War on Islamism

Open Thread

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Let us modify the 14th:

All persons born to two American citizens, native born or two persons naturalized in the United States according to law are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. Persons born to one American citizen are citizens of the United States if they have been continuously resident within the United States for at least ten years prior to their eighteenth birthday and take an oath affirming their loyalty and renouncing all foreign ties. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, nor shall any State provide any aid whatsoever to non-citizens. Violation of a oath made in any capacity shall result in permanent disenfranchisement and is not subject to the pardon power.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective number of adult citizens. No legislative district shall be valid if it is drawn for the purposes of securing a partisan political victory nor shall any district be based upon race, ethnic, gender or religious grounds. If any district is challenged on grounds of validity, seven adult citizens of that district shall be randomly chosen via lottery to gather and rule on the validity of the district. A majority is required for ruling on the district validity. The House of Representatives shall be required to expel members from invalid legislative districts; any Representative or Senator who disagrees with said expulsion shall also be expelled. Any person expelled from Congress is by that act permanently disenfranchised and may never hold any office of profit or trust in the United States or the several States.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in actions which violated that oath.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred due to fraudulent activity; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Make your own additions or subtractions as you like: but it is clear that if we are to be a serious nation with a future, we’re going to have to start spelling things out. We can’t rely on honesty and good will – too many of our fellow citizens are idiots and crooks. We can’t leave things open to interpretation because the liars will simply interpret them to support lies.

I saw a picture of that Islamist massacre of Christians in Nigeria over Palm Sunday and it is going to stick with me forever – quite horrific. Don’t search for such pictures. This poor kid had his face sliced in half.

But we do need to think about it – these savages hacked the Christians to pieces. Think about the physical effort and time that takes. The perpetrators would have been covered in gore after they were done. Yes, they are still humans and thus endowed with the rights of same – but they are also unreasonable, inhuman savages. We can’t negotiate with such people – they don’t have grievances which we can ameliorate…they have a vision of themselves as eternal brute masters over slaves. There is no half way point between what they want and what any decent person deserves.

In Iran, this is what we’re fighting – the same sort of people. Yes, they are in error. Yes, they are capable of repentance. Yes, if they do repent then they can be welcomed with open arms into the community of people. But first they must be stopped – and that will require violence. You can’t disabuse people of such deep seated evil by careful reasoning…if they were open to careful reasoning, they never would have got to the point where they chop people up. I hope that Trump arms the Christians and provides them support via our Navy and Air Force.

Apparently for Season 3 of Rings of Power, one of the heroes is an orc. It is like they are deliberately going out of their way to be insulting.

Orcs were creatures of Morgoth in Tolkien’s universe. It is never made clear whether they were something made out of whole cloth by Morgoth or captive elves which he ruined. Suffice it to say, the orcs were made in mockery of elves. Entirely evil and entirely enslaved to Morgoth and, later, to Morgoth’s emissary, Sauron. Clever enough to make weapons and do other basic things, they were usually lazy, greedy and cowardly. Unless they had a Dark Lord to impose his will, they wandered in small bands, killing and stealing what they could. Orcs aren’t born – they are spawned. This does imply some sort of female of the species, but orcs are incapable of love or devotion. So, no, an orc can’t be friends with an elf, even as some sort of temporary alliance. That the writers of Rings of Power are doing this means they want to change the entire meaning of Tolkien’s work – and IMO, this was started with the first series for the Lord of the Rings. There were two major parts totally excluded from the movies: Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire. Part of this was time constraints but I believe that most of it was because the people who made the movie failed to understand why Bombadil was in it and why the Shire had to be scoured. Most important, though, was the excising of the Scouring.

Tolkien, himself, said it was an integral part of the story and envisioned from the start. That is, the hobbits after their arduous adventures, would have to return home and set the Shire to rights. Clean out the bad elements – a sort of low-key version of what Aragorn was doing in Gondor. That is, in any people, bad elements slip in and start to erode the good things and if they aren’t called out and expelled from time to time, it just gets worse. The hobbits had grown lazy and overly tolerant…they just wanted to be left alone and thought it was their right to be left alone. But all the while, enemies were gathering…enemies which could have been easily kept out by a bit of vigilance, but laziness allowed them in, causing death and destruction. By not having it in the movies, we are left with the sense that nothing was ever wrong with the hobbits. Nothing needed to be cured, nobody needed to stand guard. It left a hole in the tale…and that hole is now being driven through by people who not only don’t understand Tolkien’s world, but hate it.

It is my hope that eventually the slop they’re doing now will eventually be forgotten and in later years, truer adaptations will be made.


McCain’s Folly

Mark Noonan1 Comment

From PJ Media:

In the eyes of tens of millions of Egyptians, Senators John McCain’s and Lindsey Graham’s recent words and deeds in Egypt — which have the “blessing” of President Obama — have unequivocally proven that U.S. leadership is aligning with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egyptian media is awash with stories of the growing anger regarding this policy…

…What did McCain do and say in Egypt to earn the ire of millions of Egyptians?

Most offensive to Egyptians — and helpful to the Brotherhood’s cause — is McCain’s insistence on calling the June 30 revolution a “military coup.” In reality, the revolution consisted of perhaps thirty million Egyptians taking to the streets to oust the Brotherhood. McCain is either deliberately misconstruing the event, or believes the story as told by Al Jazeera and Ambassador Anne Patterson. In this narrative, at least an equal amount of Egyptians did support Morsi, and the military simply overthrew him against popular will. Al Jazeera has actually broadcast images of the millions of anti-Morsi protesters and identified them as pro-Morsi protesters, disinformation which was quickly adopted by Western media…

I don’t know what is motivating McCain – lingering belief that “politics ends at the water’s edge” might be it…though you’d figure a man who spent years in the Hanoi Hilton and ended up a veteran of a lost war would understand that its been many decades since the American left (now led by Obama) believed that politics ends at the waters edge.  Continued ire at Rand Paul’s brand of foreign policy – which is considered by McCain to be a replay of the pre-WWII isolationism – is probably playing a role.  And, of course, there is McCain’s desire to shine in the Ruling Class – to be the “Maverick”, which in liberalese is “Republican who will do our bidding”; to be written up in glowing terms in the MSM; to be interviewed by sympathetic MSMers on TV who will give him a chance to take a swipe at fellow Republicans.  But whatever the motivation, it is complete folly.

It is, of course, secondary to Obama’s folly – but that we take as a given until January 20, 2017.  For Republicans the problem is that with McCain and others out there giving cover to Obama, it becomes harder for us to both distance ourselves from Obama’s failures and, more importantly, to craft the radically new approach to foreign policy which is necessary because of Obama’s follies and the rapidly changing conditions around the world.  This isn’t the Cold War (and yet Obama still negotiates arms control agreements with Russia as if it still were); this isn’t even the post-Cold War (a brief moment in time between 1989 and 2001 when we could have re-ordered the world to our heart’s content, but didn’t).  This is a new era – a new ear of international anarchy resultant upon the end of America’s complete predominance.  We are still, by very far, the most powerful nation in the world (any nation  going to war with us – absent Obama as President – would be committing national suicide) but we are no longer able to act as we wish and when we wish and we are confronted with the challenges of Islamism and rising Chinese imperialism.  These elements have the makings in them of World War Three and we need to craft policies which will head that off…or, if that can’t be done, ensure we are in the best possibly position to win the war.  Obama’s policies are working, blindly, towards such a war while at the same time putting us in an ever worse position…McCain coming along and giving Obama cover on this is disastrous.

My view about Egypt is slightly hopeful – I fully understand that a lot of the anti-Muslim Brotherhood people are really just the Even More Muslim Muslim Brotherhood types…people who make the MB look tame by comparison.  But, still slightly hopeful – the last thing we need right now is a policy where we blunder about in Egypt while the people there are working out their destiny.  Quiet support for genuinely secular parties in Egypt, silence on actual political developments, a curtailment of US military aid (though not a complete cut-off…we want to make certain the troops remain paid so that they are less likely to revolt; mostly, stop sending them planes, tanks and other sorts of weapons) and watch developments.  We’ll soon know who winds up on top in Egypt – and if we had played our cards right, we might even have started with good will from an anti-Islamist Egyptian government.  Now we’ve just pissed everyone off..the MB for not firmly backing Morsi; the More Muslim Muslim Brotherhood because they are just creeps; the democratic forces because we are undermining them.

No Republican should have anything to say about Obama foreign policy except criticism – because it is stupid and destructive policy.  But we should hardly spend much time on that – we should spend most of our time thinking about what really needs to be done and then arguing for the changes we want.  It is a pity that McCain has decided to cap his political career – I believe it unlikely he’ll run again – by doing one, last disservice to his nation.  Better to stay home and be silent, Senator McCain, then to bookend a hero’s life with the story of how he helped Obama ruin things.