Monetary Inanity (Part Infinity)

For those who have been living under a rock the last week or so, the Swiss franc went off like a rocket when the SNB (the Swiss National Bank, Switzerland's central bank) decided to end a currency peg against the euro.

And as usual, when something like this happens, there's lots of rather poorly informed commentary making the rounds out there.  Judging from their writing, I think that financial writers must not make very much money, so it is probably understandable that most of them don't have much of a grasp of monetary matters or any real incentive to learn, especially as concerns exchange rates and central banking.  But at least some of these guys should know better, especially the ones talking about deflation.

So, once again, I'll do what I can to try and correct the internet...

First of all, the story really shouldn't be about the franc, it should be about the euro.  As far as I can tell, there isn't much wrong with the Swiss economy, and (aside from this sort of incident) their monetary system is probably the best run in...well...more or less everywhere.  Switzerland has achieved arguably the nearest approach of any modern country to monetary and economic Nirvana, which is to say, extreme boringness.  Sorry, I meant stability.  Which goes a long way towards understanding why this all happened -- especially in light of the fact that poor Switzerland is surrounded by Euro-country, which has not been managed nearly so well.

In a nutshell, with the Euro on the ropes and the European economy in the doldrums, wealthy Europeans have suddenly decided that what they really, really want is some Swiss francs in a nice, safe Swiss bank account.  This has, of course, driven demand for the franc to the stratosphere, Switzerland being a rather small country with only so many francs to go around, and Europe being rather full of fearful aristocrats with wealth to protect at this unhappy juncture.

Which is to say, it is all being driven by events that have almost nothing at all to do with the Swiss economy per se, by bad policy the Swiss had absolutely nothing to do with, yet is no doubt rather disruptive to the Swiss.  You might call it something of a 'monetary externality.'  Yet it is the job of the SNB to deal with monetary matters, and when this came up on their radar, they apparently decided that it was important to try to shield the Swiss economy from the disruption.  Understandable, but as it turned out, a rather bad idea.

A peg works by (or, rather, a peg is enforced by) the central bank undertaking activities to bring supply and demand for the two currencies in line so that the exchange rate is stabilized at a certain ratio.  If demand for one currency or the other gets too far out of line, the bank intervenes as necessary to bring them back within the bounds it has set.

In practice, this almost always means that the bank prints reams and reams of its own currency (figuratively, of course -- banking these days is done with digits) and uses it to buy assets which are sold in the other currency.  This creates demand for the foreign currency in the course of the transaction, and satiates demand for their own currency without increasing 'price' (the exchange rate) by increasing its supply.  Theoretically, it could go the other way around, (selling foreign assets to soak up your own currency, while reducing demand for the foreign one) except that the bank enforcing the peg is usually trying to bring down the value of its own currency, not up.  They don't usually do this kind of thing to prop up their exchange rate, (except maybe in really screwed up situations.  But that is not Switzerland.) 

In the process, the central bank's balance sheet 'expands' (which means it buys up more and more assets, and issues out more and more money, which it counts as a liability) and the economy is stuffed with more and more of this created money.  Usually, the Swiss are quite circumspect about this kind of thing (unlike most places), but I suppose they thought it was worth it in light of the magnitude of the disruption they were experiencing, which they probably thought would be temporary.

I think this is one of those things that, looking back, 'seemed like a good idea at the time.'  (Famous last words, right?)  The problem with a currency peg is that it forces the country creating the peg to more or less adopt the monetary policy of the country they are pegging their currency to -- for better or worse, i.e., with all that that entails.  So, if Europe inflates, Switzerland has to as well -- whether Switzerland would like to or not -- if it wants to keep the peg.  In effect, the announcement of the peg was the SNB unilaterally joining the euro.  So -- the response of Switzerland to Europe's monetary woes...was for Switzerland to adopt their monetary policies?

What could possibly go wrong?  (More famous last words...)

What probably triggered the SNB's 'immune response' was the sheer volume of transactions it was undertaking to maintain the peg.  Whenever a central bank does something like this, it is going toe-to-toe with an entire world of currency speculators and the like, having to match them transaction for transaction to keep the price where it wants.  This is a tall order, especially for a small country, and it wouldn't be the first time that a central bank failed (for a fascinating story of how George Soros ended a BOE currency peg and made a billion dollars in one day, see here). 

By pegging the franc, the SNB created for Switzerland the same, central problem that is internal to the euro itself -- bad policies, brought about externally, that nobody can get out of when they need to.  Except that the SNB saw the light, and could, and did.  And the market jacked up the exchange rate in response.  Not really that big of a deal.

Yet you see people talking about deflation.  The 'trigger' here that has set people off seems to be negative interest rates and falling prices in response to the movement (and the massive demand for Swiss bank deposits, no doubt).  Sorry folks, yes, those are symptoms, but Switzerland is really, really not what deflation looks like.

If you want to see what deflation looks like, watch the run on George Bailey's bank in It's a Wonderful Life.  Deflation looks like Wall Street in 1929, bankers jumping out of windows, mass asset seizure and liquidation by creditors, etc.  In contrast, depositors are lining up to stuff money into Swiss banks, Swiss financial stock prices were up on the news, the Swiss economy is the rock of Europe, and those poor, poor Davos billionaires are coughing up more money to conspire in comfort in Swiss resorts.  They're grumbling I'm sure, but they're coughing.

Really folks, nothing to see here.  Move along.  The situations being created by falling oil prices -- instability in Russia, Venezuela, and the like -- seem much more interesting to me.  Yet here again, these places engage in the same kinds of efforts, artificially pushing exchange rates around.  Especially in these places, this looks really destructive to me.  Probably the best thing for Russia and Venezuela would be a weaker currency, as it would make their manufacturing sectors more competitive, which might actually develop and eventually lead them to not be highly commodity-price sensitive, fragile, one-dimensional economies.  Concerns about short term stability are preventing conditions that would eventually lead to longer-term stability through economic diversification.

Likewise, the Swiss are fairly well poised to take advantage of a higher exchange rate, given their well-developed financial sector.  Maybe these guys should just listen to the market and let things unfold.  Surely there are better ways to handle these things than mass, indiscriminate, across-the-board interventionism.

But what do I know?  Maybe that's why I don't run a country.

Speak No Evil?

As public confidence dwindles in the supposedly protective mechanisms around us, we confront a choice of paths into the future:

1. We can surrender to the tides that threaten us;
2. We can become self-reliant;
3. We can close our eyes.

(Note carefully what I didn’t say. We cannot make the inherently untrustworthy agents of the State trustworthy, nor will improving their equipment, their training, or – may God help us all – their “inclusiveness” make us any safer. It’s been tried, people. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.)

He who has surrendered mentally will choose option #1. He who has resolved to survive and flourish will choose option #2. But he whose fragile mettle will not allow him to confront the evidence of the onrushing darkness will choose option #3.

It’s notable that #3 types cannot endure any dispute about what they’ve chosen to deny. That might be because it’s harder to shut your ears than your eyes. Whatever the reason, if a #3 type leans in a certain direction politically, he’ll want to silence those who’ve chosen options #1 and #2. If he’s politically or journalistically active, he’ll strive for exactly that result, whether through the law or through derision and intimidation.

Kevin Williamson gives us a look at one of the tactics employed:

The “Fox News Is Stupid and Evil” article is by now its own genre of journalism, albeit one that almost nobody does very well. In the course of attempting to enlighten some not especially bright Democrats earlier this week — hola, @mcspocky! — I went looking through a few of the so-called studies that purport to demonstrate that Fox News viewers are deeply and uniquely misinformed about public affairs. They are mostly horsepucky, as I demonstrated with this assortment of dim-witted accounts of the PunditFact “study” (which is not a study) of disputed Fox News statements, the authors of which rightly warn against using it to make general conclusions about Fox News, inasmuch as the data sample is admittedly arbitrary and biased — not out of malice or bad faith, but because the very structure of such fact-checking columns ensures that it is so, among other things by examining only disputed statements.

Other entries in the genre are not holding up well over time, either. The gentlemen-scholars of Alternet gave it their very best with a piece published under the subtle headline “Study confirms that Fox News makes you stupid.” The column contains a bullet list detailing nine outrageous things that Fox News viewers believe in error, which I have reproduced here with my comments in brackets.

The entire piece is well worth your time – Williamson, whom I have criticized in the past, does yeoman’s work in this selection – but above all, ponder his conclusion:

The Left has learned over the years that winning debates is difficult but discrediting people and institutions is relatively easy. You point the finger and yell “racist!” or “stupid!” or “stupid racist!” long enough and loud enough and it will start to stick. And for a long time, the Left did not have to do very much debating, because there was no Fox News, no Rush Limbaugh et al., and no conservative alternatives online. Now there are, and so the Left’s most pressing order of business is the delegitimization of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh et al., and conservative alternatives online. And if that doesn’t work, Harry Reid is ready to repeal the First Amendment, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is ready to see you locked up for your political views.

And when that happens, you can bet that somebody will publish a study finding that it’s the only rational thing to do.

Indeed.

---

Does anyone else here recognize the name of Theodor Adorno? You can be forgiven for it if you don’t. Yet Adorno was among the originators of the “stupid or evil” rhetorical tactic of which the Left is so fond. As he fancied himself a “scientist,” he gave it a pseudo-scientific gloss. His book The Authoritarian Personality became a basic text for the Frankfurt School rhetoricians and dialecticians who came after him. Notable among them was Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse embraced Adorno’s “conservatives are fascists” thesis wholeheartedly. As he wrote in his infamous 1965 tract “Repressive Tolerance:”

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance: ... it would extend to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word....

Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger. I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs. Different opinions and 'philosophies' can no longer compete peacefully for adherence and persuasion on rational grounds: the 'marketplace of ideas' is organized and delimited by those who determine the national and the individual interest. In this society, for which the ideologists have proclaimed the 'end of ideology', the false consciousness has become the general consciousness--from the government down to its last objects. The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped: their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional powers to those who oppress these minorities....

[1968 Postscript:] As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for 'the other side', I maintain that there are issues where either there is no 'other side' in any more than a formalistic sense, or where 'the other side' is demonstrably 'regressive' and impedes possible improvement of the human condition.

Note the use of “false consciousness” in the above. This is a thinly veiled assertion that if you disagree with Marcuse, you’re probably stupid. Marcuse subsumes the “evil” part from Adorno’s assertions about “the authoritarian personality,” which he unabashedly identifies with political conservatism and incredibly equates to “fascist.”

(Yes, yes, the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are already aware that fascism is a Marxist phenomenon, but some things cannot be said too often.)

Adorno and Marcuse provided the activist Left with rhetorical weapons they’ve used to campaign against freedom of expression for decades. Happily, they’ve made little progress so far. However, as the storm clouds mass above us, an increasing percentage of Americans find that they prefer not to hear the plain facts about any of them. Some of them would like to silence the rest of us and the organs we use for communication and mutual information, and are willing to sign on to the activists’ campaign to see to it.

---

A managed democracy is a wonderful thing, Manuel, for the managers...and its greatest strength is a free press when ‘free’ is defined as ‘responsible’ and the managers define what is ‘irresponsible.’ – Professor Bernardo de la Paz, in Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

The political campaign to limit free expression to what political powers that be decide is “reasonable and responsible” will be presented to us under a number of rationales. Some will have a superficially attractive veneer. Others will be wrapped in the stark colors of fear. Regardless of the rationale, the aim will be to put the State in charge of what may and may not be said: an abrogation of our First Amendment guaranteed rights.

As Clarence Carson once wrote, left-liberals have long maintained that freedom of speech plus the vote are sufficient to “protect freedom.” They were insincere then; they’re showing their true colors now. All that remains is to see whether decent persons will let them get away with it.

We come in peace.

Hundreds of protesters were out in force Saturday at a Muslim gathering [in Garland, Texas] blacked out to the media called “Stand with the Prophet” whose keynote speaker, an imam from Brooklyn, has been linked as an unindicted co-conspirator with the deadly 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The imam, Siraj Wahhaj, once remarked, “It is my duty and our duty as Muslims to replace the U.S. Constitution with the Quran.”

President Obama formally invited Wahhaj to give a “juma,” or invocation, at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, but his invitation was withdrawn after public criticism of the decision became widespread.^[1]

The event spokeswoman Page Spence, had this to say:

We are peaceful people. We want nothing more than to be part of this culture and community. We are level-headed peaceable people who are not trying to convert every single person to our religion.^[2]

So, wanting "nothing more than to be a part of this culture and community" involves inviting a Muslim religious leader to be a keynote speaker who thinks it's the duty of all Muslims to replace the Constitution. Call me crazy but I think declaring one's intention to do away with our Constitution is sedition pure and simple and doesn't remotely equate to being "a part of this culture and community." And this schmuck they invited was the keynote speaker?

The translation for patriots of this disgraceful woman's remarks is, "We hope you buy the ridiculous lies we tell you about Islam and our intentions. If you believe that having your Constitution replaced by the Koran is consistent with getting along with you and being part of America, well then, you're stupider than we thought."

I can't find a reference for the date or the words of Imam Wahhaj to the effect that the shariah must replace the Koran. Lots of articles on the web indicate that he "once remarked" that that is the case. I will, however, go way out on a limb and express my opinion that he was quoted correctly above. One source indicated that he said what he said prior to being invited to deliver that "juma" at the 2012 Dem National Convention.^[3] Eighteen years having gone by since the attack on WTC, I'm thinking that the Democrats (or Obama himself) did know Wahhaj was an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive crime, so Democrat thinking appears to be thoroughly anti-American and corrupt.

To the same effect on Islamic subversion and complete and utter bullshit on wanting to integrate into American society:

A leader for the Texas branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations has told a crowd at a rally for Islam that members of the faith really shouldn’t be bound by American law.

“If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land,” said Mustafa Carroll, the executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth CAIR branch, a keynote speaker as the recent rally.^[4]

It's, like, you know, a vindication of Daniel Webster who, in 1852, addressed the New York Historical Society:

The Constitution has enemies, secret and professed. . . . They have hot heads and cold hearts. They are rash, reckless, and fierce for change, and with no affection for the existing institutions of their country. . . . Other enemies there are, more cool, and with more calculation. These have a deeper and more fixed and dangerous purpose. . . . There are those in the country, who profess, in their own words, even to hate the Constitution.

Friends of the Constitution must rally and unite . . . act, with immovable firmness, like a band of brothers, with moderation and conciliation . . . looking only to the great object set before them, the preservation of the Constitution, bequeathed to them by their ancestors. They must gird up their loins for the work. It is a duty which they owe to these ancestors, and to the generations which are to succeed them.

Daniel Webster concluded: “Gentlemen, I give my confidence, my countenance, my heart and hand, my entire co-operation to all good men . . . who are willing to stand by the Constitution. . . . I hardly know . . . the manner of our political death. . . . We shall die no lingering death. . . . An earthquake would shake the foundations of the globe, pull down the pillars of heaven, and bury us at once in endless darkness. Such may be the fate of this country and its institutions. May I never live, to see that day!^[5]

From the evidence you've just read, in what way could you conclude that that day is not dawning in our own lifetime?

Notes
^[1] "Hundreds rally at secret Texas Muslim event. Media denied access to attend 'Stand with the Prophet' conference." By John Griffing, World Net Daily, 1/18/15.
^[2] Id.
^[3] "Islamists to open DNC with prayer for sharia to replace US Constitution." By Derrick Hollenbeck, Western Journalism, 8/29/12. Other Muslim invited attendees at that Convention do not, shall we say, inspire confidence.
^[4] ""#MyJihad In Texas – CAIR On Muslims: ‘We Are Above The Law Of The Land’." By Jake Hammer, Pat Dollard, 3/4/13. H/t: askmarion.
^[5] "Daniel Webster's prediction for America coming true. Bill Federer remembers dire warning against nation that forgets God." By Bill Federer, World Net Daily, 1/17/15. H/t: Liberty Review.

The Gospel According To Saint Mark: A Sunday Rumination

My parish, Saint Louis de Montfort in Sound Beach, enjoys the occasional services of a remarkable priest: Father Edward Kealey, until recently the pastor of Saint Sylvester’s in Medford. Father Ed combines an exceptional talent for homiletics with deep scholarship and a degree of intellectual excitement about Christianity and its history that’s rare even among the most dedicated clerics. All of that and more comes through in his sermons. Today’s sermon was one of the most illuminating yet.

Father Ed spoke of the Gospeler most neglected by Church historians over the centuries: Saint Mark, sometimes referred to in the New Testament as John Mark. Mark’s mother, whose name is apparently lost to history, owned the property on which the Last Supper was celebrated. Mark himself was a companion at various times to Saints Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, in his later years presided as Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, and was eventually arrested and beheaded as a martyr for Christ.

One of the questions about the Gospels that’s recurred over the centuries is why three of them – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – are so similar in the events they recount, despite the time intervals between their creations. Some classical scholars have proposed that there’s a common source behind them all: a shadowy figure sometimes denominated by “Q” who supplied the narration of those events to those three Gospelers. Yet Mark himself had at least brushing contact with the rest of the Twelve around the time of the Passion, was a companion to Saint Peter while the two were in Rome, and wrote the earliest of all four of the Gospels: the only one of the three greatly similar ones certain to have been produced in the First Century A.D. Thus, it is likely that Mark’s Gospel derives from knowledge of Jesus’s life and ministry conferred upon him by Saint Peter – and that Mark himself was “Q,” the source for Matthew and Luke, whose Gospels date to well after the events all three relate.

Yet for centuries Mark’s Gospel has been treated as the least important of the Big Three. Strange.

---

Over the centuries men have searched for more documents from the time of Christ. Numerous candidates have come forth, perhaps the best known being the scrolls of Nag Hammadi. The overarching desire is to find something written by Jesus Himself, or, failing that, a transcription of His exact words by a source other than “Q” that would confirm, at least in substance, the things He preached. Yet the Redeemer was explicit that there was no need for Him to write:

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” – Matthew 24:35

In reflecting on the post-Resurrection careers of Peter, Paul, Mark, Barnabas, and the other Apostles and early evangelists, I am perpetually amazed by their willing, uncomplaining acceptance of lives of hard labor, endless travel, and for nearly all, condemnation and execution for their faith. Those who deride Christianity as implausible can’t cope with that degree of dedication; it baffles them that any man would devote himself to such trials “for a fairy tale.” Yet if anyone needs evidence that the Redeemer did indeed walk among men, that he suffered, died, and rose from the dead in fulfillment of the promises of all the earlier Judaic prophets, what better evidence could there be?

Saint Mark never met Jesus in the flesh. His contact with the Twelve was as a young teenager, through his mother and his subsequent enlistment in the evangelical mission of the newborn Church. His role in the New Testament is far more muted than those of Peter and Paul. Yet he appears to have undergone hardships and trials at least the equal of theirs. He surrendered his life for his faith just as they did. Finally, we might have him to thank for three-fourths of the canonically accepted Gospels.

Who can confidently deride the dedication of such a man? Who can say, without any doubt whatsoever, that the mission to which Mark gave his life and his death – just as with Paul, Barnabas, and all the rest of the Twelve except for Saint John – was a fairy tale?

Not I.

---

Among the things that Father Ed had to say about Saint Mark, he noted the optimism that infuses his Gospel. Mark treats even the death of Jesus as a moment in which to exult, for which to give thanks, for it was in that moment that the sins of all Mankind became remissible – according to a former seminarian of my acquaintance, the moment in which they were actually remitted from one end of Time to the other. The other Gospels are more somber in their treatment of the Passion, preferring to reserve any sense of celebration for the Resurrection and Ascension that followed. To Mark, it’s all of a piece: a single, indivisible event in the Mind of God.

Christians are often exhorted to hope – to think of ourselves as “the people of hope.” Yet in the days between the Passion and the Resurrection even the Twelve must have had their doubts that all would ultimately be well. The Gospel According To Saint Mark, the “gospel of the year” at this point in the three-year liturgical cycle, can remind us of the indivisibility of the Divine Plan, the true and inexorable justification for all three of the theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. Even the agony of His Son’s mortal form on the cross in the cruelest form of execution known to that time was a component of that Plan. We have Mark to tell us...and perhaps to thank for telling Matthew and Luke as well.

May God bless and keep you all.

American Sniper

See it.
No excuses.

Missing Link Graciously Supplied

Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I’m feeling poorly, as you might imagine from the events of yesterday, and I doubt I can sit here for very long. (Anyway, the little tube does say “Do not drive or operate machinery,” and a computer is a machine, right? Right?) But one of my functions on the Web is to complete skeins of reasoning others have left incomplete.

Sometimes that lapse is because the commentator at issue is unable to fill in the steps missing from his argument. That’s hardly the case with Bill Whittle:

...but all the same, quite a lot of persons would regard his connection of “good intentions” legislation to mass slaughters by totalitarian governments as fanciful. It’s not, and I’m here to tell you why.

The missing link is the black market.

Whenever a government steps into the economy to provide, prohibit, or regulate some item, whether it be toothpicks, tuitions, or taxidermy, some persons will be dissatisfied with the prescribed conditions regardless of the specifics. Some fraction of those persons will want what they want on terms other than the government’s dictates badly enough to try to skirt the law. Their efforts to do so create a black market, which our excessively enlightened age prefers to call an “underground economy.” The existence of a black market undermines the effects of the government’s decrees. The Very Important Persons in charge find their prognostications to be in error...error that’s plainly visible to the consuming public. Law enforcement is called in.

But law enforcement is a tiny fraction of the consuming public. It can’t be everywhere, watching everyone, at every instant. Moreover, the use of law enforcement to suppress “economic crimes” causes the profitability of trade in the black market to increase while it weakens public confidence in the government’s efficacy and benevolence. (It also exerts a corrupting influence on law enforcement, but that’s a subject best left for another screed.) That draws in additional suppliers and additional purchasers. The black market fraction of trade in the controlled item increases, in defiance of the State’s wishes. The progression reveals the State’s claim of economic omnipotence for what it is: a fantasy. The Very Important Persons in charge can’t have that. Efforts to eliminate the black market intensify as the “above-ground economy” stutters and weakens.

The State learns the limits of its power upon its own hide as tax revenues decline and lawlessness proliferates.

---

Once upon a time, a government with the noblest of intentions -- “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!” -- strove with all its might to control a single economic phenomenon. In brief, it decreed that its unbacked paper money -- assignats -- should be treated as equivalent to gold or silver. The consequences spread rapidly, compelling that government to pass wage and price controls that blanketed the entire economy of France. Hearken to Andrew Dickson White, the founder of Cornell University, on what came next:

[I]t was found that the Maximum (a decree of the governing council of revolutionary France that set maximum prices and wages for all goods and services) could not be made to work well—even by the shrewdest devices. In the greater part of France it could not be enforced....To detect goods concealed by farmers and shopkeepers, a spy system was established with a reward to the informer of one-third of the value of the goods discovered. To spread terror, the Criminal Tribunal at Strassburg was ordered to destroy the dwelling of anyone found guilty of selling goods above the price set by law. The farmer often found that he could not raise his products at anything like the price required by the new law, and when he tried to hold back his crops or his cattle, alleging that he could not afford to sell them at the prices fixed by law, they were frequently taken from him by force and he was fortunate if paid even in the depreciated fiat money—fortunate, indeed, if he finally escaped with his life.

Involved in all these perplexities, the Convention tried to cut the Gordian knot. It decreed that any person selling gold or silver coin, or making any difference in any transaction between paper and specie, should be imprisoned in irons for six years—that anyone who refused to accept a payment in assignats, or accepted assignats at a discount, should pay a fine of three thousand francs, and that anyone committing this crime a second time should pay a fine of twenty thousand francs and suffer imprisonment twenty years in irons. Later, on the 8th of September, 1793, the penalty for such offences was made death, with confiscation of the criminal’s property, and so reward was offered to any person informing the authorities regarding any such criminal transaction. To reach the climax of ferocity, the Convention decreed, in May 1794, that the death penalty should be inflicted on any person convicted of “having asked, before a bargain was concluded, in what money payment was to be made.”

[Andrew Dickson White, Fiat Money Inflation In France]

Yes, Gentle Reader: It really happened in enlightened, predominantly Catholic France, the birthplace of Voltaire, Pascal, and Montesquieu. It happened again in the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, and in Red China under Mao Tse-tung, and it’s happening today in North Korea under Kim Jong-un. And it’s happening today in various pockets of the American economy. Consider especially the great number of persons, unable to get “above-ground” work sufficient to support their families, who resort to trading in prohibited goods, offering unlicensed services in regulated fields, or working “off the books”...often at hazard of life and freedom.

---

As Bill Whittle explains in the embedded video, the rise in college tuitions as a consequence of government-guaranteed student loans is the first step down a road to hell. We’re already seeing the consequences: not only are tuitions rising to consume the whole of the guaranteed funds; the “institutions of higher learning” are funding ever less serious, ever more pernicious “curricula” to satisfy the demands of vocal, politically influential pressure groups. Graduates heavily laden with student-loan debt are taking their first steps into the world of business and commerce, only to discover that potential employers no longer trust that their dearly bought credentials have any meaning. Alternative occupations, many of them already illegal, are multiplying—and the federal and state governments are imposing ever more severe regulations and ever more draconian penalties upon them.

Though certain specifics of this case of government intervention into the economy would not appear in other realms, the mechanism itself is universal. Yet the Very Important Persons determined to defend their “good intentions” against that inexorable mechanism will never admit to having erred. They will intensify their efforts and tighten their grip until no means to do so remains untried.

Will you, who voted to give them power, acknowledge the reality they have strained to ignore?

Day Off...Mostly

Inasmuch as I’ll be having some extensive oral surgery in a few hours, I was planning simply to announce a day off from Liberty’s Torch. What actually happened was a powerful lesson about not reading Internet news sources this early in the morning:

President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defense forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12.

“The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing.

Clearly, despite all my efforts I don’t catch every important development just as it develops. But wait: there’s more!

Obama’s willingness to pressure media outlets, to quit defending First Amendment rights and also to mollify jihadis, reflects Obama’s overall policy of minimizing conflict with militant Islam.

Throughout his presidency, Obama has tried to shift the public’s focus away from the jihadi threat toward his domestic priorities.

He also repeatedly praised Islam and Muslims, and criticized criticism of Islam. “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” he told a worldwide TV audience during a September 2012 speech at the United Nations.

It’s always been clear that Obama favors Islam over American interests and the Western code of justice. What’s now all too apparent is that he’s resolved to destroy the right to free expression for that reason.

Why not? Freedom of expression is a thorn in Obama’s flesh. This isn’t just consistent with his pro-Islam personal views; it’s also a perfect entering wedge for politically motivated censorship and manipulation of the media. It will provide him with a rationale for taking control of the Internet, for putting government “advisors” – armed, no doubt – into the editorial departments of major media organs, and for demanding “equal time” from any such organ that dares to act other than in accordance with his wishes.

There can be only one answer to this, short of forcibly evicting this pretender from the White House and decorating a prominent District of Columbia lamppost with his remains. Every American with any public voice, no matter how small, must immediately raise it in the strongest possible act of defiance.

Here’s Your Prophet Muhammad, Obama,
You Camel-Fellating Fairy:

Let hell come to breakfast. It’s time and past time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I should let my blood pressure drop a bit before I go under the knife.

A Tale Of Two Totalitarianisms

The esteemed Ace of Spades makes a striking observation this morning:

One problem with liberalism has always been that those promoting it are, and largely have been, cowards.

The creed is not inherently cowardly; in fact, most of it is brave....But a lot of the people championing it are morally uncertain and physically weak types. This has caused liberalism to be associated in the world with vacillation, compromise, and cowardice.

I knew someone who once told me he despised liberals as cowards. So you're conservative? I asked.

"No," he replied. "Communist."

And that is the knock on liberalism. Other creeds are dark, stupid, and murderous, but they appeal to young men because they seem to be espoused by strong men, rough men, ready men.

And liberalism, meanwhile, is mostly a collection of pious platitudes mouthed by sissies.

There is some justice in this. Moreover, it helps to illuminate an important commonality between the two most important totalitarian creeds of our time: Islam and Left-liberalism.

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It’s a common observation that left-liberals, for all their pieties about “helping the poor,” do very little of it personally. They prefer to vote for politicians who will then enact programs – preferably federal programs, so that no one can escape – which will result in armies of bureaucrats spending oceans of tax dollars, the greater part of which will pay the salaries of “compassionate” types like themselves and a piddling fraction of which will become benefits to the officially recognized “poor.” That’s left-liberal “charity:” the sort that declines to dirty the left-liberal’s own hands or distract him from his enjoyment of the Chardonnay and Brie.

As anyone with three functioning brain cells knows, in practice this resolves to a program of totalitarian control of just about everything in the name of “compassion,” “social justice,” or what-have-you. My term for this is social fascism: the drive toward a totalitarian State that has first claim on all things, and regulates everything down to the smallest detail, under a rationale of “good intentions.” (Jonah Goldberg calls it Liberal Fascism, which has more immediate political application.)

Left-liberalism / social-fascism is currently on the skids with Americans, owing to their disgust with the current regime. (What we can and will do about it remains uncertain.) However, the ironclad will that animates its allegiants cannot be denied. They are determined to have their way; they will stop at nothing. They regard no strategy and no tactic as out of bounds.

I can’t cite many overt expressions of such an unbounded, absolutely determined political will. However, I can cite one:

In the Nazi leadership’s view, Rauschning (a one-time friend of Hitler’s) reports, “the more inconsistent and irrational is their doctrine, the better….[E]verything that might have gone to the making up of a systematic, logically conceived doctrine is dismissed as a trifle, with sovereign contempt.” “To all doubts and questions,” writes Rosenberg, “the new man of the first German empire has only one answer: Nevertheless, I will!” [From Leonard Peikoff’s The Ominous Parallels]

Are left-liberal policies inconsistent? Irrational? Left-liberals don’t care any more than the Nazis did. They know what’s best for us, and we’re damned well going to swallow it...at the point of a gun, if need be.

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If Islam’s political culture isn’t yet plain to you, Gentle Reader, you must have skipped a few of the essays here. Islam is inseparable from its political program, and that program is totalitarian:

“Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! These are hundreds of other psalms and Hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.” – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

"The minarets are our bayonets; the domes are our helmets. Mosques are our barracks, the believers are soldiers. This holy army guards my religion. Almighty Our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom." -- Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey

The totalitarian mindset must be coupled to absolute will. People resist being ordered around, which is why the myrmidons of the State carry guns and forbid us to have them. (Note how many federal bureaucracies have armed themselves. Note how military hardware has been distributed to local police forces nationwide. And note how Obama’s Department of Justice has descended to the use of sub-legal means to throttle the supply of firearms and ammunition to private citizens. Do you really think that’s coincidence?) So to enforce a totalitarian program, the State must be willing to kill until the survivors have all submitted to its yoke: a program that requires the firmest will of all.

In that regard Islam is exactly the same:

The Qur’an contains detailed instructions and examples of how to meet unbelievers. The first instruction is that they should be called to Islam; in fact, the Qur’an says you cannot wage war against unbelievers until you have preached to them. The second instruction is that if they do not convert to Islam, then, they must be fought. The third instruction is that if they surrender, or convert, then you must stop waging war. The final instruction is that if they do not convert or surrender, then they must be killed. This is the optimum route for Islamist expansion: A tidal wave of war, subjugation and conversion.

While we were in the Mosque, the Prophet came out and said, "Let us go to the Jews" We went out till we reached Bait-ul-Midras. He said to them, "If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle." [ Sahih Bukhari, 53:392]

Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme. [The Koran, Sura 2, verse 193]

The sole difference between the Islamic mindset and that of the Leftist lies in their professed intentions. Their absolute determination to rule in all things – to compel, prohibit, and expropriate without limit – is utterly the same.

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If you need a grace note for this comparison of today’s two foremost totalitarian creeds, consider how utterly ruthless both of them are toward critics. Islam decrees death for those who dare even to differ with its dictates. Left-liberals, currently without the legal authority to silence dissenters by force, use extra-legal means: vandalism, extortion, intimidation, hackery, slander, and whatever other tools are ready to hand. That they do so under a cloak of self-righteousness doesn’t alter the totalitarian will that powers their tactics.

A Christian will reject Islamic theology reflexively, as Islam denies the divinity of Jesus. Yet that same Christian might find some of the policies of left-liberalism appealing entirely on the basis of their supposed intentions. Yet should he press a left-liberal espouser of such a policy for its record in practice, or ask what evidence would cause the left-liberal to doubt the soundness of his policy, he’ll be answered with a flood vituperation likely to exceed his expectations. Given the proliferation of such tactics, is it reasonable to doubt that the left-liberal would resort to force, were he able to get away with it?

And given all the above, why would any man of good will award one iota more respect to either of these totalitarian creeds than to the other?

Songs Of The Spectrum

I was listening to guitar virtuoso David Bromberg’s first solo album, specifically his ditty “You’ve Got To Suffer If You Want To Sing The Blues,” when I suddenly – out of the Blues, you might say – began to wonder: What about the rest of the spectrum? Are the other colors to be left without their musical requirements?

• You’ve got to bluster if you want to sing the Reds;
• You’ve got to remember the Boyne if you want to sing the Oranges;
• You’ve got to cower if you want to sing the Yellows;
• You’ve got to worship Gaia if you want to sing the Greens;
• You’ve got to suffer if you want to sing the Blues;
• (Sorry, only Duke Ellington can sing the Indigos;)
• And you should own an arboretum if you want to sing the Violets.

Now to work on melodies and lyrics...

Prices, Values, And Religious Creeds

First, a “joke:”

The CIA was screening candidates for a field-operative position that would require a delicate balance of commitment to the mission with sound moral standards. Three candidates – two men and a woman – had passed the entrance examinations and stood ready for the final test.

When the first man arrived for the test, the screener handed him a .45 automatic and pointed to a closed door. “Inside that room are two things: a folding chair and your wife seated upon it. If you want the job, go in there and kill her.”

The candidate was dumbfounded. “You expect me to kill my wife for this job? Forget it!” He handed the gun back to the screener and left in a huff.

One down, thought the screener. When the second man arrived, the screener told him the same thing. Despite an expression of shock, that candidate took the gun and entered the room, but returned a couple of minutes later, said, “Sorry, I just couldn’t bring myself to kill my beloved,” handed back the gun and left.

That was a close one, thought the screener, but I think he’ll do. Still, it’s a good thing the gun is loaded with blanks.

When the woman candidate arrived, the screener handed her the .45 and pointed to the closed door. “Inside that room are two things: a folding chair and your husband seated upon it. If you want the job, go in there and kill him.”

Without a word, the woman accepted the gun and entered the room. Several minutes passed. The screener began to wonder what was going on, in the room and in the candidate’s head. Was it possible that two of the candidates might pass the final test?

Presently the woman emerged, looking exceedingly distressed. She flipped the .45 at the screener and said in a tone of high dudgeon, “This thing is useless! I had to beat him to death with the chair!”

Are you laughing or horrified? Do you get the point...and if so, what do you think it was? Ponder for a moment before continuing on.

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“Jokes” of the above sort are not uncommon. My wife Beth (a.k.a. “the C.S.O.”) and I “enacted” a version of it this morning. I mentioned to her that a coworker and her husband, like Beth herself, are wildly enthusiastic New York Rangers fans, and go to as many games as they can afford. Beth immediately replied that “if they buy tickets they can’t use, I’ll be happy to take them.” The banter that followed concluded thus:

FWP: If someone were to ask you to murder me in exchange for a lifetime season pass to all the Rangers’ home games, you’d do it, wouldn’t you?
CSO: Well, if the seats were right behind the Rangers’ bench...

I assume that she was joshing. (I must. I do have enemies. Some of them have money. It’s why I work to keep my shooting skills sharp.) But as always after such an exchange, one must suppress a twinge of doubt.

The point, Gentle Reader, of both the original “joke” and our “reenactment,” is as follows:

If what you’ve been offered is of more value to you than the price you must pay for it, you’ll pay the price.

It’s not cosmological physics. It’s human nature – how individuals make their decisions. Indeed, you cannot measure a thing’s value by any other standard than what you’re willing to pay for it.

What we value, why we value it, and how we come to value it are highly individualized studies. In many cases, the entire matter is closed within the vault of the individual’s skull, and impervious to all notions of “rational analysis.” But the values themselves, though personally chosen and pursued, are nonetheless real – and powerful.

Which returns us to the subject of the “Enough” screeds.

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They who disdain and deride religious belief are frequently appalled by its power: its ability to motivate men to do things the disdainful ones could never imagine doing themselves. In that regard, religious convictions are akin to patriotic fervor, of the sort that gives meaning to the old phrase Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. What the disdainful ones fail to appreciate is the economic bargain that stands behind the world’s major religions...and its pseudo-religions as well.

The major religions all offer the allegiant eternal life in absolute bliss, but for a price the individual must pay. The bargain counterpoises an infinite reward against the finite, temporally bounded prescriptions and proscriptions of a moral-ethical code. Who could refuse such a bargain? Only one who disbelieves in the reliability of the offer, or the sincerity of the offerer.

For the thoroughly convinced believer, who harbors no doubts or qualms, there is no possibility of refusing – no imaginable way to reason one’s way to a refusal. Thanks, but I’d rather go to Hell? Not happenin’, gang. A believer might be tempted to “welsh” temporarily – i.e., to set the code aside in some instance with the thought that he can redeem himself later – but that constitutes a failure of belief, not some demerit of the original bargain.

Islam’s youngest adherents have all doubt flogged out of them early in life. They’re taught, by word, example, and severe negative feedback, that to speak or act other than in accordance with Islam’s decrees as they’re set down in the Koran, the Sunnah, and the ahadith is unacceptable. Indeed, any excursion into blasphemy, heresy, or apostasy would get them killed and damned.

Christopher Anvil made a compelling point about the power of religious commitment in his classic short story “Mission of Ignorance.” This brilliant story isn’t terribly long and deserves to be read in its entirety, but for those who lack the time:

    "Just suppose," said the chairman, "that you were in charge of a great spaceship—perhaps belonging to a great Galactic organization (never mind about it being a benevolent organization) and let's just suppose your job was to subvert Earth and make it obedient to that great Galactic organization—what could be nicer than to get Earth totally dependent on certain technological developments that you could withdraw at will? At a mere snap of your fingers, Earth's whole technological civilization could collapse, to leave, for practical purposes, a planetful of ignorant savages with no relevant skills, whose reproduction rate could be altered at will, and, if you chose, whose main food supply could also be wiped out with a snap of your fingers. Think how cooperative such people would be once they saw what you could do. Suppose that, having delivered the necessaries to bring about this situation and having seen the fools rushing to their own destruction, you then went away to take care of other business and returned when your calculations showed the situation would be ripe.
    "Then," said the chairman, "suppose you summoned to your ship the Earth representative, planning perhaps to give him the same little demonstration we have just given here, and suppose you discovered: first, that a mere second lieutenant had been sent to deal with you; next, that in your absence, instead of dependence on computerized voice typers, a new, completely nontechnological system of rapid writing had been developed; third, that a completely nontechnological uncomputerized system of identification had come into use; fourth, that one-quarter of the Earth's land surface was in the hands of a sect which, for religious motives, rejected the gifts, and in their place was developing Earth's own technology at a fever pitch; fifth, that the sect was armed to the teeth, dug in, stocked for a long fight, seasoned in battle, and so situated that you couldn't count on striking at the nonmembers without hitting the members of the sect, or vice versa, and, sixth, to top it all off, suppose you had no way to judge whether this was all the bad news, or whether this was just the tip of the iceberg showing above the water, with a lot more underneath? If you had been in that situation, would it have jarred you?"

Religious beliefs are neither verifiable (provable) nor falsifiable (disprovable). Therefore, they aren’t something you can argue against. And almost all their dictates are almost always absolute.

Religious wars are as bloody and horrible as they are because, as Larry Niven and Steven Barnes noted in The Descent of Anansi, religious warriors never admit defeat. They win or they die. Their beliefs will permit nothing else.

This is the situation the West, particularly America, faces with Islam.

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Islam divides the world into dar al-Islam (the House of Islam) and dar al-Harb (the House of War). It commands its adherents to wage war against all unbelievers until dar al-Harb has been wholly eliminated. That requires that every last person on Earth be:

• Converted to Islam, or:
• Reduced to dhimmi status – i.e., subjugated to Islamic rule under the sharia – or:
• Dead.

To this end, Islam sanctifies every imaginable strategy, tactic, and practice, all the way from tactically useful deceit to the mass slaughter of “infidels.” It recognizes no agreement with an “infidel” or a non-Islamic power as binding. It counsels Muslims to withhold their efforts until a promising moment should arrive, when those efforts are likely to yield advantage to Islam. Until such a time, it prescribes strategies of infiltration and deception of those it seeks to conquer. Allah has commanded it all, using His Prophet as the herald...and to dissent from any of it is worth your life.

So much for “the religion of peace.”

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Of course, much of the above is “previous work.” The core of this essay is the immutability of the religiously inculcated value scheme that drives the jihadist. The “peaceful, tolerant” Muslim majority holds to the very same set of beliefs and attendant commands, no matter what they say and do today. To believe otherwise is to ignore both the nature of religious conviction and the dynamic that has raised up and supports the “radical minority” that rages among us.

Think it over.

Never go to a religious war without your religion. -- Tom Kratman

The ABCs Of Social Fascism

The wake of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity has dragged along a development that will surprise many Americans: a fresh drive to eliminate freedom of speech.

Sara’s article is worth reading in its entirety, but the part that simply demands to be excerpted is the video she embeds:

Jonathan Turley is a self-described liberal. Indeed, he’s stated openly that though he disapproves of many of Obama’s moves on Constitutional grounds, he favors the policies involved. That marks him as unusually honest and candid for someone on the left of the spectrum. When he criticizes politicians whose orientation and policy preferences he shares, we should take him seriously.

What odds would you give, Gentle Reader, that this new campaign for censorship will become the letter of the law in Europe? How about here in America? As Turley notes in the video, Canada has already crossed that line. Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn notwithstanding, a Canadian can get into a lot of legal trouble by openly criticizing Islam or any of its major figures, past or present.

It’s even worse than you might think. A few years back there was a vilification trial in Victoria, Australia. The complainants were, of course, Muslims. The defendant tried to make his case by reading directly from the Koran:

What is car-wreck fascinating here is Judge Michael Higgins’ conclusion that simply pointing out what the Koran says now constitutes outlawed speech in Victoria. During court proceedings, when Mr. Scot began to read verses from the Koran that denigrate women, a lawyer for the Islamic Council of Victoria, the plaintiff, cut him off, explaining that reading such verses aloud is itself an act of vilification. “How,” wondered Mr. Scot, can it be vilifying to Muslims in the room when I am just reading from the Koran?”

Note this well: Presiding Judge Michael Higgins agreed with the plaintiff’s lawyer that to read certain verses from the Koran constitutes the vilification of Muslims. To the best of my knowledge, our brethren Down Under have yet to contest that “hate speech” regime.

Some patterns take longer than others to become obvious.

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I wrote a few days ago that:

Islam is massively useful to our political class. The powers that be are grateful for the threat it presents, and for the repeated evidences of that threat it provides. It serves to justify all manner of intrusions on Americans’ rights, and all manner of incursions upon our privacy. Thus, to expect that the State will ever act against Islam, regardless of how its atrocities proliferate, is a foolish notion.

A new campaign against freedom of expression, in the name of the non-existent “right not to be offended,” fits that paradigm perfectly. You may rest assured, Gentle Reader, that that campaign will have plenty of special-interest backers. The more important question is why the great majority of the rest of us will bow before it.

In his book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg points out that laws Americans of a hundred years ago would have denounced as intolerable incursions on the rights and prerogatives of a free people are widely accepted today. Today’s Americans generally tolerate, even welcome “liberal fascism:” the unlimited use of coercive power as long as it can be framed as “for a good cause.” There are three components to this phenomenon:

First, thanks to the use of the mass media and the educational infrastructure, a great many of us have been conditioned to deem virtually everything the federal government decrees, whether enacted legislatively or decreed by regulation, as acceptable on practical grounds. In other words, as long as the overt end strikes us as a good one, we’ll bow to the means. This complete effacement of the nature of a republic – a country in which the rei publicae are constitutionally defined and governments are forbidden to meddle in any other matters – has essentially nullified the constraints of the Constitution.

Second, the media and the schools have also widened the range of government activities generally deemed beneficial. Note how this couples to the above consideration: if you’re against “hate speech,” “discrimination,” or “pollution,” how could you possibly be against laws that penalize them? The emergence of vocal, even militant special interests dedicated to such causes (and allowed de facto to go far beyond what was once considered acceptable in promoting them) puts “private muscle” at the service of government’s guns.

Third, even when an interest group was not part of the originating force for some fascist law, it might afterward deem that law convenient for its own purposes. The result is a continuing enlargement of the aggregate support of such an enactment as more groups find ways to exploit it to their own advantage.

Politicians strain to give lip service to freedom and limited government while encouraging all three of those attitudes and their consequences.

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I’ve written before that the Left will not leave us free to speak our minds:

Just how are freedom of expression and the electoral process faring in the Land of the Formerly Free?

First, freedom of expression:

• The McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act has partly abrogated the right to free expression around election time.
• Given the new Administration and the enlarged Democrat majorities on Capitol Hill, we stand in immediate danger of the revival of the Fairness Doctrine, which is aimed at quenching conservative talk radio.
• The use of tax law to silence conservative and libertarian opinion is growing, especially as regards voluntary associations such as churches and charitable groups.
• Several liberal luminaries, among them both Cass Sunstein and Hillary Clinton, have argued for the censorship of the World Wide Web.
• Lawsuits attempting to silence a commentator who has merely stated established facts or accurately quoted an adversarial opponent are rife, and are usually allowed to go forward by the courts.
• Conservative public officials are continuously derided, assailed, and slandered, both by the Mainstream Media and by activist groups.
• Lectures and presentations by libertarian and conservative figures are heckled, massively protested, and often terminally disrupted by liberal activists. The speakers who dare to appear at such events are at continuous risk of physical assault.

The legal impediments to free expression are bad enough. When one adds the "chilling effect" of the extra-legal mechanisms used to silence pro-freedom views, the pile reaches an alarming height.

Yes, Europe has gone further down this road than America...but Obama and his brethren on the social-fascist Left are determined to follow it if they must, sprint past it if they can. As with mass shootings, they’ll use any “crisis” brought about by someone’s violent response to a spate of plain speaking as a justification for further infringements on the freedom of expression.

How far will we let this go before the musket comes down from the mantel?

Idiot's Guide to Islam.

Culpable party: Crusader Rabbit..

Taqiyya and world-class hypocrisy grand double prize winner.

In a sermon excerpt posted on the Internet on January 10, 2015, Tunisian cleric Bechir Ben Hassen declared that anyone cursing the Prophet Muhammad should be punished by death. Sheikh Ben Hassen recently posted online a video message recorded opposite the International Criminal Court in the Hague, in which he praised European democracy, tolerance, and freedom of speech.

~ MEMRI.

Video of his sermon here: "Tunisian Cleric Bechir Ben Hassen: Anyone Cursing the Prophet Muhammad Should be Executed."

Do religious leaders of other religions call for the execution of anyone? Are they such monumental hypocrites?

H/t: Gates of Vienna..

The Truth Shall Make You Free

 The term “Iron Curtain” was initially used by Winston Churchill in a 1946 speech.  In it Churchill outlined the two overarching strategic threats facing the post-WWII world; war and tyranny.  He spoke of the special relationship the US and Britain shared and role they could play to stabilize events and prevent war.  He then addressed the uncertainty of Soviet Russia’s long-term intentions and threat to tranquility they posed.  Said Churchill: 

“A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies…..From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.…The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control.”

I can clearly recall the Iron Curtain.  In 1980-81, I was a young infantryman, stationed in the former West Germany during what might be described as the most frigid point of the Cold War.  The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan, Iran was holding our hostages, and Jimmy Carter was at the helm -- moving our nation’s morale towards a muddled malaise. 

Led by the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact was in a face-off of apocalyptic proportions with the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization.   The likely scenario had the Warsaw Pact invading from Eastern Europe, through East Germany, into West Germany, and onto the rest of Europe.  We were outnumbered in a big way.  It was estimated that NATO had just 6,615 tanks to confront the 16,000 of the Pact, in terms of combat aircraft 1,810 facing 2,500.   The conventional thought amongst us GIs; after enough Americans were killed we’d have the political will to go nuclear.

That border between the two Germanys, like the walls around the encircled city of Berlin, graphically displayed the physical nature of the face-off.   Perhaps you too can remember the images of Eastern Europeans trying to escape to the freedom and economic vibrancy of the West.  They would brave barbed wire and mine fields, armed guards and attack dogs, all in an attempt to flee the repressive ideology and underperforming economy of the communist Utopia.   That Iron Curtain was not only employed to keep those behind it trapped in the darkness of totalitarianism, it was also emplaced to keep the West’s light of liberty from shining in.

Today there’s an “Information Curtain.”  Its physical boundaries are more difficult to delineate; it’s a noncontiguous curtain, but those that are behind it are in darkness nonetheless.  What territory lies behind the modern day Information Curtain? Liberal academic institutions, the press rooms of the main stream media, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, Islamic enclaves and urban ghettoes, politically correct government schools, union halls, and secularized bureaucracies are just some of the areas behind the Information Curtain.  These disparate, and seemingly diverse factions, are all united in their desire to reject the truth and in their dedication to destroy anyone that dares to declare it in their midst. 

The rulers of these regions are committed to keeping out truth.  Their strategy is deception disguised as truth.  Their offensive tactic is to demand tolerance, to deny the existence of absolute truth, of right and wrong – then intolerantly destroy anyone they deem wrong, who doesn’t embrace their revelation of right.  Their defense is to dismiss disagreement as “hate speech” or “fill-in-the-blank phobia.”  These modern day Pravda promoters rely on the media and misinformation to maintain control; developing false narratives that intentionally exchange the truth for a lie.  The theory of evolution, the philosophy of moral equivalence, multiculturalism, secular humanism, climate change, and the normalization of aberrant sexual behavior are all part of their politically correct propaganda.  

The Free World is in desperate need of a leader today. There’s no Reagan to declare, “Tear down this wall!”  No Churchill to challenge the curtain.    One of Churchill’s favorite songs was the Battle Hymn of the Republic – our Republic.  At his request it was played at his funeral.  My hunch on some of his favorite lines:   

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free. 

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; His truth is marching on.”