The Crumbling Cornerstone Part 2: Mental Avoidances

Quite a few prominent and semi-prominent persons have been opining about the “marriage strike:” the colloquial term that refers to the declining occurrence of traditional marriage in the United States. A significant amount of the attention comes from Dr. Helen Smith, a forensic psychologist and opinion writer for PJ Media, whose book Men on Strike is the current touchstone of the debate. Dr. Helen recently conducted a brief panel discussion of the subject with three other PJ Media luminaries. The range of relevant ideas the group covered was impressive, both for what was addressed and for what the group seemed determined to avoid addressing.

What’s that you say? What was the unaddressed subject? Why, rape, of course. Specifically, the new plague of accusations of rape being leveled against thousands of men, particularly male college students.

Though it isn’t much discussed, that plague of accusations has violated the bedrooms of married American men as well.

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If you’re unfamiliar with the plight of Columbia University student Paul Nungesser, have a little background:

Paul Nungesser and Emma Sulkowicz met during freshman orientation in the fall of 2011, and by the end of their first year of college, they were what you might call friends with benefits. They had sex twice, as well as frequent “sleepovers,” always hugged each other and were close confidants.

The second time they had sex, the two agree, it began consensually. But then their stories diverge. As Young writes, “According to Sulkowicz, he suddenly and brutally assaulted her, then picked up his clothes and left without a word, leaving her stunned and shattered on the bed. According to Nungesser, they briefly engaged in anal intercourse by mutual agreement, then went on to engage in other sexual activity and fell asleep. He says that he woke up early in the morning and went back to his own room while Sulkowicz was still sleeping.”

But two days after this alleged attack, he invited her to come to a party, and she responded affirmatively, adding that the two should have a “paul-emma chill sesh.” A couple weeks later on Facebook, Sulkowicz wrote to Nungesser, “I want to see yoyououoyou.”

There are six pages’ worth of back-and-forth Facebook messages between the two, which Sulkowicz has confirmed are real and not redacted in any way.

Whatever else you can say about social media these days, it has made it awfully hard for women to change their minds about the nature of a sexual encounter from months earlier.

To make a long and ugly story short, Sulkowicz subsequently accused Nungesser of raping her. At least three other Columbia students subsequently filed comparable accusations against the young German student. All those accusations were filed with the university; none went to the judicial authorities. The university investigated and cleared Nungesser unconditionally, despite the low “preponderance of the evidence” standard it maintains about such accusations.

But Sulkowicz wasn’t finished. She took to toting her mattress around the campus with her, as a form of “protest.” Nungesser was held by much of the rest of the university student community to be guilty of rape despite having been cleared, and despite Sulkowicz’s decision not to file criminal charges against him.

These days, the accusation of rape constitutes “proof” in far too many minds.

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If you have an elephant’s memory, you might recall the 1978 case of John and Greta Rideout of Salem, Oregon. On October 10 of that year, Greta accused her husband John of raping her: a crime under recently revised Oregon law. Though John was found not guilty of the charge by the trial jury, the incident became a spark for a new front of the feminist movement: against the supposed problem of “marital rape:” the husband forcibly raping his unwilling wife. Marital rape was briefly a cause celebre, though in recent years it has received little air time and few column-inches.

That it no longer gets a lot of media attention doesn’t mean wives have ceased to level the charge against their husbands. It appears with fair frequency in women’s divorce filings, as do other allegations of sexual misbehavior inside the marriage. (Consider the case of Jack and Jeri Ryan, which exploded during Barack Obama’s campaign for United States Senator from Illinois.) Family Court judges nearly always treat such allegations as true without a requirement for substantiation.

Stephen Baskerville’s excellent book Taken Into Custody describes the prevalent guilty-by-accusation mindset in the social-welfare bureaucracies and among those who work in the Family Courts. Such accusations frequently become the basis for sole custody awards, punitive property settlements, and alimony awards.

The hazards of intramarital sex have become a major disincentive to men thinking of matrimony. Yet that was never mentioned during Dr. Helen’s panel discussion.

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Under the guilty-by-accusation standard, which prevails in far too many minds and is reinforced by far too many media outlets and organs of opinion, no man is safe. Hearken to Dalrock on this subject:

In the wake of mattress carrying Emma Sulkowicz’s claim of rape falling apart, Emma Gray at the Huffington Post has created a chart to detail what kinds of situations would indicate that a man accused of rape should not be presumed guilty.

Outraged yet? How about you guys thinking of “popping the question” to your beloved? Dalrock makes his assessment in the starkest of terms:

Based on this, I would say the only way to not be presumed guilty of rape is to either not be accused, or not exist.

You simply have to have a gander at the Washington Post article Dalrock links. The Post might be reliably left-liberal on its op-ed page, but its reporters continue to do journalism as journalism is supposed to be done, at least some of the time. The same cannot be said for Rolling Stone’s Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who strove to whip the fictitious rape into a major media frenzy.

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Extramarital sex has long been regarded as possessing particular hazards for men. Today, many of those same hazards pertain to intramarital sex, including the possibility of being accused of heinous deeds one never committed. If such accusations are treated as true despite the absence of any evidence to that effect, they can destroy a man’s entire life even if a trial court exonerates him.

If you need a punch line for this farce, consider that under the guilty-until-proven-innocent mindset, the accusation stands apart from any need for physical contact between the accuser and the accused. If he and she were ever at all proximate – that is, unless he was never anywhere near her – gender-war feminists and their media allies will treat such an accusation as plausible, grounds for smearing him indelibly.

Marriage? That’s like baring his throat to a woman, entirely on the basis of his judgment of her character. How often have you been wrong about the character of a member of the opposite sex? Given all the above, the great wonder of our time is that there are any men still willing to talk to women, much less date, court, or marry them. But this is seldom discussed by persons concerned with the dwindling of American marriages.

The crumbling of the cornerstone of American society continues apace.

Conversations

FWP: Say, why has this Brian Williams thing come to the fore just now? Aren’t all the stories he told years in the past?
CSO: I don’t know. Maybe someone got pissed at him about something else and decided to dredge it up.

FWP: Possible. Likely, even. People don’t talk about past stuff without a reason. We don’t talk about Halley’s Comet between appearances.
CSO: Oh, some do. The admirers. The fan clubs.

FWP: Say! There’s an under-served community of sufferers!
CSO: Huh? Who?

FWP: People who feel offended or victimized by astronomical events! Don’t they need love and support too? I mean, sunspots and meteor showers aren’t their doing, right? Think of the possibilities! Twelve-step programs! Lobbying organizations! Special counselors in the public schools!
CSO: Yeah. But wouldn’t they come up hard against the astronomy clubs?
FWP: Of course. Like loggers and Druids.
CSO: Sounds like a lawyers’ dream.
FWP: It could revive the legal profession all by itself.
CSO: I’ll write to the bar association.

Galapaglop Nation.

“Over the long term, I’m pretty optimistic, and the reason is because this country just becomes more and more of a hodgepodge of folks,” Obama told Vox editor Ezra Klein.

What we worked for all these years. A mélange. A stew. A jumble. A mishmash. A tangle. An undifferentiated goo. A plop. A glop.

That's what people die for. A chop suey nation.

The heart races. The spirits soar. The mind reels.

President Piss Ant.

KM (mojito-powered) A.

"Obama “Hopeful” Immigration Will Drown Conservatism." By Neil Munro, The Daily Caller, 2/11/15.

The pathetic GOP.

Instead, the recent history of “conservative” governance has been one of ever-larger government, and an expansion of the cronyism and corruption built into the system. The last time the GOP had complete control over the government, 2003-07, it massively expanded Medicare and enacted more pork-barrel spending than any prior Congress in history.^[1]

This is an all-too-accurate description of the GOP in the wild. The Bush administration was a completely squandered opportunity to attack the welfare state and work for a restoration of constitutional government. Pères et fils.

As an aside, I note the above quote would be true even if an ultra-lefty lunatic said it. I don't have any trouble acknowledging the truth of it. But how often do you hear a lefty say, "You have a point there. The things I advocate DO increase the powers of government and a whole lot of things that I advocate DO require the Constitution to be stood on its head"?

Similarly, I can see that there are problems with corporations making political donations per Citizens United. That's a lot of money that corporation officers and boards get to throw around. Granted. But will the left acknowledge that unions exercise the same disproportionate political power with their cash and in-kind political contributions?

Any downsides to having a parasite class, open borders, welfare for foreigners who arrived here yesterday, Muslims inside the borders, affirmative action? Nooooo. And that's even at the level of the non-Treason Class or the level of the non-cynical operative scotch taping together winning electoral combos that have all the elegance of a toilet bowl-crucifix-tampax objet d'art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Nope. If you're looking for honest political debate, try some other planet. And if you think the Bushes are ancient history, you've not been paying attention to McConnell, McCain, McBoehner, and the Jebster.

Notes
^[1] "The Republican Party Is Not Your Friend." By Jay Cost, The Federalist, 2/11/15.

Pearls of expression.

I have to be bemused at all the criticism of Silicon Valley’s lack of diversity. How someone can walk into an office and see a workforce comprised of Ukrainians, Persians, Afghans, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Hispanics, and the odd Irish guy, and then say “hey, where’s the black guy, what is this, a meeting of the KKK?”, bewilders me.

Comment by TD on "How to Make Sense of an Incoherent America." By Victor Davis Hanson, Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers. 2/11/15.

Assorted

1. Our Muslim Sympathizer President.

There are days it all gets to be a bit too much:

The president continued in this ongoing effort, this week, to shift the national narrative to his pet domestic issues and away from national security concerns in his interview with the sycophantic pro-Obama new media outlet, “Vox”. Obama was asked whether he believes the media “overstates” the threat of terrorism at the expense of other stories, like “climate change and epidemic disease.”

“Absolutely. I don’t blame the media for that. What’s the famous saying about local newscasts? If it bleeds, it leads. You show crime stories and you show fires, because that’s what folks watch. It’s all about ratings,” he answered. What Obama had to say about the targeted attack on Jews by Islamic terrorists at a kosher deli in Paris has people shaking their heads in disbelief. “It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris. We devote enormous resources to that, and it is right and appropriate for us to be vigilant and aggressive in trying to deal with that — the same way a big city mayor’s got to cut the crime rate down if he wants that city to thrive.” This was not “random violence” any more than the Fort Hood shooting was “workplace violence.” But the Community-Organizer-in-Chief would prefer the media talk about the more pressing threat of — climate change – so he’s changing the conversation. “The news media ‘absolutely’ overstates the risks of terrorism because stories about things like climate change aren’t ‘sexy’ and don’t drive ratings.”

“Violent, vicious zealots,” eh? Well, what are those “zealots” zealous about? Obama is absolutely unwilling to say – all the way to his outright denial that the “Islamic State” is Islamic.

As for the business about “randomly shoot[ing] a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris,” it was a Kosher deli chosen specifically because it was owned, operated, and patronized by French Jews. But apparently the mention of that fact comes too close to Islam and its historical antipathy toward Jews: an antipathy that was inaugurated by Muhammad himself and is commemorated in this charming “prayer:”

The Prophet, Allah's prayer and peace be upon him, says: "The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews." (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)

I can think of only two ways to interpret Obama’s behavior:

• It could be a version of the deny-it-and-it-will-go-away syndrome illustrated in the latter portion of Atlas Shrugged, where Jim Taggart appeals to Dagny for help defending the company against the predations of Cuffy Meigs “without admitting the fact of Meigs’ existence.”
• Alternately, it could be simple camouflage for a firm determination not to do anything of substance to counter Islamic terrorism and general militancy — a return by Obama to his Islamic upbringing.

Which of those explanations strikes you as more plausible will be determined by whether you can believe that a man who has said and done what Obama has said and done these past six years genuinely follows Christ…or loves America.

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2. Back To The Family.

With apologies to Jethro Tull, the degradation of the family might be the most important of the sociological maladies that plague the United States and the western world generally today. My colleague Dystopic has some brief yet penetrating comments on it today:

One of the great appeals of Socialism is that it operates on a principle not unlike that of the extended family. The smaller the scale, the more likely it is to be effective. Centrally planning a community of 100 people is a very different matter from that of a 100 million....

With the destruction of the family, most people don’t have anywhere to turn. Government steps in and offers to be the surrogate family, to provide everything people, deep down, feel is missing from their lives. It all seems so convenient.

But it fails a crucial test. Family members care about you in a way the government never will. To the government, you are a Social Security number. A taxpayer and/or a benefit recipient. Only in aggregate do you mean anything at all. Your family has a vested interest in you, or at least it once did.

I suspect future historians will look back on our age and see, above all, the destruction and dismemberment of family life as the single greatest tragedy of our age and the worst enabler of large-scale Socialism. And, above all else, directly responsible for the approaching Fall.

I couldn’t have put it better.

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3. The Final Frontier.

The esteemed Glenn Reynolds suggests that there is something good about the Obama Administration after all:

On the space front generally, the Obama administration's policies have substantially boosted the private space launch industry. Companies ranging from Virgin Galactic to Blue Origin to SpaceX and Xcor and many more are building rockets and experimenting with new ways to get into space cheaply.

But another company, Bigelow Aerospace, has been looking beyond the process of getting to outer space, to the question of what to do once we get there. Bigelow has decided that it wants to go to the moon, and — here's the real news — has gotten the Federal Aviation Administration's space office (Office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation) to give it the go-ahead, and to state that the U.S. government will recognize and protect Bigelow's right to create a base and to operate exclusively in that base's vicinity.

I don’t view this as sunnily as Professor Reynolds. The very fact that an agency of the United States Federal Government claims:

• Jurisdiction over whether a group of Americans can go to another planet;
• The power to rule on whether they’re allowed to establish a base there;
• And the privilege of extending state protection to that base;

...is an assertion of extraterritorial powers in the most literal sense of that phrase.

Extraterritoriality is the characteristic sign of an “imperial” or “colonial” power. On Earth, jurisdiction – the power to say what the law is and to punish those who violate it – is tightly bound to national sovereignty and to the nation’s territorial borders. That binding is why nation-states agree to extradition treaties, and why the Constitution specifically empowers Congress “To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations.” (Article I, Section 8) For a nation-state to claim jurisdiction outside its sovereign territory invites clashes with other nation-states, especially should the claim involve territory of disputed allegiance or ownership.

The colonial powers of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries practiced extraterritoriality specifically to protect their administrators and other expatriate subjects in the occupied colonies. When the Europeans relinquished their colonial claims, several bloodbaths resulted as the native peoples took vengeance on the expatriates who remained among them. One of those bloodbaths continues today, in the nation once called Rhodesia.

Granted that we haven’t any Lunarian natives to worry about, for the U.S. to claim extraterritorial authority over the Moon still constitutes a step in a dangerous direction...one whose potential will only be revealed when other nations acquire the ability to put men on the Moon.

Police State NYC

New York State residents outside the five boroughs of New York City tend to regard political developments there with a certain detachment. After all, city ordinances and practices don't affect us directly. The city can't tax or regulate us. The city is fairly well confined to its current boundaries. Were it to attempt to annex portions of the nearby counties, as has occurred around other major cities, the reaction would be swift and terrible to behold.

But developments in the two leading cities of these United States, New York and Los Angeles, can never be safely ignored. They set too many trends -- and some of the trends are very unpleasant.

Here's one that should disturb you:

Attempting to further bolster a de facto monopoly of violence in New York City, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton proposed additional edicts to tip the power scales even more in favor of enforcers over citizens, the New York Observer reported Wednesday. In addition to stiffening penalties for things like wearing protective body armor, tinting windows and holding police to similar information disclosures that “civilians” (a telling attitude in itself ) are subjected to, Bratton said it would be “very helpful” if charges of resisting arrest were upped from misdemeanors to felonies....

“NYPD Has a Plan to Magically Turn Anyone It Wants Into a Felon,” Gawker Justice observes in a more hard-edged assessment that includes examples of resisting arrest charges being deliberately unjustly applied. And it’s that felony rap that should most outrage right to keep and bear arms advocates, because such convictions will result in lifetime prohibitions against owning guns, outcomes Bratton and his boss, socialist mayor Bill de Blasio, wouldn't mind seeing more of. Understand, these are people who want to deploy with machine guns to control protesters, a wish they've apparently publicly backed down from -- for now.

Ponder that for a moment.

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Just a few weeks ago, I wrote:

What is a policeman, in the American context of our time? He’s a municipal or state employee, protected by a powerful union and laws akin to those that protect civilian Civil Service employees, and effectively answerable only to his superiors in the police hierarchy. He’s been granted certain legal privileges – already we’re in murky waters – and a default presumption of justification regarding his uses of coercive force. He may have had some training in police procedure and the restrictions on his activities, though the smaller the district and its police force, the less certain that will be.

What does this policeman do? More to the point:

• What must he do?
• What may he do?
• What must he not do?

...ex officio?

The “must” part has grown very slender. Recent Supreme Court decisions have decreed that, regardless of the prevalent conceptions, the police have no “duty to protect” and no “duty to intervene.” If you deem yourself to be in danger, the problem is yours, even if the police agree with your assessment. You can be in the midst of an actual criminal victimization, yet the police have no duty to intervene to stop it or to protect you, even if they can see it happening before their own eyes.

The “may” part has become very broad. For example, numerous court decisions have ruled that all a policeman needs to detain you is “reasonable suspicion” that you are or have been involved in a crime. What constitutes “reasonable suspicion” has proved remarkably flexible. A cop who wants to search your car can simply say “I smell marijuana,” and suddenly the most invasive imaginable search is “reasonable,” no matter what his original reason was for detaining you. Regardless of any and all circumstances, you are not allowed to refuse his “lawful order” – yet another serious departure from American norms.

The “must not” part has effectively vanished. State and local police forces have become quasi-military bodies. They’ve been equipped with large amounts of military-grade hardware that no private citizen would be permitted to own. They frequently stage violent intrusions and “no-knock” raids on private institutions and private homes. Most of the time, they have court authorizations for those activities...but often on suppositions that later prove to have been wrong, or based on testimony or “evidence” that was convenient but fictitious. Despite all that, courts have ruled that persons subjected to such treatment do not have a right to resist it – that any violence committed in the process of resistance will be held against the citizen, not the police.

Does that seem relevant to Commissioner Bratton's request that "resisting arrest" be upgraded to a felony count -- a charge that the police could use a posteriori to justify killing a "resister?" Bear in mind that the cop's claim that he ordered you to halt, and that you refused, is deemed sufficient foundation for a charge of "resisting arrest," even if no other offense was ever charged to you.

There's been a lot of discussion about the burgeoning of police-state tactics in the United States these past few years. Skeptics have dismissed it as just "loose talk" that tries to elevate "isolated incidents" into patterns of abuse of power. Now that you've been apprised of Commissioner Bratton's latest request, does it seem all that loose to you?

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David Codrea, the author of the article quoted above, is a long-time activist for the right to keep and bear arms. His observation about the special danger to firearms enthusiasts:

And it’s that felony rap that should most outrage right to keep and bear arms advocates, because such convictions will result in lifetime prohibitions against owning guns, outcomes Bratton and his boss, socialist mayor Bill de Blasio, wouldn't mind seeing more of.

...should alarm any city dweller with a legally owned firearm. City authorities, not just in New York City but in many other cities as well, are passionate about disarming their subjects. Exceptions among them are few. New York City is merely the "leader" in this regard: except for the well connected and very well-heeled, it's become all but impossible to get a permit to possess a firearm -- handgun or long gun -- within the five boroughs.

Were city residents who possess already-registered and permitted firearms to be targeted with "no-knock" raids under specious justifications, and killed for daring to appear at their own doors with their guns, what would the popular reaction be? That the police have become an instrument of tyranny? Or that one foolish enough to "resist arrest" deserves whatever happens to him?

Opinion is sharply divided on this subject. The geographical cleavage is plain, but the political cleavage is more interesting, as it defies party affiliation. Staunch conservatives passionate about the right to keep and bear arms become queasy when confronted with a case of police overreach. Their natural tendency is to support and defend the police as "the forces of law and order." Conversely, staunch liberals generally hostile to private ownership of firearms are more likely to judge the police harshly for such tactics...at least, when the victim isn't a prominent conservative.

New York State has already made severe incursions upon the right to keep and bear arms. Yet city and county police forces are accumulating military-grade weapons and equipment at a record rate. Should the City Council look with favor upon Bratton's suggestion, and should the state legislature proclaim the change in law state-wide, Andrew Cuomo's campaign against privately owned firearms could receive a significant boost.

It's been said that a state in which only the police have weapons is the essence of a police state. Perhaps that's not quite enough, but when we add the provisions that "resisting arrest" shall constitute a felony and that a "civilian" may not refuse a cop's "lawful order," we're getting very close. Given that the definition of such a "lawful order" is effectively "whatever a cop tells you to do," I'd say we've arrived.

No, it's not safe to ignore developments in the Big Apple. Stay tuned.

Marine Le Pen lays it all out, much to the displeasure of a BBC troll.

Clearly this is a formidable woman. The most interesting question is why people like her have had such an uphill climb in French politics. And any place else in Europe. Voters have been sparing in their support of patriotic European parties, as I've said ad nauseum before.

Anyway, the interviewer had clearly been prepped to derail Le Pen by raising the perennially favorite issue of the left, namely, "offensive" speech.

"I'll take 'Fake Outrage' for $400, Alex."

BBC interest in the substance of Le Pen's words or in anything to do with any real problems associated with immigration, multiculturalism, and surrender to an inferior, medieval, supremacist, political movement? In highlighting that native (white) Europeans have interests of their own distinct from and opposed to immigrants' interests? In driving home the point that immigrants come to countries not their own at the sufferance of the people of those host countries?

Zero.

Hence, "troll."

Quickies: This Is A Marine?

I have an extraordinarily busy day before me, so today’s post must be brief.

First, read Doug Giles’s column of today. Try to contain your incredulity and read it all the way to the end.

Eddie Ray Routh, the subject of that column, killed two retired SEALs. One of Routh’s victims was Chris Kyle, a justly celebrated American hero. Routh’s mother had asked Kyle to help Routh, who supposedly suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Routh widowed Chris Kyle’s wife Taya and left the Kyles’ two children without a father.
Routh is about to stand trial for two counts of murder. His defense will be insanity related to his PTSD.
Routh is a former United States Marine.

The Marines are a proud service, for good reason: it’s a tough service to get into, and it demands much of those who wear its emblem. The Marines are often “first into the shit.” They have to be good. They make up for their relatively small numbers with courage, skill, mobility, and hard training.

What are the facts of Routh’s discharge from service? What credibility has a man who never saw combat, whose one tour in the Middle East was at an air base described as “cushy,” and who never experienced an episode of incoming fire, when he claims Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Indeed, how did Eddie Ray Routh become a Marine in the first place?

Are we looking at a degradation-of-standards problem here?

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If any of the armed services would be expected to resist the watering-down of its standards, it would be the Marines. I suppose no matter how much effort is put to the maintenance of a high standard, once in a great while someone who doesn’t belong there will get in anyway. But Eddie Ray Routh’s story is remarkable: the very antithesis of the pride of service we think of in connection with the Marines. Then, once he’s safely home, he murders two fellow servicemen, one of whom is currently the most celebrated unelected figure in America.

Was some sort of pressure put on the Marine Corps to accept Eddie Ray Routh? If so, where did it come from? If not, how on Earth did he pass not just the initial screening but the rigors of Marine training? How did his aversion to service in combat go unnoticed until he was “in the sandbox,” detailed to guard jihadists who apparently won some measure of sympathy from him?

No doubt Routh’s insanity / PTSD defense will be subjected to intense scrutiny during his trial...but that scrutiny might not occur within the courtroom. If pressure got him into the Marine Corps despite his evident unsuitability, pressure might prevent the subject from being explored under a jury’s eyes. Indeed, pressure might shield him from the just consequences of his actions.

Murder deserves a harsh penalty. We don’t inflict that penalty on a man whom we deem to have been “not responsible” at the time of the event, but insanity, whether arising from PTSD or from some other genesis, is an affirmative defense: it must be substantiated by the accused. I very much want to see Eddie Ray Routh pressed on that defense...but whether he will be, given the mysteries surrounding his acceptance into the Marine Corps and his abstention from combat, is a question in itself.

And once those questions have been answered, how about this one: Why did Eddie Ray Routh, supposedly out of his mind from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder despite never having been in combat, shoot Chris Kyle and another retired SEAL, but no one else at the gun range that day?

We shall see.

Sheep, Wolves, and Snipers

Over the last two weekends, I’ve seen two great films -- Unbroken and American Sniper.  Regarding WWII and Unbroken, I am grateful for those men that took up arms in defense of our nation and our way of life.  Admiral Chester Nimitz, describing the courage displayed by US Marines on the island of Iwo Jima declared, “uncommon valor was a common virtue."  What a tremendous testimony to the tenacity of those men.  They were one of the Greatest Generations. 

 

Turn now to the current war, formerly known as the Global War on Terror by our last real leader, and referred to now as an overseas contingency operation, or workplace violence (if you are killed by a terrorist at Fort Hood), by our current  president.  Regardless of what it’s called, another generation of the greatest Americans, guys like Staff Sergeant Salvatore A. Giunta, Staff Sergeant Leroy A. Petry, and Sergeant Dakota Meyer, to name just a few, have risen up to follow in their forefather’s  footsteps.   

Another one of the post-9-11 generation heroes is Chris Kyle, the American Sniper. A scene in the film depicted young Chris at the family dinner table.  His brother had been involved in a bullying incident at school that day.  Their father tells his two young sons an allegory about prey, predators, and protectors.  “There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs,” their Dad starts. “Some people prefer to believe that evil doesn’t exist in the world, and if it ever darkened their doorstep, they wouldn’t know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep.”    

He goes on with the lesson, “Then you’ve got predators -- who use violence to prey on the weak. They’re the wolves. And then there are those blessed with the gift of aggression, an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed who lives to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdogs.”   

While the movie reminds us Chris Kyle was clearly a sheepdog extraordinaire, it also portrays him as a man who bore the emotional scars of traumatic stress and the attendant challenges of reintegrating into civility and home life.   Virtually every veteran of Enduring and Iraqi Freedom could relate to the great degree of difficulty in readjusting from a protracted state of hyper vigilance to a land of the free and the home of the over indulgent.  A nation of seemingly indifferent and unconcerned; in spite of the occasional “thanks for your service” – ostensibly oblivious to the ongoing dangers still being faced by their brothers that they have left behind in theater.    Whether this allegory was actually shared by Mr. Kyle with his sons is immaterial – the lesson was learned and Chris lived it out accordingly.  

The allegory of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs was made popular by Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Tom Grossman, in his 2008 book, “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.”  In it he recounts where he got the allegory, “One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: ‘Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident….’”  Grossman concludes, “Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.  "Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf." 

This reminded me of what Jesus said 2,000 years earlier, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”  You can see that Jesus said there is an enemy that even a sniper’s scope cannot discern.  He said there is a ravenous wolf that dresses like a sheep, which can only be recognized by the fruit they produce.

My hunch on what the fruit of that sheep-dressed wolf might sound like if he were speaking at a prayer breakfast:

“ISIS, you’ve been busy beheading and burning hostages, raping and maiming, don’t worry, you’re in good company – after all those crappy Christians did it too.”   

Source:  https://miscellany101.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sheep_clothing.jpg

How Islam Became a Religion of Peace

[A fresh gift of fiction from the brilliant F. J. Dagg. -- FWP]

---

    Muhammad set his tea aside and smiled. He picked up the papers in his lap and read again--for the third time--and his joy increased. His eyes lingered lovingly on the number, “1,500,000.” It was a very good number, but it was early and all indications suggested that the number would increase, likely dramatically. He recalled his earlier achievements in the United States and swelled with satisfaction. Allah must be pleased with him indeed to bless this first venture in a new location with such success.
    Ibn Sadr approached, bowing. Muhammad bestowed a rare smile on his subordinate.
    “News?”
    “Allah be praised, yes.” Sadr dared a smile as he offered a sheaf of papers. “You will be pleased.”
    Muhammad read. He let the papers fall to his lap and murmured, “Allahu akbar.”
    Ibn Sadr bowed and retired in silence.
    Muhammad reviewed his capital outlay for this undertaking. A nondescript freighter of Cambodian registry, an Iranian missile, a North Korean warhead--and the city of Shanghai was no more. An infidel entrepreneur of the Great Satan’s glory days would have burst with pride at such a rate of return on investment. The initial figure of a million and a half dead had soared to over four million, but the destruction was so great--and incomplete, as the firestorm continued even now--that no one could guess what the ultimate death toll would be, or if it would ever be known with certainty.
    “Allahu akbar,” whispered Muhammad.

*****

    Though Captain Han was not a sentimental man, he was tempted, briefly, to weep. But he gave no outward sign of his grief and quickly mastered himself. Command of a capital warship allows for no self-indulgence.
    He locked the transcript of the top priority message in his stateroom safe and went to the control room, musing that his crew would be happy to break the routine of cruising endless random patterns in the eastern Indian Ocean.
    To his navigator he said, “Make your course 280 degrees. Maximum cruise speed.”
    Han admired the smoothness with which the crew carried out his orders. He would tell them of Shanghai when they arrived on station.

*****

    The first bars of “Begin the Beguine” purred from Muhammad’s phone. He noticed that the faint pang of guilt the melody had always evoked had failed to come at all today. Surely Allah would excuse his guilty pleasure--this unmasterable affection for the music of Cole Porter--in light of the success of his holy labors first concerning the three cities in the US, and now, the first in China.
    “Allahu akbar,” he answered.
    He listened at length, then replied, “Yes, praise Allah, execute Phase Two. We must press our advantage and, Allah willing, the eastern jihad will be a much shorter affair than was the struggle in the West.”
    He listened again, briefly.
    “Allahu Akbar.”
    As he ended the call, a unexpected shadow passed over his mood. He had finished bin Laden’s work in New York with an emir’s yacht carrying a special cargo into the harbor, and had created a splendid symmetry with the simultaneous strike on Long Beach, where the container with Pakistan’s 40-kiloton gift to the infidels had slipped by. To keep them guessing--and because of the corrosive envy of the U.S. space program that had tormented his youth--he had chosen Houston for the third and final warhead, Iran’s contribution. It had come, piece by piece, across the line that had once been the United States’ southern border months before the Great Day. Evidently, those responsible for what the Great Satan’s leaders called “security” were so thoroughly occupied changing the diapers of Honduran children that they overlooked the stream of components that would be assembled in a Texas warehouse into a device of about four times the potency of that which had incinerated most of Nagasaki.
    In the aftermath, the President of the United States had prostrated himself before the Ummah, promising to apply the harshest measures to Americans who took reprisals against Muslims resident in the U.S., then imposing martial law upon his own people--that is to say, the people he ruled. (A jihadi of Muhammad’s acquaintance who had spent time in the U.S. and appreciated American humor said that the president “had his Gucci loafer on the neck of the infidel.”) It had been a success beyond Muhammad’s wildest imaginings--so why did this darkness pass over him at the moment of this fourth great triumph?
    He thought of his eldest son, now with the third team of the Asian offensive’s jihadis, and a man any father would proud of. Aarif was, to borrow a term from the infidels, a Renaissance Man--scholar of the Qur’an, nuclear scientist, and soldier. He would be well-fitted, Muhammad often thought, to one day lead the coming worldwide Caliphate.
    These happy thoughts chased away the shadow. Muhammad picked up his phone again and rang the number of his Minister of Information. How sweet it would be to announce to the world exactly who had just sent four million infidels to hell.

*****

    Captain Han kept to his cabin more than was ordinary during the transit of the Indian Ocean. Though a solitary man, he had had a deep affection for his sister and her children, a photograph of whom rested at a corner of his small desk. When he had last visited them they were settling into their new home in Shanghai. He reflected that it was a new age now, another world.
    Burning incense or candles would not do aboard a submarine, so he placed a candle before the photograph and imagined it lit. It would have to serve as their shrine for the time being, until he could make fire.
    A light knock at the door.
    “Yes.” The door opened a crack. The navigator saluted.
    “Eight hours until station, sir.”
    “Very good.”
    The door closed. Captain Han’s gaze returned to the picture of his lost family.

*****

    “... confirmation that the event in Shanghai was a nuclear explosion, we now have reports of a second detonation and fire at Tianjin. The President of the United States is holding a press conference at this moment. He assures China that the U.S. is in no way responsible, pointing out that Chinese intelligence assets should by now have verified the dismantling of most of America’s nuclear forces...”
     “Nothing about Guangzhou,” said Muhammad, turning from the television. “We should have heard about Guangzhou by now.”
    His lieutenants exchanged furtive glances. Though Shanghai and Tianjin represented a stunning success promising to parallel the Holy Day when they had all but slain the Great Satan, all knew that Muhammad’s son Aarif was with the Guangzhou team, and all knew that Muhammad loved Aarif second only to Allah.

*****

    When Captain Han received word of the strike on Tianjin, his vessel, the newest of the Jin class of ballistic missile submarines, was four hours from its newly assigned area of operations. Besides news of the second city destroyed, he received an amendment to his orders. He summoned his officers. He told them of the destruction of the two cities and allowed them a few moments to absorb the enormity.
    “The second attack, and an alteration of our orders, require immediate action.” He opened his safe and handed a paper to his fire control officer. “Your coordinates.”
    The officer read, then frowned as he looked up. “But this last one...the South China Sea?”
    Captain Han regarded him in silence. The officer nodded, saluted, and left.

*****

    Allah had not smiled on Muhammad’s plan for Guangzhou, His apparent displeasure manifest in the malfunction of the Iranian missile’s guidance system. Halfway between its launch point--a lonely tramp freighter three hundred miles west of Manila--and its target, it deviated from its trajectory, violently earthward. In seconds, it collided with the stratosphere and disintegrated, a serpentine plume the only trace of its existence--and a brilliant indicator of its point of origin. The Chinese satellite passing overhead could not have missed it.

*****

    Muhammad stopped pacing, but only for a second. The television yammered ceaselessly of Shanghai and Tianjin, and of how the American president continued to abase himself before the Chinese, begging their indulgence--as if the U.S. were responsible for the millions of Chinese dead--as he had abased himself before the Ummah not a month earlier while three of America’s great cities still burned. Yet not a word of Guangzhou. Nor was there a word from Aarif or his team.
    The air had become close in his command center, or seemed to have, and Muhammad stepped outside. Had harm come to Aarif, he should be happy, confident of his son’s place in Paradise. But he was not happy. He had arranged, discreetly, for Aarif ’s assignment to the southern team, in the knowledge that Chinese naval assets would be concentrated in the north in exercises with Russia on the day of the attacks. But as the silence lengthened, his mind ran away with him, conjuring terrible images.
    “Jets!” Muhammad looked up to see a sentry pointing high and southward. Indeed, four vapor trails etched the sky, very high, very fast, and heading his way. He could not, however, recall seeing contrails quite like these, coming, it seemed, from nowhere, at such angles, and at such speed.
    If only Aarif were here. He would know...
     It was his final thought. Four warheads of ninety kilotons’ yield each detonated simultaneously at a mile’s altitude, bracketing the village that hosted Muhammad’s headquarters.

*****

    Aliyah gently placed the fig in Aarif’s mouth. He thanked Allah again for this girl. What would I do without her?
    What indeed? Captain Han’s pattern of warheads aimed at the southern team had not been as accurate as those that had done for Aarif’s father, yet they were close enough to set the team’s ship instantly ablaze, kill most of the crew outright, and cost Aarif both of his legs. He kept his right arm for three more days, until the surgeon of the vessel that had miraculously rescued him took it off to save his life.
    In the last thirteen years Aarif had engaged in much meditation and reflection. Both of his wives were dead of cancer--the cancer that had taken so many of the few survivors--his daughter Aliyah, severely irradiated while still in the womb, was quite deficient mentally, but, Allah be praised, sufficiently functional to feed him, dress him, and keep him more or less clean.
    Information was hard to come by in this new world, but as far as he could determine, the Ummah had essentially ceased to be. He did know with certainty that many cities--Tehran, Riyadh, Baghdad, Kabul, Karachi, and alas, Mecca and Medina, among numerous others in the Middle East, Africa, and the western Pacific--no longer existed. He knew that his father--he who had brought the Great Satan at last to its knees--had vanished in the desert. Most of the rumors suggested that the Chinese had virtually annihilated the Ummah in retribution for Shanghai and Tianjin, but the few remaining faithful knew it was Allah’s hand that had crushed them.
    And Aarif knew, too, that for the first time in fourteen centuries, a new beginning was necessary. He knew beyond doubt that it was Allah’s voice he heard--so quiet, yet so deep and near. It was Allah himself who guided his one remaining limb, scarred and shriveled, to write:

    In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful,
    A new Covenant, and a new Scripture are hereby given the faithful.
    Recite thou! For thy Lord is the most Beneficent,
    Who hath taught the use of the pen,
    Thou shalt henceforth renounce war in thy Lord’s Holy Name...

    [February 5, 2015]

What conflicts?

The doctrines of Islam, for instance, are incompatible with the doctrines of Mormonism because they claim that Mohammed was the last prophet and if that is true, then Joseph Smith and every Mormon prophet who came after him were not prophets at all, and every word they wrote was a lie. The doctrines of Islam are also incompatible with those of mainstream Christianity because Islam denies the crucifixion, denies the resurrection and denies the divinity of Jesus. The idea that all religions are the same is an intellectual error of the first magnitude. You cannot possibly believe in different religions, you can only believe in one.^[1]

To the witless among us, cannibalism can be harmonized with transubstantiation, and all honor to the cannibal. Resistance is fealty to the U.S. of KKK Amerika.

Just wish for harmony and, voila, there it is. Shariah's inflexible demand that no kafir law be superior to it is, well, completely compatible with U.S. laws – which had hitherto been considered the laws of the land by niave Americans. Who knew that Muslim immigrants to the U.S. arrived with a built-in demand for a revolution in U.S. law? A complete upending of our laws and customs?

Wellll, make that an apparent demand for shariah displacement. To the Treason Class no conflict exists. Harmony is assured.

Notes
^[1] "The Mark of Evil." By Nick McAvelly, Liberty^gb, 2/2/15.

On Feminism, Power, And Groups, Yet Again

Milo Yiannopoulos's article at Breitbart about the dustup inside the Science Fiction Writers of America, stimulated by Larry Correia's “Sad Puppies” campaign to excite debate over the ascendancy of brutally enforced “political correctness” within that organization, has reminded me of a few things I wrote some time ago.

First, here's a snippet from a column about a year and a half old:

One of the intrinsic differences between the sexes is that between men's and women's interest in power over others....

The female psyche is oriented toward collective decision-making. All those nights squatting around Cro-Magnon campfires complaining about their mates' ingratitude and the impossibility of keeping a neat cave when Ug simply refuses to put his antelope femur away at the end of the day have left an indelible legacy. There are female individualists, of course, but they tend to be a minority, and are generally shunned by their more collectivist sisters. She who thinks sitting around and kvetching about the menfolk is a waste of time cannot fail to let the attitude show, and so will be made unwelcome in the larger circle.

Collectivism -- the assumption that "we" trumps "I" -- is indispensable to power politics.

Women who seek power will naturally attempt first to gain consensus support from other women. It's a female politician's fundamental "constituency." Within explicitly political women's groups, you will find few consensuses that are not near to absolute, for women are also naturally inclined toward the sort of emotional manipulation -- indeed, emotional brutality -- that's on display toward Malzberg and Resnick.

Even women who don't seek power for themselves are passionate about power for women, which of course translates to women's power over men; they see it as the one and only way to "straighten out" the rest of us. Thus, when a sister begins to "climb the ladder," they will rally behind her to an overwhelming degree, hoping that she will acquire the stature needed to beat some sense into our thick male skulls. The suggestion that this is more likely than not to evoke an adverse reaction tends to upset them; most women will dismiss it without giving it any thought. (Cf. women's reactions to Helen Smith's recent book Men on Strike.)

Then came this piece, which I posted last May:

Until the Left manages to seize totalitarian control of these United States, such "forbidding" will consist of the sort of vituperation and vilification the linked article exemplifies. The intent is clear enough: those who dare to offend against some Leftist mascot-group's grievances must be intimidated into abject apology and subsequent silence. The only voices permitted are those that are in perfect accord with the Left.

And finally, consider these thoughts, from last September:

I wrote, some time ago and in another context, that being a "joiner" is hazardous to one's health. Oftentimes, "joiners" are hazardous to others' health -- yours and mine -- as well. Regard the "joiners" of whom I speak in the above, and shudder.

That third piece was elicited by my ire at the Left's unceasing attempts to wrest Americans' privately owned firearms away from us. The most important components of the force pressing for citizen disarmament are groups that, if they aren't overtly feminist, are nevertheless dominated by women.

Has it ever been more obvious what the ruling ideology of the Left must be?

---

    Retief stood up. "I'm taking a few weeks off...if you have no objections, Mr. Ambassador. My pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is good."
    "But there are some extremely important matters coming up," Magnan said. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups."
    "Count me out. Groups give me an itch."
    "Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief. After all, we diplomats are ourselves a group."
    "Uh-huh," Retief said. "That's what I mean."
    Magnan sat quietly, his mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the hall and closed the door gently behind him.

[From a Keith Laumer story whose name I've mislaid.]

Bodies that practice collective decision making excite those who seek power: they target such bodies for infiltration and takeover. That's what happened to SFWA. It's also what's happened to both major political parties and quite a few less well known organizations.

The link between the female tendency toward collective decision-making and the power-seeking characteristic of the Left could not be more obvious. It drives some of the most outrageous behavior visible today. Consider, if you will, the execrable campaign by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to defame Columbia University student Paul Nungesser over a rape accusation, for which he's already been cleared twice. Is it not clear that Gillibrand would never have considered doing such a thing were the "rape culture" not a common theme among young American women? Is a motive other than the advancement of Gillibrand's power and prestige at the expense of an innocent young student even possible?

The problem is insoluble in the context of organized groups. Friedrich Hayek told us why in The Road To Serfdom, in the chapter "Why The Worst Get On Top." Given enough time, an organization with a defined membership and a defined decision-making process will always come under the hands of those who seek power above all else, regardless of that organization's supposed reason for existing. The dynamic is unopposed by an equal or more powerful dynamic; therefore, it will always "go to completion."

There is no escape except forgoing membership in any and all such groups. But therein lies the perfect countermeasure, as I wrote in the second of the articles cited above:

There's a form of Gresham's Law that functions here: A group that equally values its most civilized members and its most vitriolic members will soon possess a preponderance of the latter. The good, self-respecting members will disdain to remain among persons who hurl insults and epithets at them, leaving the group populated by only the insult-hurlers, plus a smattering of generally decent persons with inadequate self-respect.

The progression won't stop there. Such a group, now dominated by "the worst of the worst," will gradually fail to return an adequate "profit" -- in money, volunteer labor, prestige, fellowship, or anything else one might value -- to its members, most especially those who've taken control of it. The typical response to such enervation is for the leaders to strive to whip up the enthusiasm of the group by artificial means; i.e., to "keep the hate alive."...

So it is with the SFWA viragoes. Whatever success they have in "cleansing" SFWA will prove self-defeating. If they persist, it will degenerate to a backwater, an occupationally-oriented sewing circle of gender-war-feminist self-and-mutual-congratulation that bears no relevance to science fiction, its quality, or its popularity. But that's all secondary to the core mission of keeping the hate alive.

In particular, if feminism and the humorlessness, aggressiveness, and habitual vituperation of feminists sours your stomach, this is the antacid. It cannot be said too often:

Don't Be A Joiner!

Just don't.

Deliberate destruction.

Even with the ridiculously optimistic economic assumptions that are used in Obama’s new budget, the federal budget is never projected to balance within the next decade. Instead, Obama’s budget projects that the national debt will rise from 18.1 trillion dollars right now to 26.2 trillion dollars in 2025.

Of course it would greatly help if the federal government actually spent our money wisely. But instead, the feds often waste our hard-earned tax dollars in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable. The following is just one example…

The U.S. federal government has prompted controversy after spending over $33,000 on a study to find out whether same-sex couples live closer to tobacco shops than heterosexuals.

The large sum was spent on a study by the National Institutes of Health entitled, ‘Relationship Between Tobacco Retailer Density and Sexual Minority Couples.’

Thanks to this kind of insane spending, our debt is completely and totally out of control.

* * * *

If something were to happen which would cause the rest of the planet to either be unwilling or unable to lend us trillions of dollars at ridiculously low interest rates all of a sudden, the game would be over.

We were handed the keys to the greatest and most prosperous economy in the history of the planet, and our greed has totally wrecked it.

We were wealthy beyond imagination, but that was never good enough for us. We always had to have more.

And now we are hurtling toward financial oblivion, and we have a man in the White House that wants us to go into debt even faster.^[1]

I wanted to title this entry "Deliberate destruction or monumental stupidity" but couldn't bring myself to suggest a possibility of Treason Class goodwill.

As Holmes would say, once you eliminate the impossible notion that the leaders could be this stupid -- that they can not see the horrifying turn of the chart of the federal debt straight up into Jack and the Beanstalk territory – you are left with the conclusion of malevolent action, however improbable that may be.

Contrary to what Mr. Snyder says, I don't think even greed is by itself an adequate explanation. I think it's deliberate destruction for, as the legal maxim goes, we are presumed to intend the natural consequences of our acts. Greed figures in there -- greed for money and power -- but it's joined at the hip with malevolence.

No WAY can anyone who votes for one of those appropriation bills, especially with the kind of nonsense in them such as the example cited above, NOT know what he is doing to the Nation down the road.

Notes
^[1] "Barack Obama Says That What America Really Needs Is Lots More Debt." By Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse, 2/2/15.

Words Fail Me Dept.

I was about to turn away from the Web and concentrate on other pursuits when I noticed this unbelievable obscenity:

How do we, as people of faith, reconcile these realities --the profound good, the strength, the tenacity, the compassion and love that can flow from all of our faiths, operating alongside those who seek to hijack religious for their own murderous ends?

Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

Yes, Gentle Reader: those words were uttered by Barack Hussein Obama, at the National Prayer Breakfast, held today.

---

Allow me to quote an essay written in 2003 by a gentleman named Claudio Salvucci:

For centuries, the Middle East had been under the control of moderate Muslim leaders, and those leaders had respectfully allowed Christian pilgrims to come and go as they pleased to visit the holy places of their religion. A sizable and flourishing Jewish community had finally returned to its homeland after having been banished for centuries.

Then, just after the turn of a new millennium, something happened that would change the course of history forever.

A man came to power in the Middle East who could best be described as a murderous and fanatical madman. Hundreds of years of moderate Islamic rule gave way to strict sectarian laws and intense persecution of Jews and Christians. Peaceful travelers were attacked, robbed, and killed.

Then one autumn Tuesday, this fanatical madman destroyed some of the most powerfully symbolic buildings in all the world. They were the ideological heart and soul of Western civilization, standing in a great city that enshrined everything that civilization believed in.

The news spread like wildfire around the known world.

Outraged, the Western powers galvanized with a unity that had seldom been seen in their long and bloody history. Warring, squabbling countries suddenly sensed a larger, common purpose that extended far beyond their own borders.

After praying and holding religious services in the rubble of these once proud buildings, the leaders of the West began to put together a military coalition that would prevent such outrages from ever happening again. A renewed sense of long-dormant unity was awakening and a new generation of brave warriors made preparations for a long struggle to preserve freedom. They would, not out of desire but of necessity, take up arms against the people who were threatening their way of life.

It would be a defensive war against terror and oppression.

It would be known as the Crusades.

Claudio’s essay, which first appeared in the 2003 issue of The Tarpeian Rock, from Arx Publishing, goes on from there. (Back issues of the magazine are available through the Arx website.) I’ve reproduced his opening because it highlights the similarities between the events that triggered the Crusades and the events of Black Tuesday: September 11, 2001. I’ll add one bit more:

Christians are more than willing to condemn Crusader excesses, and assign blame where blame is due. They always have been. The devout 12th Century pilgrim Ekkehard of Aurach observed how evil men were infiltrating the Crusaders’ ranks and sorely lamented how the “armies of Christ were defiled.” Pope Innocent III, who himself called the Fourth Crusade, upon hearing of the senseless and deplorable sack of Constantinople in 1204, angrily upbraided his own papal legate for scandalizing the Church with, in his words, “an example of perdition and the works of darkness.”

Find me a Muslim satrap who will unequivocally condemn all jihadist violence, regardless of the identity, locale, religion, or statements of the victims.

---

Christianity is founded upon the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of God and the Redeemer of Mankind. Nothing in His teachings as they’re recorded in the Gospels justifies the atrocities committed upon Jerusalem and Constantinople. Nor was there any attempt, even by the perpetrators, to justify them as Christian deeds. Any professing Christian should know that – and Barack Hussein Obama claims to be a Christian.

By the words he allowed to fall from his own lips, Obama has put his claim of Christian devotion in the toilet. Let the news be sounded far and wide, that he might never, ever again be allowed to get away with that claim.