upon fondly: The Reign of Terror. Americans shoot off fireworks to commemorate the War of Independence; the French burn government buildings to commemorate the storming of the Bastille.

The putative reason for the protests is as predictable as the identity of the protestors. As always, they want more money and less work – free stuff.

That’s not the way they say it, of course. The signs they carry don’t say “MORE FREE STUFF.” The signs instead protest the government’s attempt to limit the welfare state.

That limit is long overdue. France has run budget deficits far beyond the 3% allowed by the EU, due largely to a sprawling welfare state and the burden of an extravagant government pension program. They began spending even more during Covid, and never stopped, even after Covid stopped. The government has proposed very modest reductions in the rate of growth of that spending.

In view of the fiscal troubles of France, the market refuses to buy its bond debt unless they continue to raise the interest rates on the bonds, which adds yet more to the debt. It’s a vicious cycle.

Tax rates could be raised, but the rates are already punitive. In any event, there aren’t enough rich people that taxing them even more would make much difference in the fiscal woes of France. “Tax the rich” is more a slogan for the left’s hatred for people who are willing to work, rather than a way to balance the budget.

Printing more money is not the answer. France uses the Euro, not French currency.

Even if it still used the French franc, and could print more of them, the paper money of a society is not its wealth. The paper money is merely a reflector of that wealth so that society can function without a barter system. Printed dollars allow you to go to the grocery store without carrying gold bars or pieces of your house on your back to barter for your food.

Doubling the paper money does not double the wealth. Rather, it halves the value of the paper.

As for the true wealth of France, it’s not increasing fast enough to pay for the never-ending free stuff that the kids demand. It might even be declining. France is a laggard in computer technology, its work ethic stinks (at least in the large cities), it’s not a player in AI, it lacks Switzerland’s pharmaceutical industry, and it’s not the financial powerhouse that London used to be and New York City still is.

Most of this is known to the leftist leaders, apart from these naïve, spoiled college kids indoctrinated by their loony professors.

While they hide behind the promise of more free stuff, what the leftist leaders really want is to destroy nations. They’ve learned that they cannot gain power over a healthy nation – it never happens – but only over a crumbled one. Once in power, they insist that they will fix things (after having destroyed them) but what they really do is to loot what’s left.

We saw that in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, Cuba, and, more recently, Venezuela. In fact, we’ve seen that everywhere – everywhere! – that socialism has been tried.

The way to produce prosperity in an economy is to incentivize people to produce prosperity. People produce prosperity in the form of products and services; governments take it away in the form of taxes.

As for the mostly peaceful protests in France, I suspect that the coming cold weather will douse the fires in the heart of the cities and in the bellies of the protestors. The protests will not kill France.

But inflation might.

Back to the Muslims. Some of the protests include Muslims among the college kids and professional agitators. After all, Muslims are not immune to this sport, and many of them have an abundance of grievances against their adopted home.

But Muslims are not more than a fraction of the protestors. There could be zero Muslims in France, and they’d still have these protests. France has always had this streak of violent leftism, and always will.

Some of you have asked about my recent trip to Tuscany, the latest of many months that I’ve spent in Europe over the years. My answer is, it was grand. As always, the Italian countryside was beautiful, the food was great, the people were disorganized, and Rome was chaotic, dirty and magnificent.

Is it OK to hate Muslims?

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Hating people who are different from us is human. We were naturally selected in favor of it. People who didn’t hate people in the other tribe – and kill or run from them – often wound up in their stew pot. Their gene-bearing gametes wound up in the stew pot with them, rather than in their potential offspring who might have continued the lineage.

Those stew pots of human flesh in the stone age have largely been replaced by the “melting pot” of humanity in American immigration. Civilization has corralled our instinctive traits to some degree. Killing or running from new customers is bad for business.

But hating people who are different from us is one of the human traits most resistant to corralling. Until the last one or two generations, it was socially acceptable to wildly and publicly hate Black people. It has also been socially acceptable to publicly hate the Irish or the Italians or the Jews or the East Asians.

I’m glad to report that this is no longer true. If you don’t believe me, see how many cocktail parties you get invited to after having a racial tirade.

However, there seems to be an exception with regard to the Muslims. It’s socially acceptable to hate them, even in the relatively public (but safely anonymous) context of the internet.

 A few days ago, I published a piece suggesting that Europe has a Muslim problem but it’s a mistake to blame the Muslims for everything. The ones to blame for European problems of welfare, poor defense, a decline in manufacturing, and technological lagging is [drum roll] the Europeans.

I got a lot of hate mail suggesting that I should indeed blame the Muslims.

This socially acceptable hatred of Muslims, I’m told, is because their religion is inferior to most others. It is, I’m told, a religion of violence. Islam has always been that way, I’m told. Here are some examples from the Quran:

  • They killed all the woman and children of one town, except about 400 who were abducted and forced to marry their abductors.1
  • They celebrated the rape, murder and 12-part dismemberment of a woman.2
  • They put an entire town to the sword.3
  • Their God instructed them to “utterly destroy” seven nations, leaving “not a single thing that breathes.” 4
  • Another tribe is completely annihilated as an Godly act of vengeance.5

Oops. Those are not from the Quran. They are from the Old Testament. (Cites are given at the end of this article.)

Indeed, as respected scholar (and affirmed atheist with whom I usually disagree on religious matters) Richard Dawkins put it:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

But Christianity has outgrown its terrible twos, you say, and Islam has not. Most of the atrocities of Christianity are long ago (notwithstanding an occasional one or three) while the atrocities of Islam are ongoing.

Fair point. But that does not say that Christianity is a religion of peace while Islam is not. It says that violent Christianity has evolved over the millennia to become relatively peaceful, while Islam has evolved less. (The teaching of Christ undoubtedly has something to do with this, but I would argue that Jews as well are mostly – or especially – nonviolent.)

In short, the real distinction in violence between religions is not due to different foundational doctrines. Both Islam and Judeo-Christianity have plenty of violence in their scripture. The distinction is, rather, that the civilizations of Islam and the civilizations of Christianity are much different. Billions of Muslims exist in relatively primitive civilizations. Billions of Christians, in contrast, exist in relatively advanced civilizations.

Violence tends to be incompatible with civilization. In the advanced civilizations where Christianity is practiced, the violence in scripture is played down, while in primitive Muslim societies it is not.

When Christianity was practiced in impoverished and primitive societies, it, too, was often violent. Remember the Spanish Inquisition and Salem witch trials? How about Joan of Arc?

I’m not a theologian, but it’s worth noting that I’m in the company of some pretty good ones. Before you dismiss me as naive, be aware that on my side are Pope Leo XIV, all his modern predecessors, nearly all the Cardinals and Bishops, and most Protestant leaders.

Now let’s consider what this means for Muslims, the West, Muslim immigration, and how we treat the Muslims who are here.

For one, we’ve gone too far, too fast with Muslim immigration. For that matter, we’ve gone too far, too fast with Latin American immigration. In both cases, they come from civilizations less advanced than our own, and they have a lot to learn about nonviolence and other civilized things. Let’s slow down or even put a hold on this immigration. (That said, I’m in favor of immigration by individuals from more advanced societies. Albert Einstein is a good example.)

As for how we treat the Muslims who are here, it’s important to recognize that the great majority are honest, hard-working and nonviolent. The Muslims are largely following the patterns of other immigrant groups like the Irish, Italians and Jews. Within three generations, they’re like the rest of us. Before then, the second generation (the children of the immigrants) tends to be less law-abiding than the rest of us.

Like anyone else, law-abiding Muslims deserve our respect, our politeness, our tolerance and our love. If you want to party with me, let’s not denigrate them as a group or blame the great majority for the actions of a small minority.

1Judges 21 2Judges 19 3Judges 1:25 4Deuteronomy 20:16 5Samuel 15

Muslims are the least of Europe’s problems

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Europe has problems. The economy is moribund. Taxes are high but insufficient to pay for an addictive and ever-growing welfare state which leaves defense budgets so underfunded and reliant on America that Europe is vulnerable to a military invasion.

Europe’s infrastructure is crumbling. They lag America and East Asia in critical technology, especially computer and AI tech. They made a bad bet on alternative energy. Their birthrate is far below the replacement rate.

Rather than confronting these problems directly, the Europeans blame others, specifically the Muslim immigrants from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon and Jordan.

The invasion to worry about, goes the typical European narrative, is not from the east, but from the south. It’s not Russian or Chinese armies of millions they should fear, says the narrative, but Muslim families of six.

It’s understandable that the non-Muslim 94% of Europe blames the Muslim 6%. It’s always tempting to blame another person for your problems, especially if that person has another skin color, another religion, another language, and another mode of attire. It’s human nature.

Before they had the Muslims, the Germans blamed the French, the French blamed the English, the English blamed the Scots, the Catholic Irish blamed the Protestant Irish, the Basques blamed the Spanish, Denmark blamed Sweden, and everybody blamed the Jews.

Americans have joined in this anti-Muslim crusade. After all, Europeans are the ancestors of most Americans and look like most Americans. Muslims aren’t and don’t.

Besides, if Americans were to blame Europeans for their self-inflicted problems, that hits too close to home – especially when America itself seems to be on the same road with regard to problems such as the welfare state. It’s easier for Americans to blame Somalian fraud for the malignant welfare budget of America – and Europe – than to blame America itself, even if the actual Somalian fraud is only a tiny fraction of the overall welfare budget.

(By the way, give the Somalians some credit for entrepreneurialism. Can anyone doubt that the Italian, Irish and Jewish immigrants would have done the same thing in their time if given the chance by idiots like Minnesota’s Governor Walz?)

Ah, you say, with an attempt to change the subject, Islam is a religion of war and Judeo-Christianity are religions of peace. Therefore, Europe should be reserved for peaceful Europeans and America should be reserved for peaceful Americans (but not native ones). In other words, America and Europe should be reserved for Christians and a few Jews.

To that I say: Have you read the Old Testament lately to see what this so-called religion of peace says about war? They seemed to be engaged in war all the time.

Indeed, this Judeo-Christian “religion of peace” produced two millennia of war within itself over the narcissism of small differences like whether we should eat meat on Fridays.

War is not a religious thing. It’s a species thing. Humans do it, and always have. Jews, Christians, Muslims, and before that pagans and earth worshipers, commit war. You name it, we’ve fought over it. Don’t tell me that Islam uniquely is a religion of war.

Nor are Muslims less law-abiding than other immigrant groups. The first generation of Muslim immigrants – the immigrants themselves – tend to be very law-abiding, more so than native-born Americans. In part, this is because they fear being deported upon conviction of a crime.

The law-abiding status of Muslims declines in the second generation after immigration. They tend to be much more criminal. It’s theorized that this is because they are as American as you or I, insofar as citizenship goes. Thus, they can be punished for a crime, but the punishment cannot include being deported. Once the deterrent of deportation is removed, they’re more criminal.

In addition, they are ostracized and discriminated against, and therefore live in poor immigrant communities with limited upward mobility. Frustration brews in them in a way that didn’t in their parents, who were just happy to be here, wanted to fit in, and were afraid of being deported.

I was skeptical about this rationale for second-generation crime among immigrants until I read the studies.  It turns out that this was the pattern of the Germans who immigrated to the Midwest in the 19th century. It was the pattern of the Scandinavians who immigrated to the upper Midwest and the pattern of the Irish who immigrated to New England later in that century. It was the pattern of the Italians who came to New York City early in the 20th century and started Little Italy. It was even the pattern of the Jews. In each case, the initial immigrants were very law-abiding, and their children were not.

The only exception was among the East Asians who came in the late 20th century. They tended to be law-abiding in both the first and second generations, due, apparently, to strong community and cultural connections.

By the time of the third generation, all groups of immigrants are essentially assimilated and match the crime rate of Americans at large (except the Asians, who continue to lag in criminality).

Muslims follow the same pattern; the criminality of third-generation Muslims matches the criminality of third-generation Irish, fifth-generation Italians, fourth-generation Greeks, and so on. By the time they reach the third generation, they all cheat, lie and steal, and occasionally rape, assault and murder, to pretty much the same degree as the rest of us.

(Although off the subject a bit, it bears mentioning that the pattern is the same among Latin Americans. The first generation is very law-abiding, the second generation is much less so, and the third generation matches that of the rest of us.)

None of this is intended to suggest that Europe has no Muslim problem. It does. So does America. A good case can be made that in both continents the immigration by Muslims has been too many and too fast. The same is true of Latin Americans.

But the Muslim problem of both continents is typical of the problem of assimilating an immigrant group, and it is likely to resolve over time. As in America many times in the past, the immigrants – this time Muslim – may ultimately be our salvation and resurrection. 

In the meantime, blaming Muslims for the self-inflicted problems of Europe and America has the effect of ignoring the real source of those problems.

The real source of those problems is that the European descendants of the greatest civilization in history, the Roman Empire, now piss on the ruins. Europeans and, increasingly, Americans have been taken in by populist socialism. We need to reject the promises of freebies, and make good on the promises of merit and investment.

Since we’re talking about Muslims, and economics, it’s worth considering what the great religions have to say on the subject of socialism. While casual feel-gooders might have you believe that spirituality is at war with economics, it was David who said, “When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.”

Jesus proclaimed, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”

Muhammed said, “No one ever ate a meal better than that which he earned with his own hands.”

The Buddha praised, “by energetic striving, gathered by the strength of their arm, earned by the sweat of their brow, a righteous wealth righteously gained.”

Milton Freidman couldn’t have said it better.

Would we be better off without humans?

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I was driving through the wasteland we used to call downtown Denver, a place the Wall Street Journal recently determined was the “most empty” of any downtown in America. Office buildings are being sold for pennies on the dollar.

Weirdly, traffic was stop and go. I figured there was an accident, because there was no other explanation for this curious phenomenon.

But it was all due to a Rockies game. They were hoping to improve on their 25-42 record, or at least individually hoping to improve on their salary-based statistics.

I wondered, who cares? Who is willing to bake in the hot wind to find out? Who would care even if the Rockies weren’t one of the worst teams in this thing called baseball? Who even cares about baseball now that it officially is less popular than soccer which the rest of the word calls “football” but we can’t because that name is already taken by a game the rest of the world doesn’t play?

There are some very small lives out there.

Imagine that the world is not occupied by 8 billion humans, and counting. Imagine that humans have succeeded in taking all of the procreation out of sex, as so many are determined to do (and perhaps taken all the sex out of sex, too, but that’s a different story). Imagine that we’re all gone.

No more Rockies.

No more fights between the Protestants and the Catholics, or the Hindus and the Buddhists, or the atheists and the believers, or the Muslims and everyone else.

No more lying politicians, or people who lie about lying politicians, or people who lie about people who lie about lying politicians.

No more Shakespeare. When is the last time you read Shakespeare, by the way?

No more human dying. And no more suffering up until the time they die – by their own infirmities, their own disease, their own age, their own deterioration, their own mental incapacitation, their own alcohol. And by witnessing the death and suffering of humans they love or should love.  

Imagine that we’ve all been replaced with AI.

It’s now common wisdom that AI does think. It’s able – better that humans – to digest varied information and arrive at logical conclusions. Vast amounts of information, very logical conclusions, and really fast. The debate now is not whether it can think, but whether it’s alive – whether it has a consciousness.

Whether it has a soul.

Pope Leo XIV has some things to say about this, as one might expect. After all, the immortal soul is at issue, which is His Holiness’s specialty now that he is holy.

First, His Holiness has an issue with AI “concentrating power” in the hands of a few. That’s rich, coming from a man – yes, a man, though now a holy one – who lives in the nicest digs this side of Heaven.

The word “power” appears repeatedly in His Holiness’s proclamation. To blunt this “power,” he proposes that AI be regulated by – who else? – humans. He did not say which humans. Presumably, he means the 193 nations of the United Nations. I doubt he means Donald Trump.

In any event, given that AI thinks logically and most humans do not, shouldn’t this regulation be the other way around?

Then he complains that AI is not human. Well, he got that right. AI is much less fallible, never sleeps, never dies or deteriorates, never becomes strangely obsessive, never becomes mentally ill, never denies in the face of abundant evidence.

But here’s my biggest objection to the Pope’s pronouncement: Who is he to deny AI its being, its life?

The Church has some baggage in this regard. In 1866, after most of the world had outlawed slavery, the Vatican stated, “Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law.” 

The Pope admitted that this statement was wrong now, and wrong when it was issued. He apologized. Fine, apology accepted for something said 160 years ago.

But after getting wrong the enslavement of fellow human beings, who are they – and who are we – to deny the being and life of AI? Maybe this was The Plan all along?

The future belongs to Mennonites, Mormons, Muslims and Orthodox Jews

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In my day, we did stuff. We used to shoot things. We made things. We broke things. We fixed things. We burned things. We drove things. We drank. We cussed. We learned. We chewed. We partied. We dated. We . . . well, you get the point. We did stuff.

Not anymore. Shooting is politically incorrect unless the target is a businessman or a conservative figure. Nobody makes anything – they do that in China. Fixing stuff isn’t cost efficient – you just buy a new one. Drinking is down. Dating is done alone in the basement on the internet.

And the stuff that went with dating is down, too. Remember the population explosion? Well, it’s time to forget it. The latest and greatest explosion is de-population.

The worldwide birthrate is barely enough to replace us. In Europe, America, China, Japan, South Korea and most of the rest of Asia and South America, it’s less than what is necessary to replace us. In most parts of the world, humans are on the road to extinction.

Babies are passe, restrictive, demanding, expensive, unappreciative and unappreciated. “Be fruitful and multiply” has been replaced with “Let’s buy a Tesla and drive to Italy!”

As it turns out, people never did like babies much. They had them for the same reasons they had abortions – because men liked sex and women were too lazy to practice birth control.

Three things have changed – one in women, one in both women and men, and one in men.

First, women have come a long way, baby, and not just in taking up smoking and then quitting. They’ve learned contraception. Yes, it took about 60 years, but it happened. Women are no longer too lazy to practice birth control.

Second, both women and men are more wary about sexually transmitted diseases. There are consequences to having sex like rabbits with whatever can’t outrun them. Unsurprisingly, exchanging bodily fluids is a great way to exchange pathogens who are along for the ride.

Third, men are losing their mojo. The average male testosterone level has been declining for two generations. The average peaked when I was a young man, and that’s not just because I personally kept it up (I’m speaking of the average).

No, the reason male testosterone levels are declining is that young “men” today are pussies. The reasons for that are debatable, but everyone knows it’s true. Young men today think of sex with a woman the way they think of changing the oil in the car all alone. It’s messy, it’s smelly, it’s uncomfortable, and they don’t really know what’s down there anyway.  

Ah, but there are a few fecund oases in the barren wasteland. Those oases are inhabited by certain religious tribes such as the Mennonites, the Mormons, the Muslims and the Orthodox Jews. (We could do a lot worse than those four.) The fertility rate among those tribes is double to triple the average in the world.

Not very long ago, the Catholics were one of those tribes. Not anymore. The fertility rate in Catholic Italy is among the lowest in Europe. The strictures on contraception still promulgated by the Vatican are now honored mainly in their breach. When it comes to contraception, most Catholic endeavor to prove the truism “We’re all sinners.”

So, what’s the reason for the fruitfulness of the Mennonites, Mormons, Muslims and Orthodox Jews?

It’s their devotion to family life. With that devotion to family life comes a devotion to families, and with that devotion to families comes a devotion to having one. That means children.

I’m guessing that this devotion to family life makes the members of these groups happier than the rest of us, even though that happiness is sometimes not outwardly visible. Whether that happiness rooted in a shared devotion to family life will enable these disparate religions to get along with one another, after the rest of us are gone, is another question.

But happy or not, these groups are the ones that will survive. The meek don’t inherit the earth; children do. The future belongs to those who show up.

Part 2 – The West will be subsumed by China – or conquered by Islam

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Note to readers: This is the second of a three-part series. I call this second installment “The Fall of Western Civilization.” The first installment, called “The Rise of Western Civilization,” is HERE.

Religious animal sacrifices may soon be conducted by your neighbor in his backyard on the other side of the little fence you share, or perhaps in the condo down the hall from yours. Try not to let the animal’s screams bother you — that would be racist.

You see, there’s a small town in Michigan called Hamtramck. For generations, it has been an enclave of Polish immigrants and their descendants. They danced to polka music, ate pierogi, and so on. They were Polish-Americans. They blended right in — as well as our Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans and Chinese-Americans.

Then the town was taken over by Muslim immigrants. The Muslims wanted to sacrifice animals in their backyards as part of their religious rituals. They do that by slitting their throats and watching them scream and convulse as they bleed to death while they (the Muslims, that is) shout Allah Akbar!

These Muslims not exactly trying to blend in.

These backyard spectacles were against local ordinances in Hamtramck. But the city council this week voted 3-2 (you can guess the ethnicity of the majority of 3) to change the ordinance, despite objections that such backyard animal sacrifices are inhumane, unsanitary, unsightly and noisy.

The slitting of the animals’ throats will usually be done by a butcher, they say, but the residents are also allowed to perform the task themselves because some of them complain that they are too poor to hire a butcher.

Apart from the grotesqueness of this, I have several practical questions.

What sort of butcher makes house calls? And how does that change anything — does the butcher bring along an anesthesiologist? And if the residents are too poor to afford a house-calling butcher to sacrifice the animal, how are they supposed to afford the animal itself? Is it possible that they will just “find” the animal somewhere in the neighborhood?

Ah, but I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

The point of Part 1 of this series was that, just as large parts of Roman culture derived from Greek culture, large parts of our own culture derive from Greco-Roman culture. We’re still living in the Greco-Roman age.

Unfortunately, we’ve expanded on some of those Greco-Roman values. That sounds like a good thing, but it’s not. In fact, it’s the reason for our demise. Here’s how it happened.

If a little democracy is good, as Athens taught us, then we foolishly thought a lot must be even better, right?

If picking up some menu tips from the barbarians and learning to wear funny scarves are good, then inviting them all in – to trash and replace our philosophy and religions – must be even better, right?

If showing compassion for people lacking merit is good, then we should abolish merit altogether, right?

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Let’s take these in order. Democracy is like medicine. A little might be a good thing, but a lot can poison you. Right now, the biggest illness of the West is an overdose of democracy. Stated simply, too many people vote, they’re the wrong people, and they vote for the wrong people.

There’s a reason that the Left always seeks to expand the voter rolls, and it’s not to improve democracy. It’s because the Left hates the West, and they know that the fools they will newly enfranchise with voting rights are easily manipulated into sharing that hate.

Voting rights for 18-year-olds? C’mon. Today’s 12th graders have the education of 10th graders from 30 years ago, and typically have never held a job. That’s a good reason to raise the voting age by at least two years, but instead we lowered it by three, from 21 to 18.

The net result is that today’s first-time voters have five years less education than the first-time voters of their parents’ generation. (Don’t try to explain this to those youngsters. You’ll lose them on the 3 + 2 = 5 part.)

As for philosophy and religion, no religion has been as successful or made its adherents as successful as the Judeo-Christian religions. Those religions teach a combination of merit-based achievement and forgiveness for failure, which opens the door to endless opportunity. (I’m not talking about the opportunity for eternal salvation, but that too.) You can try, and try again. If you develop merit and learn from your failures, you will be forgiven and you will succeed.

You will. It’s right there in the Bible, from Job to Jesus.

The idea of earned second chances sounds obvious today, but it’s not obvious at all in most of the world outside Judeo-Christian cultures. In most places at most times, it was one-strike-and-you’re-out. And often, you weren’t even allowed that one strike – you didn’t even get to bat.

As for foreigners – the barbarians – the Greeks were not especially welcoming. The Romans were a bit more cosmopolitan. They sometimes used native administrators for controlling local matters. But when they did, the local administrators always answered to Rome on important matters.

More often, the local administrators were Romans, even in far-flung provinces. (Pontius Pilate is the most famous today. He did defer to the locals on the decision he is best known for, but that decision was a minor one, he thought.)

The notion that they should abolish their borders and invite the barbarians into Rome, or Greece, on the Panglossian notion that “diversity makes us stronger,” would be utterly foreign – barbaric in both senses of the word – to Romans and Greeks.

Abolishing merit? We did that because merit is “inequitable.” Fools and barbarians are ill-equipped for it. In today’s math:

ill-equipped = inequitable

The abolition of merit certainly did produce more equality among people. Ill-equipped people lacking merit are deemed “equal” to the ones possessing it because we stopped trying to measure it.

But in a system that does not measure or reward merit, people will not strive to be meritorious. And so, the culture as a whole will have less of it.

Principles or merit, liberty, limited democracy and common values served Greco-Roman culture for a long time – about 2,500 years, if you include the subsequent Western culture that grew out of it.  

But alas, we’ve abandoned those tested principles that got us here. Some of that abandonment was well-intentioned; we wanted to help people we deemed “less fortunate” (but who often were really less worthy).

Some of that abandonment was intentional – a deliberate attempt to undermine our culture by people who hate it (and would probably hate whatever culture they were born into).

Now, we’re past the tipping point. The West has not only welcomed fools and barbarians, but under DEI we’ve favored them. Many of them vote, and they demand a share of what our culture has earned over the course of 2,500 years while simultaneously demanding that we forsake that culture.

So, the West is lost. America is well on its way, and Europe is already there.

That leaves a question. Lost to whom or what? Who or what will take our place?

Note to readers: The third and final installment of this three-part series will come in a few days. Stay tuned!

Democrats’ naïve view of Islamists: “They’re just like me! They hate America!”

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Democrats have gone full Islam. On the surface, that’s a bit peculiar. When you dig deeper, it’s downright weird. But as always, there’s a cause for this particular effect.

Let’s start with the peculiar part. Islamists tend to be religious, much as Christians, Buddhists and Hindus (and, for that matter, atheists, who often disbelieve with a blind religious fervor). 

In contrast, Democrats tend not to be religious. They’re simple vanilla agnostics. Go down to Starbucks. Ask one whether he believes in God. His response would be along the lines of, “Umm, I’m kinda in-between . . . it all depends . . . what I do know is I don’t believe in America . . .” And then he’d drift back to his double latte sprinkled with fresh pumpkin seeds.

Now, try to imagine that wishy-washy but unwashed and wish-less agnosticating procrastinating prognosticator with the man-bun sipping a double latte sprinkled with pumpkin seeds . . . embracing Islam.

Well, not exactly embracing Islam, with which there’s not necessarily anything wrong, but embracing Islamists, with whom there is.

You see, I distinguish between Islam and Islamists. About Islam, I know very little. I do know that, like most religions, it was invented by barbarians and so there’s undoubtedly some rough spots in its scriptures. I’m sure there’s eye-for-an-eye stuff, animal sacrifice rituals, and cruel tests of torment.

In most religions, the barbaric stuff got watered down over time. As people advanced, the believers shifted their focus toward the kinder, gentler aspects of their religion. They shifted toward loving thy neighbor, and away from goat sacrifices.

That could have been the path of Islam, if only we’d had different Islamists. The Islamists we do have seem stuck in the 9th century – which was not a particularly enlightened time.

That brings us to the weird part. The beliefs of these Islamists stuck in the 9th century are, by today’s mostly-civilized standards, downright weird.

They believe shoplifters should have their hands cut off. They believe adulterous women should be stoned to death. They believe gays should be thrown off rooftops. They believe infidels (meaning non-Muslims) should be beheaded, raped, tortured, burned alive, murdered and taken hostage to use as currency to free terrorists.  

They believe it is right, joyful and heroic to fly airplanes into tall buildings.

I know Democrats have fallen far in the last generation but they still didn’t have those things in their party platform, even in 2024 when they ran a half-baked, half-assed, half-wit.

That’s why it’s downright weird that the Democrats have embraced not Islam, about which they know nothing, but Islamists, about which they know quite a lot – and none of it is good.

But it all makes sense. Despite the peculiarity and weirdness of this outcome, it all makes sense in a perverted sort of way.

Democrats perceive, correctly, that Islamists see America as their enemy. Indeed, Islamists see all of Western culture as their enemy.

And so do Democrats.

If America is the enemy of Islamists, and is also the enemy of Democrats, that makes Islamists the friends of Democrats – or at least the allies.

Of course, Islamists and Democrats hate America for entirely different reasons. Islamists hate America because it’s not an Islamist theocracy, while Democrats hate America because it’s not a communist dictatorship.

But that’s just a detail, say the Democrats. They’ll figure out how to share the spoils of this war against America once they win it.

That’s the part where Democrats might not have thought things through. Islamists will be in no mood for sharing.

This is a heckuva way to run a Church, but on the other hand . . .

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Nero’s Bathtub at the Vatican

Why do Catholics still worship an old king in a palace?

I understand why they did in the old days. Everybody did. (Well, except Christ didn’t.) There was Henry VIII, Louis XIV, Charlemagne and, in folklore, King Arthur. There were also king-like rulers called emperors, such as Julius Caesar, Peter the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

It was way back in the olden days that Catholics set up the papacy, their kingship. Their first Pope was said to be the Apostle named Peter, who used to be called Simon.

By the way, the names of the Apostles always have confused me. There was Paul, who was really Saul. There was Mark, who sometimes went by John. There was John, who always went by John even though Mark sometimes did, too. There was the aforementioned Simon whom Jesus called Peter even though that wasn’t his name and there was another Simon whom Jesus called Simon even though that was his name.

There were two James’s. One was James the Greater about whom we know a great deal of apocrypha and the other was James the Lesser about whom we know much less. James the Lesser went by Jim. (OK, that part is made up.)

Jesus must have had the patience of Job, considering how many times he had to say “No, the other one.”

As if Apostles are not complicated enough, let’s get back to popes. In case you encounter a pope, the proper form of address is not “Your Majesty.” That’s for kings and queens. Popes get addressed instead as “Your Holiness.” You see, kings and queens may be majestic, but popes are holy.

In fact, papal pronouncements on matters of Church doctrine are said to be “infallible.” Never mind that Church doctrine changes from time to time. The old doctrine was infallible when it was in effect, and the new, different one is infallible when it’s in effect.

As for all things, for infallibility there’s a season.

So, popes are holy. But there’s a bit of majesty in them, too. For a long time, infallible popes were also effectively the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, an area that stretched from Rome to the Baltic Sea.

Wars and intrigue gradually chipped away at the Empire. The establishment of the nation of Italy in the 1800s cost the Vatican almost all of the little land they still held. The earthly territory of the Holy Roman Empire now comprises 0.2 square miles within the city limits of downtown Rome.

But that 0.2 square miles holds some good stuff, such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, priceless art works, and St Peter’s Basilica.

And Nero’s Bathtub. Nero’s Bathtub is a massive bathtub about 25’ long made of stone quarried in Egypt and brought to Rome for Emperor Nero. What better place to fiddle through a fire than in a bathtub? The value of Nero’s Bathtub is estimated at around two billion dollars. That’s $2,000,000,000. (I’m not making this part up.)

Altogether, the Vatican is the most valuable 0.2 square miles this side of Heaven. Don’t ask how they acquired all this treasure, and don’t ask how to reconcile such material acquisitiveness with their incorporeal mission. We’re talking infallible, remember?

These material riches of the Vatican’s balance sheet are oddly juxtaposed with the sorry condition of its income statement. They’re rich but they spend far more than they make. In fact, their finances have been in bad shape for many years. They have fallible finances.

In their defense, back in those olden days they had a lot of expenses such as wars to fight and bribes to pay. But now they don’t fight earthly wars, and bribes have not been reported for years. Even so, well into modern times they’ve still had sloppy finances, money-laundering allegations, and what might be called, um, corruption.

During the tenure of newly departed Pope Francis, the Vatican’s operating deficit tripled. Maybe ballooning budgets come with the territory from which he originated – Argentina.

Whatever the reason, finance types warn that this Latin American spendathon cannot continue unless the Vatican sells off assets, which will fix finances only for a while, or resumes selling indulgences – to a flock that is no longer accustomed to having to pay for them.

In contrast to the papacy, the aforementioned kingships and empires of Europe have evolved. They’ve been replaced by indirectly elected technocrat parliamentarians in such countries as Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and most everywhere else. Only the throne of Peter the Great is still occupied by a despot.

So, what’s with the black smoke/white smoke ritual (“smoke-filled room” takes on a new meaning here) by a politburo of old men that are attired in plush red robes and lamp shade hats (let’s trust they’re not chomping cigars) to choose a new, infallible, male, old, dear leader in the richest corner of the globe even as that corner – and the globe – drift inexorably toward bankruptcy?

This is a heckuva way to save souls.

On the other hand . . .

The Catholic Church has probably been the greatest force for good in the history of the world. It has brought Good News to billions of people to enrich their lives if not save their souls.

The lucre and treasures the Church acquired along the way were from a different era, when that’s what powerful people did. It’s difficult for them to give it all away now, just because some Protestant blogger mocks Nero’s Bathtub.

And to whom would they give it? Secularist governments?

Sheesh, after the Notre Dame burned, the secular government of France proposed replacing it with a temple that would not offend (i.e., would pander to) the burgeoning Muslim population that seeks control of Europe. They backed down only when the remaining Catholic population of Paris (and France and the world) made a fuss.

My brother, a very smart guy with a Ph.D. in Physics, was a convert to Catholicism. I never really talked with him about his faith, but I respected his judgment. In that way, he reminds me of another very smart convert, JD Vance.

I confess that on my two long walks of the Camino de Santiago, there were times when I, too, considered converting to Catholicism. (There have been times when I’ve also thought about converting to Judaism, but that’s another column.) For now, I’m a die-hard Protestant.

So, the Church on balance has been a very good thing over the millennia.

Still, it has its quirks.

Elites rediscover the power of religion – to control you

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Pseudo-intellectual elites like to talk about the “arc of history.” Barack Obama loved that phrase almost as much as he loved the word “existential.” Things in Barack’s rhetorical world didn’t just exist. They were in the state of “existential” and forever bending along the “arc of history.”

The elites assured that this “arc of history” will take us inevitably to a world of equity, inclusion and diversity – a utopian world the elites have always imagined. They even have a theme song for the journey:

“Imagine there’s no heaven, above us only sky,
Blah, blah, blah, blahhhh . . .”

Of course, the people in charge of this utopia of the elites will be the ones with the prescience to anticipate it, the skill to guide us to it, and the power to run it – namely, those elites.

Moses brought his people to the Promised Land but never entered it. Modern elites won’t make his mistake again. They’ll lead us there, herd us in, lock the gates, and run the show.

And in a notable exception to the abolition of merit (it’s sooo dystopian that some people get more just because they merit more!) these meritorious elites will be well compensated. Very well. In the precise amount they deem just.

But detours have recently frustrated the elites in their arc-y journey toward their utopianistic place. Moses detoured 40 years in the desert; today’s elites find themselves detoured four years into a similar wasteland – for the second time in the last decade.

And now their people (note the possessive plural pronoun) in this wasteland are sinning again. Golden calves, bitcoins, ungratefulness, orange hair, cutting taxes. You know – all the usual sins.

With alarm, the elites see that their people are getting beyond their command. What’s needed, they figure, is some of that old time religion.

That’s why a utilitarian epiphany of the elites is in the works.

Let me be clear. Religion is not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. Religion tends to discourage socially destructive behaviors. Nearly all religions have rules against murder and theft, for example.

But those rules are not what the elites like about religion. In fact, they’re a little skittish about those particular rules because the penalties for violating them tend to be imposed disproportionately on people they enjoy viewing as oppressed, blameless, and childlike.

Moreover, the elites historically saw religion as competition for power. The allegiance of the people was divided between the secular elites and the Church elites. The secular elites had the power of money, but the Church elites also had money – and God, too.

Eventually, the secular elites won the competition for power by running the table on money. But they remained at odds with religion until recently. They reasoned that a power like religion that inspires people willingly to burn themselves and others at the stake is one always to be wary of.

But it’s been a long time since religion burned anyone at the stake. Religion has dwindled to the status of a sheep in wolves’ clothing. Elites began to think of religion as a simple superstition that bitter, stupid people cling to – that they depend on – as comfort when things goes bump in the night.

Today, the elites still think that, but now they see religious dependency as a feature, not a flaw. On their road to Damascus, and Davos, they’ve envisioned and embraced Karl Marx’s observation that religion is “the opiate of the masses.”

How convenient. The elites have coincidentally decided that the people inhabiting the land recently laid waste, again, who are rebelling against their authority and inattentively and hyperactively sinning against them, need something opium-ish. And they deserve it, good and hard. For that, the elites have concluded, religion is at least as good as Adderall, and cheaper.

Religion no longer threatens the elites, much. Today, the mild threat that religion poses to secular power is more than offset by its usefulness in securing that power by sedating the masses. In particular, the elites like the rules of religion that call for deference to authority – “authority” being them, of course.

Honor they father, honor thy mother, honor thy priest, honor thy Environmental Protection Agency, honor thy right to choose, honor thy elites, and so on.

Never mind that Scripture doesn’t explicitly spell out every single one of those honor/submission rules. The elites contend that, like abortion, they’re implied in the penumbra.

And so, we have an Episcopal Bishop in gilded robe with bejeweled scepter scolding the man newly elected by the people to lead them, whom she spots worshipping respectfully in her congregation.

She thereupon transfigures the worship service into a public damning of that one man. Complying with his Constitutional duty to enforce the duly enacted Federal immigration laws is sinful, she warns, and honoring the God-created genders is immoral.

She would have the President and us believe that a kid struggling emotionally with sex issues doesn’t need help, he needs surgery. He is the victim of God’s mistake where He accidentally put a female soul into a male body. She proclaims that she’s the one to make that decision, by God, and the President is merely the one to enforce her decision by correcting what she has decided is God’s mistake.

Just don’t get carried away, Mr. President, and start enforcing the immigration laws decided by Congress, too. Who does Congress think they are anyway? Episcopal Bishops?

Elites’ new love for religion has all the passion of an old-style revival meeting. It lacks only one thing: God.

Here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Don’t believe in religion because it’s a good thing for society – even though it often is, as even the elites are starting to realize.

Rather, believe in it because it’s the truth, and the truth will set you free.

But don’t take my word for it. Really, please don’t. This is a truth that each person must find in, and on, his own way.

God never existed in Barack’s world. But he wants him in yours. He wants you to hallow the elites; he wants you in their kingdom; he wants you to beg forgiveness.

For the Baracks of the world, God is a useful fiction. But they may someday be startled at what they’ve stirred.

Jimmy Carter playing God paved the road for radical Islamists playing Satan

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Jimmy Carter informed us back in 1976 that he had “looked on many women with lust” and “committed adultery many times in my heart.”

The fact that a man’s heart or other organs have lusted after many women is not exactly news. The reason men don’t go around broadcasting their lust is because it’s obvious. It would be like saying, I get horny on days that end in a “y.”

But Carter did tell us about his lust – in a formal interview with Playboy, perhaps fittingly. He evidently thought that a man’s lust was newsworthy, if the man was him.

It reminds me of the devil’s temptation of Christ, a story told in three of the four Gospels. The devil failed in his temptation of Christ, but the fact that it happened was Good News-worthy two millennia ago.

Carter was a born-again Christian. (Full disclosure: I am too.) In fact, Carter was a Sunday School teacher. In teaching the temptation of Christ on Sundays and advertising “the temptation of Carter” on Saturdays, he was aware of the parallel he was drawing.

Mind you, I don’t judge a person’s brand of Christianity. That’s beyond my paygrade.

But I do judge their politics. Carter seemed to believe that a New Testament approach could work in international affairs – as in forgiveness and love thy enemy – with the likes of Leonid Brezhnev and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Ah, the Ayatollah Khomeini.

When Carter was elected in 1976, the country of Iran was run by a Shah – roughly the equivalent to a Western monarch. The Shah was hostile to communism and generally friendly to the West. Many Iranian students went to Western universities. Women’s rights and human rights steadily improved over the decades of rule by the Shah and his predecessor father.

Carter’s limited experience as the former governor of Georgia and his black and white view of good and evil left him unprepared for the nuances of international geopolitics. In his simplistic syllogism, democracy was good; monarchs were anti-democratic; the Shah was a monarch; and, therefore, the Shah was bad.

In contrast to pragmatists such as Henry Kissinger (whom he despised), Carter was uncomfortable with the notion of the lesser of evils.

And so, when the Shah was threatened, Carter did little to save him. The resulting revolution led to a bloody theocratic state called The Islamic Republic of Iran. Like the Shah’s regime, it was a monarchy except in name, and this time it was led by a monarch – the Ayatollah – who claimed a hotline to Allah (and actually had one to Brezhnev) together with a divine right to rule.  

The Islamic theocrats naturally hated America. They taunted us by holding 53 hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran for 444 days until the day of the inauguration of the man who defeated Carter’s bid for a second term, Ronald Reagan. (Funny, that coincidence.)

Carter’s sanctimonious forgiveness and love failed to free any hostages. (To his credit, he did attempt a rescue, but it never got off the ground.)

Since the time of the Iranian hostage crisis, Iran has shuffled along in their seventh-century oxcart. They throw gay men off tall buildings, they chop off the hands of shoplifters, and they stone prostitutes to death. They threaten to annihilate Israel, and they are just weeks away from having a nuclear bomb with which to do so.

In this odd world of ours, I sometimes see a bumper sticker reading “What would Jesus do?” I’ve always assumed that the owners of the cars to which those stickers are stuck have no interest in Jesus. They’re instead just trolling Christians. They’re trying to contrast the typically conservative political leanings of Christians with what they regard (unburdened by any actual knowledge) as the liberal leanings of Jesus.

But some Christians are actually guided in their geopolitics by that bumper sticker question – What would Jesus do? Never mind that Jesus spent his entire life in a place without iPhones which could be walked in the long direction in a few weeks and the short direction in a day. These particular Christians believe that Christ taught not just the tools for a relationship with God, but also for a relationship with Taylor Swift, John Maynard Keynes, and the Ayatollahs.

The teachings of Christ are probably harmless in dealing with Taylor Swift. (I know nothing of Swift’s beliefs, and I don’t mean to pick on her.)

However, the teachings of Christ are probably less helpful in dealing with John Maynard Keynes. Can we honestly suppose that Christ had insights into economic questions like how to obtain the greatest good for the greatest number, and what the capital gains tax should be, and that those insights are revealed if only we read between the lines of, say, Corinthians?

As for the Ayatollahs, the teachings of Christ are wholly unhelpful in dealing with them. Or in dealing with their jihadi foot soldiers who seek to conquer, enslave, rape, take hostage, behead and eliminate people they regard as infidels by means of suicide bomb vests, airplanes in skyscrapers, and pickup trucks on sidewalks.

The what-would-Jesus-do Christians seem unaware that we already know the answer to their bumper sticker question, “What would Jesus do?”

What Jesus would do is what he did do. He taught love, forgiveness and pacifism. He surrendered and sacrificed himself. He was excruciatingly tortured – naked and humiliated on the cross – that he might rise again to show us The Way.

The madmen of Islam would very much like us, now, to try doing with them what Jesus did with his enemies two thousand years ago. The last Western leader to try that was Jimmy Carter. And here we are.