The Closing Of The Muslim Mind by Robert R. Reilly

Foreword by Roger Scruton

“The roots of Western civilization lie in the religion of Israel, the culture of Greece, and the law of Rome, and the resulting synthesis has flourished and decayed in a thousand ways during the two millennia that have followed the death of Christ. Whether expanding into new territories or retreating into cities, Western civilization has continually experimented with new institutions, new laws, new forms of political order, new scientific beliefs, and new practices in the arts. And this tradition of experiment led, in time, to the Enlightenment, to democracy, and to forms of social order in which free opinion and freedom of religion are guaranteed by the state.

Why did not something similar happen in the Islamic world? (more…)

I have to thank James Gorski for inspiring me to dig my heels in and take on Andrew McCarthy’s, “The Grand Jihad,” in earnest.  This book rightfully belongs on the same shelf next to where you keep your copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

No matter how much religion you believe, no matter how securely you hold to the fundamental rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no matter how you uphold the rule of law in Western society, these values, in themselves, won’t protect you. (more…)

“As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war.

But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.”

The left clearly owns all of the points Cheney mentions above….not a close call.  As to the inference from those points that Obama thinks we’re not at war, as a private citizen protected by the 1st Am., the former Vice President has every right to his rhetorical flourishes no matter how much they vex demleftys.

Speaking of the 1st Am., I assume everyone now needs to keep a current backup of their computer handy for when the TSA goons show up at your door to seize your equipment.

TRUTH-TELLING.

IT is amusing to see how a man in a passion lets the truth escape him. The London Times, which has constantly striven to represent the rebellion as the noble effort of an oppressed people to recover and defend their liberties, and has with perfect success falsified every fact in the history of the war, unguardedly tells the naked truth in a late article written under the consciousness of the extremity of the rebel cause.

It is speaking of the project of arming the slaves at the South, and the Times innocently remarks: ” The South has no reason to doubt that the negro will fight just as bravely in support of the cause of slavery, which is the cause of his master, as he will in the cause of liberty.” And it adds of its particular friends the rebels : ” The man who would submit without a murmur to the impressment of his horses or his crops, may very likely shrink back with a species of superstitious horror from the attempt of his own Government [at Richmond] to deprive him of those very slaves for whom he has already fought a long and desperate war.”

This is as it should be. The Times confesses that this insurrection is an effort to save slavery; and the paper whose asserted pride it is to defend “fair play”—the representative of the aristocratic governing class of England deliberately supports as a manly assertion of an undoubted right the armed effort of a body of men to overthrow a Government, which they do not pretend has ever wronged them, merely for the sake of preserving slavery. Does any really intelligent and thoughtful Englishman wonder that his country is detested by all other nations when he sees that its leading journal, holding a position which no other paper holds in any other country, is guilty of such a crime against human nature and civil society?

We do not for a moment forget the sympathy and generous service of our friends in England who, understanding this war, truly appreciate and despise the course of the Times and its adherents. But the fact of which we speak will help explain to them the indignation which they hear so often breathed against England. They may he very sure that if the mine owners any where in England should revolt against the British Government for the sole purpose of more surely imbruting the unhappy miners, no American statesman in office would applaud their insurrection as the founding of a nation, as Mr. GLADSTONE said of this rebellion ; and if any leading newspaper here, clearly recognizing the object of the insurrection, vehemently supported it, it would be overwhelmed with the derision and wrath of the great body of the people.

Harper’s Weekly, December 10, 1864

Agreement For Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq

Signed November 17, 2008 in Baghdad.  Main stream media — Hello?  Anyone there?

http://www.zombietime.com/vi_day/

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“Global warming is still largely a vessel into which it adherents’ pour their own virtue and, even more frequently, for demonizing opponents.”  Christopher C. Horner, Red Hot Lies.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. (more…)

Opening remarks of Scalia’s dissent

“What the Court apparently means is that the political branches can debate, afterwhich the Third Branch will decide.”

Boumediene v. Bush - Full Decision

Getting to Know John McCain

Messages From John

FITNA part 1
FITNA part 2

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Pat Condell’s excellent commentary The Religion of Fear

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From: A View From The Eye Of The Storm, Terror and Reason in the Middle East, ISBN 0-06-083911-2

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NYTimes on Pakistan lawyer demonstration “The pressure on the lawyers is far more intense now than it was even in the spring, when their anger had been stoked by General Musharraf’s attempt to dismiss the chief justice. The step was seen as a direct threat to the independence of the judiciary, and hence themselves. Led by Aitzaz Ahsan,…

Aitzaz Ahsan is an active member of Pakistan Peoples Party. “Among the express goals for which the Party was formed were the establishment of an egalitarian democracy and the application of socialistic ideas to realize economic and social justice.
The Life Chairperson - Pakistan Peoples Party Benazir Bhutto

Pakistan Sharia Law “The Enforcement of Sharia Act 1991 affirms the supremacy of the sharia, (defined in the Act as the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah) as the supreme law of Pakistan. The Act states that all statute law is to be interpreted in light of the sharia and that all Muslim citizens of Pakistan shall observe the sharia and act accordingly.

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Why is the NYT so sympathetic to the Pakistani sharia left? The NYT wouldn’t even exist if the sharia left controlled America.

The Trouble is the West

“The Western mind-set—that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away—is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it [Islam], or it’s only going to get bigger.”  

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 

Convention Lecture | April, 2004 | Haim Harari

 HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson Institute of
Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001, of the Weizmann
Institute of Science.

 During his years as President of the Institute, it entered numerous new
scientific fields and projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one Billion
Dollars in philanthropic money, hired more than half of its current tenured
Professors and became one of the highest royalty-earning academic
organizations in the world.

 Throughout all his adult life, he has made major contributions to three
different fields: Particle Physics Research on the international scene,
Science Education in the Israeli school system and Science Administration
and Policy Making. 

  ”As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological
“entertainment” in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman
suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of the
world from which I come. I have never been and I will never be a Government
official and I have no privileged information. My perspective is entirely
based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my family has lived
in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my views as those of the
proverbial taxi driver, which you are supposed to question, when you visit a
country. (more…)