Tag Archives: religion

Is it OK to hate Muslims?

Posted on by
4

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Those stew pots of human flesh in the stone age have largely been replaced by the “melting pot” of humanity in American immigration.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

Posted on by
28

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.

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

Posted on by
5

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.

Final Installment – The West will be subsumed by China or conquered by Islam

Posted on by
7

Note to Readers: This is the final installment of a three-part series. Part One is HERE and Part Two is HERE. I call this final installment “Choose Your Destructor.”

Part One of this series discussed the rise of Western Civilization from the Greeks and Romans. Part Two concluded with the sad realization that this Western Civilization is falling. The question for this final Part Three is, what will replace it?

It won’t be Russia, “a gas station masquerading as a country,” as John McCain famously put it. McCain died before he could witness Russia proving him right by flailing and failing to conquer it’s eastern neighbor for nearly four years now, a conquering that any competent conqueror could have performed in four weeks.

Of course, by “eastern neighbor,” I’m not talking about the NATO alliance, or even Finland or Sweden. I’m talking about . . . drum roll . . . Ukraine. That’s right. Russia cannot even take over a country most people had never heard of before Russia made heroes of them, and still couldn’t place on a map even if the map were limited to Eastern Europe.

That leaves two powerful forces as candidates for the Destructor of Western Civilization – the nation of China and the imperialist religion of Islam.

China is an ancient civilization going back to the time of the pharaohs. They built their civilization the old-fashioned way — by hard work, merit and an inquisitive culture, much as the Greeks and Romans later built theirs.

The ancient Chinese differed from the Greeks and Romans in an important way, due to geography. The Chinese weren’t located on the friendly pond of the Mediterranean Sea, but rather on the shores of the vast and ferocious Pacific Ocean, and so they never developed an advanced seafaring technology. That limited their ability to expand, since the land to the immediate west of them was high and dry. Eventually, they traded with the West over the Silk Road, but that came late and entailed an arduous journey.

As a result, Chinese culture has always been insular. Until the 20th century, they didn’t give a fig about the West. They were quite sure their system and their people were superior to whatever the West had to offer.

They still often think that way, though now they see that the West – or at least America – does have some things to offer. Such as advanced AI microchips.

With or without the West, Chinese culture is successful by most measures, as one would expect of a bright and numerous people utilizing merit-based approaches to management.

To be sure, communism has corrupted Chinese culture, as it corrupts all cultures it infects. But Chinese communism is a little different. It’s not just an extreme form of socialism. They don’t practice “from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.” Karl Marx was not Chinese.

The communism practiced by the Chinese is more like a state-regulated capitalism. Small businesses flourish independently in a free market economy. Large ones are often controlled or even owned by the government, but with the goal of maximizing wealth, not redistributing it. Foreign investment in China is encouraged. They emphasize manufacturing and exporting manufactured goods, something no communist country ever achieved during the Cold War.

The political system, too, is pragmatic in a way seldom seen in Marxist communism. People join the Party, they advance by showing ability and alliances, and the most-accomplished become part of an oligarchy or “politburo,” which chooses leaders.

The leaders they choose these days are not dictators in the sense of having absolute power. There’s always the oligarchy/politburo to deal with.

This should sound familiar. The Founders of the United States of America were an oligarchy. They were not elected. Rather, they knew and respected one another and built alliances among themselves to arrive at most decisions by consensus.

Oligarchies are not so bad. I sometimes wish we were now being ruled by the oligarchy of Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Monroe, Franklin, Adams and the other Founders, rather than by warring mobs, conspiracy theorists and a lying media.

Chinese culture is generally not imperial. That’s in part due to their geographical isolation and consequent wariness of outsiders and in part, relatedly, because they always thought their culture was too good to share. Whatever the reasons, they don’t have a tradition of subjugating and enslaving their neighbors. The Chinese could own most of Russia and all of Southeast Asia, at a minimum, but they don’t. (Yes, I know about their designs on Tibet and Taiwan.)

Nor are the Chinese a theocracy or regime of ideologues. They’re a pragmatic and patient people. The billion-plus of them will eventually dominate the world, but probably not by brute force. (Yes, I know about the brutality of Tiananmen Square.)

Their strategy in trade is an example. Their days of slave labor and child labor are largely over. With vast numbers of skilled workers, they manufacture huge quantities of goods at high efficiency and sell them at a small margin. The manufacturing skills and trading networks they’re developing will serve them over the long term.

It’s the long term they’re interested in. The Chinese were a civilization in the time of the Egyptians, and well before the Greeks and Romans.

Our assimilation by the Chinese will probably be gradual and not destructive. They’re not interested in killing their customers. They think of Americans the way we think of cattle – big and clumsy, but very useful once you domesticate them.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the Chinese are nice people. They will exploit us, and they already are. Like cattle, we will be milked.

But we won’t be slaughtered.

There are things China admires about us, such as our inventiveness, our technological sophistication, and even our entrepreneurialism (despite or perhaps because of the fact that they themselves are, putatively, anti-capitalist communists).

With any luck, the Greco-Roman-Western culture that still dominates the world but is falling fast will not be extinguished, but will instead live on and be subsumed by China. Who knows, they might even improve on it, just as the Romans improved on the Greeks in some ways and we improved on them both in some ways.

They might even boot the Muslims out of Europe – something that European leaders lack the backbone to do even as the European people demand it.

Which brings us to the other possible group that could be our Destructor. It’s that old nemesis of the Greeks – the Persians. Or, more broadly, the Muslims. Of course, the ancient Persians were not Muslims, since Muhammad was still a millennium in the future, but there’s a straight line between the culture of Persia and the culture of Islam.

I will state some hard truths about the Muslims. Rather than grappling with those hard truths, some will simply dismiss the message by labelling me as the messenger “Islamophobic.”

If “Islamophobic” means fearing people who glorify the beheading of babies, the torturing of hostages, the defenestration of gays, and the raping of women, then I plead guilty. I am indeed Islamophobic.

One of those hard truths about the Muslims is that they have a nasty habit of conquering and converting infidels at the point of the sword – the ones they don’t kill outright, that is. To that end, they’ve invaded Europe multiple times, the most recent being the “mostly peaceful” invasion of the last generation.

They’re like strangers who crashed a house party. The kind hosts reluctantly let them stay. Then they repaid the hosts’ kindness by trashing their house. Now, the hosts are afraid to ask them to leave. Next, they’ll be sleeping in the hosts’ bed, with his wife along with the young girls they brought.

It won’t continue to be mostly peaceful. The party crashers see the hosts as infidels. They contend the hosts have no rightful authority over this house. They must submit and convert and then submit some more, and some more, or be put to death.

In fairness to Muslims, two qualifications should be mentioned. First, violence can be found not only in Muslim writings but also in Judeo-Christian writings. But violence in old Judeo-Christian texts is mostly ignored or viewed as allegorical now. When’s the last time you heard a Christian talk about literal jihad? Or globalizing an intifada? No mainstream Christian theologian preaches that we should invade Saudi Arabia and kill or convert them.

Many mainstream Muslim theologians, on the other hand, do preach that they should invade Europe and America, kill or convert us, and steal our stuff. Their leaders publicly label us Satanic. The great cathedrals of Europe will be converted into Muslim mosques in the next 50 years. Bet on it.

The second qualification is, not all Muslims believe in violence. In fact, the great majority of them do not. But – and this is a big but – when someone commits an atrocity in the name of his religion, others of that religion are obligated to condemn the atrocity and disown the criminal who committed it. Muslims seldom do.

I realize I’m asking for more from good Muslims than I’ve ever asked of myself. I’m asking them to risk everything by standing against religious atrocities, while all I’ve ever risked is losing a few tribal readers by standing against stupid tweets.

But if you don’t stand up to wrongs committed in the name of your religion or tribe, then you forfeit that religion or tribe to the wrong. So far, most Muslims have elected not to bravely stand up to wrongs committed in the name of their religion. They’ve elected to risk their religion rather than risk themselves.

It’s ironic that, once you scratch the surface, this religion cloaked in machismo seems to be 10% barbarians and 90% chickens.

Back to those plodding Chinese. The difference between Chinese and Muslim culture can be seen in a microcosm in their respective immigrants to America. Which do you prefer?

I prefer the Chinese. Given the choice, I choose to be assimilated by pragmatic, exploitative, profit-seeking Chinese rather than being conquered and converted, or worse, by violent, macho, chicken-shit Muslims.

I wish I didn’t have to choose – I wish there were still reason for optimism about the West – but there’s not. Being assimilated into China is our only hope for some semblance of our culture to survive.

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

Posted on by
4

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.

Is the American Pope a case of follow-the-money?

Posted on by
1

To everyone’s surprise, the new Pope is an American. Like almost everyone else in the world, I’d never heard of him before yesterday. But he looks like a straight shooter and a stand-up guy. And, as popes go, he looks pretty healthy.

For readers in my tribe who are dismayed that he once expressed some passing criticism of President Trump’s summary deportation of illegal aliens, I ask you: What’s a clergyman supposed to say – kick the SOBs out?

I did not expect to see this – an American Pope – now or ever. Reports are that the smoke-watchers crowding the Vatican grounds didn’t either, and were a bit disappointed.

That’s not because Europeans hate or even dislike Americans. The practice of scorning American tourists ended at least a generation ago. The days of ugly Americans are now replaced by the days of rich Americans – and everyone likes customers who are rich.  (That said, it doesn’t hurt to greet people in their language when you’re in their country. “Buenos dias” and “bonjour” fetch a lot more smiles than “Hey, howya doin?”)

So don’t be fooled by Americans who sanctimoniously advertise to fellow Americans that they identify themselves as Canadians, not Americans, when they go to Europe, ostensibly to trick the Europeans into liking them. Those Americans are revealing a dislike for Americans alright – by themselves. Those Americans hate America, and they project that hatred onto the world.

Although Europeans don’t hate Americans the way some Americans hate Americans, I still wouldn’t expect the sun-drunk, ecstasy-filled citizens of Rome milling about St. Peter’s Square this week to be whispering, “Let’s pray they elect an Americano!”

And they weren’t. So why did the Cardinals elect an Americano?

Here’s a relevant factoid: The Vatican has deep financial problems.

Here’s another relevant factoid: When the Notre Dame burned a few years ago, guess who donated the greatest amount for the rebuilding, apart from the French themselves (several of whom were extraordinarily generous). It was the Americanos.

Connect the dots. 

I hope the strategy pans out. We need the Catholic Church more than ever before – and I say that as a Protestant.

Elites rediscover the power of religion – to control you

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Who the heck does the Commie Pope think they is?

Posted on by
5

Now when the radical priest come to get me released
We was all on the cover of Newsweek

Paul Simon, Me and Julia

Let’s start with a different Pope. Let’s start with the Pope who came of age in Poland while it was enslaved for decades under the Soviet Union after WWII. He’s the Pope who went home after the Sistine Chapel routine to accept the adoration of literally millions of his countrymen.

He’s the Pope who helped bring down the tyranny of the Soviets who knew all about military power but nothing about the spiritual kind. He’s the Pope who nearly died in an assassination attempt apparently masterminded by those same Soviets and carried out by a Turkish thug with aid from another enslaved country, Bulgaria.

He’s the Pope who publicly forgave his Muslim attacker, downplayed the attacker’s Soviet and Bulgarian connections in order to keep the peace, and asked that the attacker be pardoned. The would-be assassin was duly pardoned, went back to Turkey, and converted to Catholicism.

He’s St. John Paul II.

I join tens of millions of Poles – and hundreds of millions of Catholics, fellow Protestants and other people of faith around the world – in loving that man. (I once saw him at the conclusion of a pilgrimage but that’s a different column.)

The current Pope was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, and took the name Francis when he moved to Rome. The Cardinals thought they were showing real strategerie in picking a guy from Latin America. There’s lots of alleged Catholics there, and their numbers grow every day. In contrast, in Italy there aren’t even many putative Catholics, even fewer real ones, and their numbers are dwindling every day as Italians make a religion out of defying the Church’s birth control prohibitions.

Pope Francis is known for what he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like Israel. He doesn’t like Ukraine. He doesn’t like America. He doesn’t like Europe. He doesn’t like the best tool in history for alleviating material suffering – capitalism. 

However, he does like food. He likes to lecture people about their morals. Like all Argentinians, he likes inflation. He likes Karl Marx. But (or is it “therefore”?) he likes the most lavish palace in all of Christendom, the Vatican.

But let’s give the radical priest his due. He just came out against the gender-bender stuff. You can’t just change your gender, he says. That constitutes playing God. Only God gets to play God.

To be sure, however, it’s still Francis who gets to tell us what He says when He does.

But hey, this is a start! We have a world leader who thinks or at least says that having virtue is more important than signaling it, and that Christianity is a greater religion than wokeness.

The congregations of the woke are crying “blasphemy!” They had trusted Francis to toe the line, drink the Kool-Aid, and carry their tin cross. And he had, so far.

The problem for the woke is, the radical priests of Latin America may well be Commies and may even be gay, but they’re not transexuals. Buenos Aires is not Bangkok.  Intersectionality doesn’t go as far as intersexuality.

Francis likes to wear a dress and wears a lampshade for a hat, but don’t be fooled. There are no trannies in Argentina. John Paul II is probably glad.

God, Man and Global Warming

Posted on by
Reply

Why do global-warming activists get so angry?

My Jan. 4 column noted that there is ongoing debate among serious scientists about the extent and particulars of global warming. Contrary to some assertions, the science is not settled, say numerous scientists, including President Barack Obama’s own former Undersecretary of Science Steven Koonin, who is a prominent Caltech physics professor with a Ph.D. from MIT.

Nonetheless, I suggested that we should take the issue seriously, investigate it thoroughly and, in the meantime, conserve our resources and seek renewable ones.

And, I implored, let’s put aside the ugly personal attacks and not get sanctimonious about it. We’re all in this together.

The column generated 208 online comments on The Aspen Times website. Countless others were emailed to me. Many on both sides supported my conciliatory tone.

But many of the comments by global-warming activists were hostile. Continue reading →