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Posts Tagged → Islam

Some “palestine” chants I can live with

Patriotic Americans sick and tired of genocidal maniacs chanting in our streets, demanding that Western Civilization roll over and die for them can enjoy some “palestine” chants that would make sense to me:

Pave, pave Palestine…save, save humankind

Nuke, nuke Palestine…save, save humankind

Fake, fake Palestine…go back to your own kind

From the river to the sea, the Jewish People will be free

A billion Muslims, sittin’ in a tree…won’t you leave some space for me

Hey hey, ho ho…palestine has got to go

Palestine apartheid…means Jewish genocide

Palestine apartheid…means Christian genocide

I could go on with many more creative chants, but you get the point. Way over a billion Muslims can’t make room for fifteen million Jews on Planet Earth? Really? That isn’t fair. That is genocidal. It is apartheid.

Every Western nation has to commit suicide in the name of failed multiculturalism? That is also genocidal against Christians and Caucasians.

If so-called Fakestinians are so “indigenous” to Israel, then why is their mosque sitting on top of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem? Doesn’t that ancient Temple symbol of the Jews being in Israel a long time before the imperialist and colonizing Muslims arrived kinda stick in your eye?

This Jerusalem temple thing is a problem everywhere, actually. Hindu and Sikh temples and Christian churches from Europe across India have mosques sitting on top of them. That’s not the “indigenous” people building the latest thing, that is a symbol of Islamic imperialism and colonialism claiming other people’s holy sites.

And it is this Islamic imperialism and colonialism that is at the heart of the problem in the Middle East.

Should people be able and willing to live together? Sure! I would hope so. America and European nations sure have been bending over backwards to accommodate people who really hate us. Awful lot of waiting and waiting on people to assimilate and adopt our pluralistic, tolerant values.

In Israel, a lot of Muslims live better than they live anywhere else. But outside of Israel, so far, the ancient history and the recent history both indicate that the Muslim side wants to dominate and control every place and every person on Planet Earth. That is not politically or culturally sustainable.

It is also simply not fair, and no one who thinks about this issue is going to conclude that the billion-plus Muslims are victims, because the evidence is that they are perpetrating great crimes against minority people everywhere. At some point, people in Ireland and Israel and elsewhere are going to fight back.

Personally, I think Islam is a very cool religion. And I also think it needs a reformation just as Judaism (1,800 years ago) and Christianity (500 years ago) went through reformations.

 

 

Jews are the original “indigenous people”

Harvard University is now universally known as the place where capable young minds go to die. Literally only a few hours after the Hamas massacre of roughly a thousand Israeli civilians, and while the beheaded babies and raped women’s corpses were still warm, something like forty (40… 4-0 count ’em) student groups at Harvard University publicly announced their “solidarity” with Hamas and its broadly broadcast images of butchery.

Included among this Harvard University gathering of aspiring young sadists and Stalinists we also saw the Black Lives Matter students raising their fists against their imaginary foes, colonization and imperialism. Somehow, somewhere on the Harvard University campus, which to be fair is not anywhere near alone among so-called universities in this epic mis-educational failure, these students had been incorrectly taught that Muslim Arabs are the sad victims of a colonizing and imperialistic state of Israel. Probably more propagandists than we care to think of masquerading as serious university professors at Harvard University have been unchecked in stating lies as facts to the “young heads full of mush.” Not just about Arabs, Jews, and Israel, but a whole host of subjects.

So wackily radicalized and so failed has the universal university “educational” experience become (check out Miss Irony Of The Year award recipient and terribly mis-educated black NYU student Ryna Workman in her full on racist mode) that the political orthodoxy enabling the propagandists-faux-educators prevents college campuses from even hosting guest speakers who speak something different. Never mind that the different topics usually involve the actual, factual truth…

The factual truth about Israel and Jews and Arabs and Muslims, as evidenced by several hundred years of archaeology in Israel that jibes hand-in-glove with the Torah/ Bible, as well as well documented history of the Near East/Middle East region, is that the Jews are the only indigenous people in Israel, and likely in a good bit of the surrounding region.

But aren’t Arabs and Muslims the majority there? Weren’t they oppressed by the World War I and World War II European governments? Were Arabs and Muslims not moved, re-settled, dislocated, and treated badly?

  • Everyone in Europe and the Near East was mistreated, re-located, dislocated, displaced, and treated badly in Word War One and World War Two. Literally every single ethnic and religious and linguistic group suffered greatly at some point beginning about 1912 and ending never. Germans started both wars, inflicted unbelievable suffering on their neighbors during the two wars, and then suffered very badly at the end of both wars. Everyone around Germany suffered. The suffering was shared and meted out liberally by the Turkish Empire, ally to the Germans.
  • Yes, about 500,000 Muslim Arabs were dislocated about ten to twenty miles by the 1948 civil war they started in Israel, and also about 1,000,000 (one million) Jews were similarly displaced from across North Africa to Iran, in the same time period. If anyone is a sad refugee in this situation, it is the Jews.
  • Arabs are -historically speaking- and -factually speaking- from Arabia, which is known today as the Saudi Peninsula or Saudi Arabia. Islam (Muslims) began in Arabia and spread throughout the region due to the violent colonizing of Arabs and the imperialistic success of Muslims.
  • Arabia is not Israel or Judea or Samaria or the Golan or the Galilee. For people to leave Arabia and then lay claim to Israel and Judea and Samaria and the Galilee and the Golan (all areas with unbroken Jewish communities for the past 4,000 years) they would have to be really aggressively practicing both colonialism and imperialism.
  • Sick irony of moronic ironies, the word Palestine is now used to fakely name an artificially new place that never historically existed with this name…except when the ultimate colonizers and imperialist ROMANS used it.
  • Again, are you the reader not amazed at the weirdness of people who right now lay claim to the ultimate symbol of Roman colonization and imperialism as their evidence of being “indigenous” to the land they occupy? There was no Palestine, there never was a Palestine, and the only time there was any historic referral to the name Palestine was by the Romans, who fought the Jews in a long and brutal civil war, and who then tried to de-Jewishize Israel and Judea by renaming the area. And this is why modern day colonist Arabs and imperialist Muslims seek once again to re-name and de-name Israel into something else.

If you are truly bothered by colonization and imperialism, then you have to question how the heck there came to be more Arabs and more Muslims in downtown Cairo than there are Jews in the entire world. Islamic imperialism and Arab colonialism are responsible for the spread of Arab Islam and Islamic Arabs across a huge swath of the planet.

The question of whether or not these Muslim Arabs today across North Africa and the Near East and the Middle East are entitled to claim all of the area they came to dominate through terror and violence and ethnic cleansing is a discussion the world ought to have. I mean this. Neither Arabs nor Muslims are indigenous to any place except the Arabian Peninsula. I am not advocating that they all go back there right now, but to the more educated and clear-thinking readers here, I am asking you to weigh out the actual history of the region and the causes of the problems that the region now faces.

We must have an authentic discussion about this, which I recognize is something today’s university student has probably not experienced.

Israel and its indigenous people – Jews – right now face a genocidal force that is unhappy about not controlling every corner of the earth, including lusting after Spain and Austria and Israel to begin with. We gotta address this problem, people, or the problem is going to continue.

In the meantime, Am Israel Chai – the Jewish People Yet Live, a battle cry, slogan, a rejection of foreign colonialism and imperialism, whatever you want to call it, that has persisted from the throats of Jews standing on the dirt of Israel for thousands of years, until this very day. Like right now today, as Jews in their homeland of Israel fight back against foreign imperialism and colonization as presently embodied by Hamas and their evil supporters.

Kathy Barnette, American icon

US Senate candidate Kathy Barnette is one of my fellow America First conservative activists who GOPe scum sneer at because we run impossible political campaigns at great personal expense, just to move the ball down the field a foot or two. And like a lot of other grass roots voters, among other reasons I like her for her risk taking and sacrifice on our behalf.

In 2009 I ran in a congressional primary in a four-pack of candidates. This was at the very beginning of the Tea Party movement. I was politely asked to not run by a Republican state senator who ended up running and barely winning the primary race himself (then he was crushed in November by the incumbent Democrat), as well as by a significant Pennsylvania GOPe donor and by the PAGOP chairman. I burned some bridges by staying in the race, and I did very OK in the end.

In 2012 I ran for PA state senate, and at the last minute the PAGOP gerrymandered me out of my own 15th state senate district. The then-Republican-led PA Supreme Court threw out the gerrymander plan, citing my situation (the justices called it an “iron cross designed to keep someone in particular from running for this senate seat”), and so I was back in the race with just days to get on the ballot. Then the PAGOP ran another candidate in addition to me and their chosen one, in order to dilute the vote. Their second candidate was a long-time sitting elected official. The PAGOP plan worked, and the “very moderate” chosen candidate won with 43% of the vote, while I had a very respectable second place. I think we spent about ten thousand dollars, while the GOPe candidate spent $300,000 and the GOPe candidate #2 spent $34,000.

The PAGOP “very moderate” candidate who won that Republican primary nomination went on to be utterly crushed by a liberal Democrat in a Republican +10% district. So much for the PAGOP and GOPe regular RINO program working out. This is why so many grass roots conservatives no longer trust the GOPe or PAGOP to find good candidates.

I ran for that state senate seat again in 2015, and again it was me versus the moderate PAGOP candidate. So a third candidate was selected to dilute the vote and help the moderate win. That race ended in November 2015 when I fell during a bear hunt high up on a northcentral Pennsylvania mountaintop and wrecked my knee, requiring two back-to-back surgeries so I could walk again. The moderate Republican won that primary and beat the liberal Democrat the following November, and has been a mostly do-nothing, know-nothing bench warmer ever since. It depresses me to think of what might have been, might have been achieved, had we gotten a conservative in this seat…

…anyhow, I can relate to Kathy Barnette, because I, too, have personally risked and sacrificed a great deal to do my own best to steer political outcomes in the right direction. She has my total respect and support.

Fast forward to today, and warrior princess Kathy Barnette is being criticized for having lost her congressional race in liberal Montgomery County several years ago. In a district that is Democrat +25%, conservative Barnette ran anyhow, just to stir things up. How many of the anti-Barnette sneering weenies in the PAGOP have ever risked anything, or sacrificed anything, like she did, for the good of the cause?

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Someone GOPe just did a laughably dishonest and fake video about Barnette that was shown on TV, where one-second snippets of her various speeches were sloppily combined to make her sound like she supports Black Lives Matter (she doesn’t), hates police (she doesn’t), and hates white people (she doesn’t).

In every case Barnette was actually saying exactly the opposite of what is claimed in the fake video: That she does not support BLM, which she called “parasitic,” and she does support the police and does not support defunding the police, and that she opposes anti-white racism. Etc.

A reporter named Jack Posobiec has posted a video on Rumble where he exposes each of these lies about Barnette. Posobiec also posted a video about how he has combed through over 1,300 of Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Oz’s TV appearances over decades, and has found ZERO pro-America or even conservative content of any sort, cultural or political.

Dr. Oz:

  • served in the Turkish armed forces, while Barnette served in the US Army Reserve
  • voted in Turkey in 2018, while Barnette votes in her home nation of America
  • holds dual citizenship with Turkey and America… a huge conflict of interest; Barnette is just a plain ol’ American citizen
  • is a long-time Hollywood liberal who suddenly discovered the GOP when he decided to buy a senate seat in a state he does not live in
  • lives in New Jersey, not PA, unlike Barnette, who actually lives in PA
  • supports hormone blockers for little boys and transexualism/ transgenderism for little children
  • supports anti-gun rights “red flag” laws, whereas Barnette is endorsed by Gun Owners of America
  • Barnette is endorsed by US Senator Joni Ernst, General Mike Flynn, Susan B. Anthony List, and a long laundry list of other conservative organizations and individuals

Two other criticisms of Barnette do have a smidgeon of relevance, but are easily dismissed.

One is that she is “anti gay,” which is a dishonest way to characterize Barnette’s support for a Christian baker who did not want the government to force him to bake a cake for a gay wedding. And Barnette correctly points out that what began as an understandable cry for fair treatment by the gay community has turned into a relentless demand for absolute endorsement of homosexual behavior, with heavy punishment for dissenters. Americans and humans everywhere have a right to their own beliefs, and a right to be left alone, and a right to say they are uncomfortable with other people’s sex lives. Barnette was correct in her position on this.

The other claim is that Barnette is “anti Islam,” which is yet again a dishonest way of reporting that Barnette wants the same kind of public debate about public policy issues surrounding Islam in America as Islamic groups demand about Christians, Jews, and pro-Israel groups in America. Barnette correctly points out that if it’s OK for Islam and Muslims to criticize people for their religious views, then it is fair for those same people to similarly criticize and question Islam and Muslims for their religious views. Fair is fair, equal is equal. This is not difficult to understand or to support. Every fair-minded person should support Barnette on these issues.

In short, Kathy Barnette is right over the target, she is poised to win and upset many years of RINO planning, and the bullcrap flak is coming in heavy, from the GOPe and the PAGOP and the RINOs. I have no way of knowing if Barnette will win next week, but if she does, it will probably be by a couple thousand votes. And if she loses, it will probably be by a few hundred votes.

Everyone who loves a free constitutional America must absolutely vote for Kathy Barnette, an American icon of bravery and selfless sacrifice.

p.s. Candidate Dave McCormick is a World Economic Forum member and a serial RINO from Connecticut. I keep getting emails from him claiming he is pro-2A, but then why did Barnette get endorsed by GOA? Turns out McCormick did not even bother to answer the GOA candidate survey… what an arrogant man.

Time to create Kurdistan out of Iraq

Now that a slim majority of the Iraqi parliament has voted to demand the full exit of American everything from Iraq, it is time for America, the liberator and vanquisher of Iraq, to decide what to do next.

Note that Iraq is roughly 60% Shia Muslim, who identify closely with Shia-majority Iran. That 60% of Iraq’s population lives in a relatively small region adjoining Iran, and despite holding such a small geographical area, about 15% of Iraq’s surface area, the population dominates the entire country.

One of the enormous mistakes made by the Bush administration when invading Iraq were these assumptions: 1) Iraqis will welcome Americans as liberators the same way Europeans welcomed American GIs in World War II; 2) Iraqis will be forever grateful for America’s liberation of Iraq, and they will therefore become a key ally in the region; 3) Iraq was, is, and will be fertile ground for planting western-style democracy, thereby creating some form of democratic government that will naturally cooperate with America and other Western nations.

These assumptions were rightly questioned at the time of the Iraq invasion, and they were further questioned during the occupation and subjugation of the native jihadis there. In recent years a kind of quiet war of careful positioning has followed, and so the newest assumption was that America had been successful in all ways, and had brought lasting peace to Iraq. And so, the thinking has gone, America can just pull up stakes and move everyone back home.

Not so fast.

Being anti-war is understandable if it applies to unjust wars, unwarranted wars, stupid wars, wasteful wars, and artificially inhibited wars, all of which applied up front to the American invasion of Iraq and then the occupation. Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of the Iraq occupation was the ridiculous “rules of engagement,” created by Bush and further tightened by Obama, whereby our own troops pretty much had to bleed before they were allowed to return fire against aggressors. These insanely restrictive rules of engagement inhibited American forces from doing their job effectively, quickly, and safely. These rules led to years of IEDs and snipers killing and badly wounding American military personnel who were in Iraq to bring peace and prosperity to Iraqis, and to an anti-warrior culture at the Pentagon back home, whereby devoted fighters like Navy SEAL operations chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher were often held to impossibly impractical standards for conduct on the field of battle against merciless enemies. And then made an example of by desk jockeys and armchair generals.

Almost all of those IED and sniper attacks on American forces could have been prevented by having either no rules of engagement, or rules of engagement that greatly and quite naturally favored the interests of our forces over vague concerns about perceptions and lingering “feelings” of Iraqis.

However, the rules of engagement stayed on and what was done was done; now twenty years later, America has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars and tanker trucks of American blood to bring peace and prosperity to yet another group of Middle East/Near East/ Muslim people who really don’t value peace and prosperity, nor democracy, either. None of these things that Americans and Europeans value are valued by Muslims, plain and simple. This is proven by the lack of peace, the lack of prosperity, and the lack of democracy or the rule of law in every..single…Muslim country.

So now that the vanquished are demanding that the conqueror leave Iraq, what should America do?

Our main options are to stay and fight all over again, or to appease the Iraqi government, which is now largely a Shia proxy of Iran’s theocracy, or to turn and leave.

Staying and fighting is unappealing, because we did that already, at great cost. The “no blood for oil” cries of the initial invasion were prophetic, as America stupidly declined to take any payment of any sort for our efforts. Not even in abundant Iraqi oil, which could have been easily and fairly shipped home to offset our huge investment in Iraq’s freedom and stability.

Appeasing the Shia-led Iraqi government is also unappealing and impractical, as appeasement never works, it just delays the inevitable conflict while our enemy prepares overtime for violent conflict. Thus prolonging the inevitable.

Finally, America can turn and leave, pulling up stakes and bidding farewell to Iraq with a “pox on your house” tossed over our shoulder as we send everyone home. This option has the greatest emotional appeal, and for good reason: Those who love and cherish American military personnel are loathe to see them sacrificed once again or any longer in the pursuit of vague, poorly defined, or improbable geopolitical goals. And the oil-less Iraq war and occupation was nothing if not poorly defined with vague, improbable goals at huge cost. But leaving cold turkey is a terrible option, because it will mean America invested trillions of dollars and thousands of wonderful young men for nothing. Not even for oil, and yet we will be in a worse position than we were when we first invaded.

A fourth option exists, and will take some creativity to implement. But it is doable, and is the best of all our options, because it allows America to meet all of its geopolitical and strategic goals at minimal cost to our servicemen and taxpayers.

This fourth option is to subdivide Iraq into new states, based on ethnicity and or religious makeup. Similar to how Pakistan was created out of India in 1948.

We will support those new states that share our interests, and we will harass and undermine those states that ally themselves with our sworn enemies, like Iran (and yes, theocratic Iran has been America’s sworn enemy long before Israel had a dog in that fight). Thus, breaking up Iraq into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish states will allow us to more easily identify and help our friends, and more easily isolate and fight our enemies. It will take the vast majority of Iraq’s Shia Muslims and keep them in the smallest geographical area of Iraq where they already live. It will also enable America to finally begin to take payment from the vast oil fields that are mostly surrounded by pro-America Kurds. Most of Iraq’s geography is already divided up along ethnic and sectarian lines, so the new state lines on the map can be pretty easily drawn to match.

By creating the modern Kurdistan, America will implement several goals. First, we will be placing most of the existing oil fields in the hands of a people who have been and who still are naturally inclined to ally with America. America will benefit from the oil not going to Iran, and we can always set up a long-overdue financial debt repayment program with the Kurds, in oil or in oil receipts.

Second, we will be undermining two of the most dangerous states in the region, Iran and Turkey, both of whom have openly demonstrated clear goals of regional domination at any cost and with any method. Recall that Turkey has been quietly allied with ISIS, and also has been openly in pursuit of genocide against the Kurds while lusting after their oil fields. Iran’s ideological threat needs no explanation, as they openly wish to explode many nuclear bombs across America, and for years they have been quietly exploiting our open southern border in preparation to do just this.

In the spirit of the times, I propose the creation of Shiastan (capital city of Najaf), Sunnistan (capital city of Baghdad), and Kurdistan (capital city of Kirkuk) in response to Iraq’s declaration of war against America.

Source: Ohio State University Department of History, which in turns attributes the US government

 

 

9/11’s meaning then and now

Today is the 18th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, known as “9/11”.

From October 2001 to October 2003, I worked closely with the National Park Service and with the families of the Flight 93 victims on protecting the crash site, two solid hard-working years, so that it could eventually become a national memorial without worries of losing the physical sense of what the surrounding ground looked like the moment the plane flipped upside down and did a nose-dive into Tim Lambert’s spruce grove.

And for those two years no one ever blamed the victims of 9/11. Nor did anyone try to scapegoat anyone else for 9/11. Solemnly we focused hard on protecting the landscape so that future generations would know and remember not only what happened, but why and by whom. Like a battlefield, which most Americans properly see it as.

However, for a lot of Americans today, the ‘why’ and and ‘whom’ parts of 9/11 are now strangely flipped around.

In a recent conference about 9/11, panelists blamed guns, the NRA, whites, Christians, and a lack of open borders for 9/11. No, I am not making this up. Blaming the American victims of 9/11 is the actual state of mind among many liberal leaders today. At the conference, they refused to mention Islam, Muslim terrorists, or hijacked planes. Instead, they used the event to call attention to their favorite failed policy goals, not to heal the wounded nation or to discuss lessons learned about how to avoid a repeat of 9/11.

And let’s be honest: Open borders will lead to not just one more 9/11, but many more acts of mass terror against Americans. You could fairly argue that the coast-to-coast illegal alien crime wave already is a form of terrorism, or that the liberal policy assault on law enforcement and the resulting mass shootings is a form of terrorism. But what is meant here, and what is the worst, are carefully planned and targeted acts of mass murder. Like what happened on 9/11.

Eighteen years ago 9/11 heightened our awareness. It made Americans feel vulnerable. It taught us that our best intentions and most open-minded policies are seen by most people outside of America as signs of weakness, of decadence, of a lack of willpower to survive, and they were then exploited to our disadvantage. Our federal government at the time properly took revenge on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, mostly hiding in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But then that same government mistakenly tried to implement a repeat of the World War II Marshall Plan, where America re-built the nations we had invaded and occupied. The post-9/11 attempted rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan was overly optimistic, because these Muslim countries are not European. They share none of the values or culture of WWII Europe, and they are immune to our culture and values.

And so now, instead of learning lessons from 9/11 and using them to protect America, we have an entire American political party that has inverted 9/11 and turned it into another forum and stage for promoting policies that have zero to do with 9/11 or preventing something similar from happening again.

Today in America, to one political party, the military veterans who fought to protect America by taking the fight to Iraq and Afghanistan are now the threat to America, not orthodox Muslims following the Koran to the letter of the law. And the patriotic friends of those veterans are the threat to America; the religious Christian friends and family of those veterans are the threat to America; and the hunters and target shooting friends of those veterans are also the threat to America.

Everyone but the actual perpetrators of 9/11, and their supporters like US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, are that political party’s scapegoats for 9/11.

For radical Muslim Ilhan Omar, on 9/11 “Somebody did something.” That’s it, that is her whole take on 9/11, and her political party agrees with her.

And now her political party is coming hard after you and me.

Looks like a whole lot of people missed the lessons-learned part of 9/11. Probably because they don’t care about them. And that right there is the real lesson learned for the rest of us: 9/11 only means something to people who actually care about America staying America.

 

Trump and that French Fire Water

President Trump tweets his immediate concern for extinguishing the blazing Notre Dame cathedral in France yesterday, and the next thing ya know, half of France is supposedly upset with him. And just to prove that there really is a little Wizard of Oz man behind that fake news curtain directing fake anger at Trump, both official and semi-official French outlets vented their displeasure and mockery of his comment.

All these French critics proved is that President Trump cares more for the Notre Dame cathedral, and for France as a free Western nation, than do the French themselves.

France has actually been on fire for years, and instead of extinguishing their own self-arson, they have poured gasoline on the flames through deliberate official action and inaction. By importing millions of openly hostile, imperialistic, non-conforming, non-integrating foreigners, France has injected a death serum into its own veins. We know this injection feels like France’s veins are on fire because of all the street level battles that have followed.

Islamic terror is real, and Islamic culture war against France and Catholic churches is real, but it is the least of France’s problems. Rather, it is the culture war against traditional French identity and values facilitated by the watered-down French Vichy intelligentsia itself (Trump’s loudest critics yesterday) that is the greatest threat to France.

Think of the official response to the 2015 Bataclan massacre in Paris by Muslim terrorists, who after the initial gunfire then walked among and picked through the dead and dying to find survivors they could further maim and sadistically torture: “Any person who thinks this event (and all the others like it) is about Islam vs. France is a bad person. No, the actual terrorists are not to blame; we French are all to blame.” It is complete nonsense, and it allowed France’s famous openness and freedom to be further stifled by an official clamp-down on pro-Western, pro-France activists.

Here in America, yesterday I listened to fake news talking weasel head Shep Smith of Fox News also shamefully carry water for the terrorists and arsonists.

If President Trump could walk on the water he recommended for the Notre Dame fire, his critics would complain that he can’t swim, and if he called for help while drowning in it, they would arrest him for disturbing the peace. Trump and his fellow pro-West leaders can do nothing correct in the eyes of his opponents. While the Bataclan dead bodies served up a big warning sign, it is difficult to create a better image of France’s nose-dive toward self destruction than the burning Notre Dame cathedral, and the French anti-France response afterwards.

Dear France, do you want to survive? If yes, then take all your fancy vino and pour it into a giant moat around your southern borders to keep the invaders out, or save it up for putting out the inevitable fires that are coming to your cities and towns.

France, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the cross, all on fire

Bataclan massacre in Paris by religious Muslim terrorists. These bloody bodies were swept under the rug by French officials and their establishment media allies

About that New Zealand mosque massacre…

Once again, liberal ideas have resulted in terrible results, and yet, the people who promote those ideas blame everyone else for their failures. Now it is a mass shooting in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The massacre did not happen in a vacuum.

New Zealand has the same kind of stupid, ineffective “gun control” that anti-firearm activists have demanded for everyone everywhere: No handguns, mass registration with the goal of eventual mass confiscation for a gun-free society (except for the police and security services controlled by the liberals). Had the members of that mosque had access to handguns, like our concealed carry laws permit here in America, then they could have defended themselves against the lone attacker. But nope, anti-gun activists require these bodies and blood in the street in order to make the emotional case for yet more anti-freedom, anti-safety gun elimination.

Sorry, mosque members. I am sorry that you were martyred by the same leftists who have brought so much destruction to everyone else across the planet.

And then, so many questions come to mind, like:

Did that mosque serve as a launching point for public or private anti-Christian, anti-Jew hatred and bigotry, as so many other mosques do around the world?

Did that mosque have members who were actively engaged in denigrating and materially undermining Christianity and Western countries from within, as so many mosques do? Did they take advantage of New Zealand’s freedom and democracy to achieve non-democratic results?

Was that mosque a security risk for New Zealand? Does it harbor violent terrorists or proponents of Islamic terrorism?

Was the mosque officially silent about the non-stop bloodbath perpetrated by Islamic jihadists against innocent people around the world, notably Christians living peacefully in Paris and London and Antwerp?

Was the mosque officially silent about the obvious danger that Islamic jihad represents to the entire world?

Did that mosque serve as a center for spreading Islamic terrorism, as so many other mosques do around the world?

These questions and many similar ones must be asked, because if any of them are affirmative, then the massacre could be construed or even understood as an act of self-defense by the perpetrator, acting on behalf of his vulnerable countrymen who are paralyzed by leftist political correctness and an inactive government run by people willing to sacrifice the entire nation on the altar of “understanding” a fascist, totalitarian ideology that is mutually exclusive with the openness and tolerance New Zealand and every other Western nation stands for.

Here in America, Muslima Terrorista Suprema Linda Sarsour used the massacre to publicly explain exactly what is at the heart of this civilizational conflict. She explicitly blamed “white Christians” as the source of all evil on Earth and of being the biggest threat to all civilizations. In other words, when some mosque somewhere gets a taste of its own medicine, suddenly jihad against Christians and whites is openly justified. As if jihad against Christians and Christianity has not been ongoing for 1,300 years! No wonder Westerners are phobic of Islam; they are afraid for very good reasons.

Here in Harrisburg, the local JCC issued a Marxist screed about the shooting, decrying, among other ridiculous things, “Islamophobia” and “bigotry” (no, not the explicit anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Hindu bigotry of the Koran). One wonders if the regular, normal, hard working members of the many various JCCs and Jewish Federations around America will ever tire of underwriting the Marxist march of their institutional professionals, who seem to specialize in delivering sappy Yiddish entertainment to elderly  people and Marxist-everything-else for everyone else. In the past it was Margie Adelmann, now it is Jen Ross, the “professional Jews” who represent the very worst of secularism and controlling, destructive leftism. Neither of them was or is responsive to JCC members who want them to stop politicizing everything in the name of Marxism and political correctness.

They, too, are on a jihad, parallel with Linda Sarsour, the rest of us be damned.

Book Review: The Uneven Road, by Lord Belhaven

The Uneven Road (1955), by Lord Belhaven

I read this fascinating book twice, and I recommend you read it at least once. Heck, just the old black and white photos of mysterious holy cities, like al Q’ara, (taken with early hand-held cameras from a bi-plane in the 1920s and 1930s) and traditional Arab tribesmen, both even today far out of reach of Westerners, are worth the five or ten bucks it’ll cost you to buy it on eBay or Amazon. For just five bucks you can get one of these fascinating and educational books, and have a most enjoyable weekend reading, and learning. Find me another great, safe, healthy mind trip for five bucks, please.

Why review a book published in 1955, about the now dead Brutish Empire? What made the British Empire so grand, so great? Setting aside the natural feelings of those locals who were subject to British rule, for better and for worse, one cannot help but marvel at the remarkable discipline, planning, administrative organization the British brought to their empire. Any nation today would be well served to get one tenth that level of service from its own government.

And why would a book published in 1955 be interesting today? For one thing, history has a tendency to repeat itself, or to repeat versions of itself — things that happened in the past seem to happen all over again. If we who are living now can harness the lessons of the past, then we can avoid the mistakes of the past, too; or at least so goes the best thinking. Certainly one must know history in order to know what happened, and how to identify when the same forces are at work once again.

In order to understand where we are today, we must look at what decisions and resulting actions got us here, and why those choices were made (come to think of it, I recently read another similarly aged but highly useful book titled Why England Slept, written in the 1940s and 1950s, then authored and published in 1962 by some then-nobody named John F. Kennedy). The Uneven Road does an excellent job of explaining much of the Middle East and East Africa through one man’s colorful and risky exploits from a military and diplomatic hot seat along the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and then into the Italian Alps. Judging by current events, little has changed in the former.

As the title implies, the author took an uneven road in his long life, following completely neither his traditional Scottish upbringing nor his adopted British devotion to Empire. As he says in so many ways throughout the book, Lord Belhaven is a lot like his forebears, individualistic, strong, self-driven men who admired authority and convention as much as they bucked them and tried to fit into them on their own terms. Or one might say, Lord Belhaven and his ancestors tried to make convention in their own image. As an American, to me this independence streak is a highly laudable trait, even if it did damage to the already impressive careers of Belhaven and his father and grandfather.

The author is both very open-minded for his time, gleefully throwing off class and religious barriers that today seem so unbelievably feudal, especially to Americans (and familiar to those Americans who enjoyed the Downton Abbey series) with our hodge-podge zero-caste-system, but which were quite dominant in his early years. He is also representative of some persistent silly views that are also peculiar to certain groups of people where he is from, even today. To me, an American, whether I agree or not, this is all part of being a natural, well-rounded human being, and a sign of being interesting. Everyone has prejudices and sharp-edged opinions, and everyone is entitled to them. No one is perfect, our author does not claim to be perfect, nor does he engage in the vacuous virtue signaling which so sharply defines today’s Western civilization. More to the point, neither you nor I are anywhere near perfect or nearly as exciting as Lord Belhaven, and only very few people you or I have met or ever will meet are going to be nearly as interesting as Lord Belhaven.

Writing as a soldier, administrator, diplomat, lonely husband and then divorcee, and amateur historian/ethnologist/archaeologist, Belhaven is a gentleman, and also a manly man. He is the old archetypical British\Scottish aristocrat patriot, both swashbuckling and under steely self control, a thing of the past which, my gosh, we now could use much more of in our own time. He is clearly a warrior, and an effective one at that, and yet much of his book is stories about how he was not such a great warrior, or how he was charged with establishing peace in lawless places through diplomacy, and yet relied upon deadly warfare.

As he reminds us, especially with the burning of the village of Jol Madram, diplomacy without the real threat and the occasional implementation of brutal violence is simply indecisive inaction, a weakness that inevitably invites more lawlessness or aggression. For Belhaven, there is no foolish, circular “conflict resolution” without resolving the conflict to concrete terms he likes and which work for the most people. Instead of getting “triggered” and fainting into a safe space when confronted with adversity, Belhaven the man of action responds by putting his finger on the trigger of his revolver and explaining just how things are going to get back to full function, or else. In a Western world today of namby pamby political correctness and feminized men, reading this book I could not help but think How refreshing! And also, Where the hell did our masculinity go?

The author’s voice is forthright, unafraid, honest, and though a few times I may disagree with his views, I keep thinking as the pages are turned, “Now here is a man I could respect and like!” Would that Western Civilization today had many more men like Alex Hamilton, aka Lord Belhaven.

Spanning the 1920s through World War II, and published toward the end of the British Empire, The Uneven Road is one more fascinating on-the-ground report in a line of the “Hell, I was there” genre of personal adventure histories written by British military and political officers across the British Empire, upon which the sun did not truly set until the 1960s. The Uneven Road is one of the last from the frontier, and in my experience it is one of the better written and certainly the most personally reflective. In some ways it is a companion piece (maybe even a necessity) to books written by or about others who traveled, explored, dug archaeological treasures, politicked, and fought in and around the Arab Peninsula, such as Lawrence, Philby, Ingrams, Jacobs, and others.

There are many, many examples of these personal field reports and histories from the 1790s through the 1960s.  Some are famous, most are obscure, some are kind of boring, and many carry an overt agenda, and yet almost all are illuminating about life among the British Empire’s boots-on-the-ground administrators and soldiers, as well as the occasionally momentous political events of the day. The fact that these personal histories exist at all, and that they are often well written, says a lot about the high caliber of the British and Scots of that time, both the writers abroad and the readership waiting back home. The Uneven Road meets or exceeds all these standards.

While other major cultural “encounters” and confrontations have been largely or absolutely settled in the same time period, in key ways that are of great interest to the modern reader, this book is about East-meets-West, a contest that has only grown sharper and more defined a full hundred-plus years after it fully got under way, as described in these pages. 

Britain: A Culture of Selfless Patriotic Duty

One need not read a book to hear or know about England’s long established culture of patriotic duty and self sacrifice for king and country, but reading this book will help the interested reader gain real appreciation for both the depth of feeling most Britons had then, and for the real personal cost it then meant later on in their lives. The unbelievable battlefield losses in World War One and WW II greatly changed England’s culture, resulting in a legacy of pacifism, fear of inevitable conflict, and self-defeat we see officially operating today.

Throughout the first half of his fine book, Belhaven off and on artfully weaves an analysis full of personal anecdotes of British military culture, including how wealthy aristocracy would often take a vow of poverty (as opposed to running a family business or a valuable property) to serve in the military, for the simple satisfaction of providing patriotic service to the nation. The following quote only touches on this, but it covers enough other turf to qualify for mention here:

“One Saturday, towards the end of our last term at Sandhurst, Tony Keogh and I were both excused [from] work because of minor injuries. Tony Keogh was a dour Wellingtonian, whose ambition was to give a lifetime’s service to Waziristan on the northwest frontier of India, a country which his father had been the first to survey.” (page 40)

Waziristan of the 1920s is today several different ‘stans, including parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It included then as it does now all of the intolerant, violent religious fanatics who still make it such a special place. From the 1880s through the 1940s, British troop losses there were big. Can you imagine being the first person to scientifically survey a significant portion of the planet, this very rugged, remote place specifically, surrounded by such danger? And then bear a son who simply wants to pick right up where you left off? Such was the tough, brave stuff the British were made of, once.

<sigh>

And it was that same patriotic fervor and absolute selfless commitment that made such brave soldiers for World War I and then World War II, and then resulted in the pacifism of modern Britain, when few men returned home:

“Toll for the brave!” that most perfect of slow marches – how often had we marched to its slow, sharp rhythm. When I hear the tune now I can see, as I saw then, the high, shining fence of bayonets, the straight, erect lines moving forward with irresistible menace and force, the very symbol and image of war. And all with its glint of youth unafraid, unconquerable. Toll for the brave indeed; few who marched that day have pottered on as I have done for fifty years.” (Page 40)

<sigh>

His description of his surprise at winning the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst is both funny, and then sad, as his stiff-upper-lip military father refuses to acknowledge it until two years afterward, and only then sarcastically. That sword becomes a snapshot of his challenged relationship with his father and also a symbol of British culture.

Report from the Frontier: “It was impossible to be bored in Aden”

If India and Africa provided the greatest quantity of opportunity and adventure (the British defeat of France’s fleet at the Nile, the ‘Mountains of the Moon’ search by naturalist-explorers Burton and Speke for the source of the Nile, the Mahdi, the Zulu Wars, Islandlwana, Rorke’s Drift, the Boer Wars, and so on) for these far-flung representatives of Her Majesty’s Service, it was the Near East and Middle East that created the most vivid and gripping images consumed widely by the public, even today.

Think of “Lawrence of Arabia” and all the thrilling weight that phrase still carries a hundred years later. And so just a decade-plus after a charismatic young Brit, T.E. Lawrence, led the Arab revolt against Ottoman Turk rule throughout the Near and Middle East, it is primarily on and around the Arabian Peninsula that Lord Belhaven’s book takes us. It is an often militarized and occasionally one-man-army journey by foot, camel, horse, donkey, bi-plane, and boats of various type and size, including some pleasure craft of his own construction.

Based in Aden and sallying forth through abandoned ruins from hidden, unknown, lost civilizations to high mountain forts inhabited by fierce tribes, Belhaven fearlessly and luckily does his best to bring order to the fractured tribal chaos of the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, what today is known as Yemen and known then as the British Protectorate of Aden. Like most Brits of his time, Belhaven was an Arabist, an Arabophile who simply looked past the stark differences of Mohammedanism compared to his own culture of gentle mercy and forgiveness, stricken as he so clearly was by exotic Arab ways. His gunfights, in which he was sometimes greatly outnumbered, the aerial bombings, and his knife-edge nose-to-nose confrontations with cutthroat highway gangs and treacherous tribes are the stuff of legend; his fishing and hunting trips during working hours are not, though he does describe them in obvious joy and often at his own expense.

Though in a serious tone Belhaven opens up about his family life in the first third of the book, in the rest he makes it clear that he knew how to have fun and push British foreign office sensibilities beyond their traditional staid demeanor.

Belhaven gets extra credit for a dry wit and self-deprecating humor applied from several miles up. He does not take himself too seriously, or even seriously at all, at times, even as the bullets are flying and his life hangs by a thread. This bon vivant tone heartily leavens the serious life-and-death situations he describes, including shooting himself in the foot in the heat of battle, and nearly shooting his Somali hunting guide who chases a large leopard out of a cave and into Belhaven’s face, not to mention his rear line and front line experiences in World War Two.

One of the artifacts of time and place is the author’s fascination with genetics, a hot (and also destructive) topic of that era. Repeatedly marveling at the “pure” inbreeding of certain tribes along the southern Arabian Peninsula, the author relied upon simplistic, romantic, and plainly incorrect notions of genetics. But this is to be chalked up to the general and long lasting British awe and love for the colorfully fierce Arab nomads of that region. Whatever they did, no matter how backwards or weird, was very cool. Who can blame him for thinking thus? Were you or I to live out there today, we would find it just as alien and compelling as he did, and it would all be just as cool now as then.

Insights into his own family struggles with intimacy and finances, and the perhaps unrealistic lifestyle expectations accompanying title, are illuminating for those wondering how the famous British aristocracy slowly crumbled from the inside and out.

When it comes to archaeology, what is not mentioned is louder than what he might have written. Lord Belhaven apparently had an eye for long lost antiquities easily unearthed with the toe of a boot in the loose sand of some long lost civilization in the middle of the blistering desert. In a tempestuous sea of worldwide archaeological looting by British nobles, scientists and adventurers, Belhaven’s personal interest in a few old broken, abandoned things lying in the dirt was strangely singled out for criticism by a couple of bespectacled Peabody types in imperial administration back home. Belhaven makes no mention of any of this in his book, and maintains his focus on big picture civilizational development. As he should, in the tradition of the fighting naturalist-archaeologist hero; a kind of Indiana Jones.

Detailed references to carved alabaster amid the sands, and marble ruins, lost cities, dams, water works also occasionally appearing and then disappearing amidst the shifting sand dunes add an element of authentic mystery that is harnessed in the Indiana Jones and The Mummy movies. Except that Belhaven was actually there, and saw and explored those ancient mysteries with his own eyes.

Will a couple of “Aw, shucks” ruin all the “Atta Boys” in this book?

Though he does not explicitly set out to do so, the author’s plainly spoken recollections invite the reader to share the author’s unspoken pangs of loss over decreasing British influence and culture.

In 1955 the author was in good company, with his views on race (a word he uses many times with several different meanings), skin color, religion, and social class, even as he was clearly departing from those long-held views. Bigotry and class snobbery were then becoming a thing of the distant past, a change which Belhaven mostly embraces and in many ways led in his own “black sheep” personal way. Those anachronisms particular to that time period he retains were either common figures of speech, cultural crutches, or concrete functions of Caucasian minority survival in otherwise hostile foreign places.

We today may not agree with him or his use of some words, but he usually explains himself well, and so we can often understand his thinking. Understand is the key word here, and it does not mean or infer acceptance or approval. And if the reader wonders why I, myself, am insufficient in my condemnations of the author’s few lapses, may I suggest one consider the word “tolerance,” or the phrase “open minded,” or that almost extinct word “understand.” In other words, that was then, this is now, these are different times than then, and once again, everyone has opinions and views that others find “offensive” or uncomfortable. Get over it, get over yourself, learn to tolerate differences in opinion, and move on. I did, and you can, too.

In an educated and open society such as ours, everyone is entitled to an opinion, even a wrong opinion, and even a bad one. God knows, today’s self-righteous book-burning censors falsely accusing everyone else of political heresy and racism have plenty of bad and wrong opinions themselves. In the past, people have been and should continue to be able to disagree with one another without taking silly offense at the simplest of differences, and then retreating to corners and brandishing the war colors. Goodness gracious, people, put away the guillotines! Give people some space to be wrong, or to explain why they thought they were right. And that maturity is what a reader must bring with them to get the most on this trip through time.

For example, in a book full of many humorous and comical stories, anecdotes and quick turns of phrases, there are a couple references to race and genetics, captured so perfectly in The Uneven Road, that really shine a light onto the important evolutionary changes of thinking and attitude about race and skin color happening in the pivotal 1950s. Recall that Belhaven is a born aristocrat:

“I found the whole subject of breeding, as it was accounted in our curious society, absurd; if a man married the crossing-sweeper’s daughter, no one bothered to find out about her breeding; her father’s trade was enough to condemn the match. When it was discovered that he was a rich Jew, who swept crossings through eccentricity, opposition could be relaxed, particularly if he kept race-horses and was a member of the Carlton.” (P. 29)

One page later Belhaven hilariously describes how his Eton school class failed a basic introductory genetics course on mice, with the best and wildly cheered answer to the teacher’s question being a boy’s half-assertion-half-question that inbreeding causes parents to eat their young.

Fast forward sixteen years and Belhaven, now working as a British Political Agent in the Arabian Peninsula, writes: “I have sat in their gathering of Princes, in their Chief’s lamp-lit reception-room and watched them, their skins shining like polished gun metal in war-paint of oil and indigo, a dull sheen of gold and silver in their great daggers, curved with the curve of the moon; the remnant of a great nation indeed, virile, unconquered by arms or by time, handsome and courageous. And marvelling, I have remembered that these men among whom I sat married always, by long custom amounting almost to law, among their own family; so through the millennia they have achieved an extraordinary purity of breeding…for a period of five thousand years…”  (P. 86, emphasis added)

And so, as much as Belhaven mocked his fellow students on their failure to grasp the essentials of healthy, necessary genetic diversity among mice and humans, he then later includes himself in their unfortunate company by endorsing the worst sort of human inbreeding, still going on even today in the Arabian Peninsula. This is the intellectual price one might pay for getting emotionally involved with something, as did Belhaven and all of his fellow Arabists. However, it remains fact that none in that time could have remotely foreseen that a surprisingly large number of parents across the Middle East would today encourage their own children to engage in suicide bombings and attacks. Talk about parents eating their young…

Just coming out of the real, actual Lawrence of Arabia time, an amazing time of high military and political adventure, and his living and working in that exact location with many of the same people, Belhaven’s near infatuation with all things Arab and Islam were then and are now understandable. His views on the Middle East were widely shared among his fellow Brits and Scots at that time. Even today many British still cling to detached, romantic notions of Arabia and Sharia-compliant beheadings and stonings, though having now painfully absorbed nearly half of the Arab world into London and having watched the other half wage sadistic war amongst themselves at home, and against Western Civilization abroad, has been shifting those old romantic notions into some other cold, hard, realizations.

Similarly, his views on Jews and Judaism range from the ground-breaking class acceptance (done with excellent humor at the expense of his fellow Brits; see above) to the old traditional British snobby disdain. He was only a little less tough on the Church of England. One must wonder what Belhaven would have written had he lived to see most American Jews and the Church of England and the current Pope all almost wholeheartedly embrace Marxism and anti-Western anarchy. If there is a resurrection of the dead, I want to be right beside Belhaven, so I can be the first to hear his colorful, insightful reaction to these unfortunate, really unbelievable facts.

One thing Belhaven did not live to see was the now-modern state of Israel, the then-nascent version of which he refuses to name in his book, but which he negatively alludes to several times. This is the old fashioned British Arabist coming through. Of the Jews of Yemen he has a brief but historically important and also humorous first hand encounter and report; but he then fails to mention their subsequent unjust inclusion among the nearly one million innocent Jewish refugees ethnically cleansed by his cool Arab friends from their ancient, very pre-Islamic communities across North Africa, the Near East, and the Middle East.

“So we came near to the end of our stay in Sa’na. Champion [Sir Reginald Champion, then Civil Secretary to Aden and later its Governor] and I called on the head of the large Jewish community in the city. Although considered by the Arabs to be an inferior race, the Jews of the Yemen were well treated by the Imam [Imam Yehia, a Shia leader who later lost the Arabian Peninsula to the Wahhabi al-Saud family, and whose spiritual descendants today are the once-again rebellious Hauthis]…Now there are no Jews left, they have all gone to Palestine, a Promised Land without either the milk of human kindness or the honey of their expectations…” (P. 104)

Hello, Lord Belhaven, reality is calling now, just as it did in 1955. The Yemenite Jews did not just casually get up and leave their homes in Yemen of 2,000 years for Israel out of a desire for better falafel or flush toilets; they were universally axe murdered and driven out of their homes by the same Muslims you so admire, the lucky survivors arriving in Israel with the shirts on their backs, their family homes and businesses stolen and occupied, their bank accounts looted, their personal property removed by force, like all the other Jews from every other Arab country at the same time. So why Belhaven ignores these facts to get in some shots on Israel is, again, likely a question of the impact of that romantic infatuation with remote alien cultures. Were he alive today, he would probably be a Christian Zionist like another famous and contemporaneous British Arabist, Col. Meinertzhagen (who when introduced in private to Adolf Hitler responded to the perfunctory ‘Heil Hitler‘ with his own ‘Heil Meinertzhagen‘).

Did Belhaven write some occasionally harsh stuff? Maybe so, certainly by today’s standards. But so what. Get over it. On balance, this book is 99.999% fascinating, illuminating, educational, and important history. Why judge and then dismiss the entire work based on a couple anachronisms from his own day?

As briefly mentioned above, one of the big challenges our younger generations are failing at is their tendency to immediately be offended by, and then harshly judge and dismiss, older generations by applying current standards. Instead of trying to understand how the previous generations thought, and why they fought way back when. Surely there must have been compelling reasons for the many momentous decisions that were made and then chiseled into stone or cast in bronze. Not everything back then is “racist,” which has become as hollow a crutch word as can be found. As old statues, symbols from important self-inflicted internal wars across America, are pulled down by screaming, infantile, anti-history mobs, one cannot help but wonder if the screamers will ever be interested in why the statue was erected in the first place. Or do they aim to simply re-write history (irrespective of the actual facts, causes and effects) to suit whatever political purpose suits them at some future time? I would rather have Belhaven’s honest accounting than a dishonest re-writing of who we are and how we got here.

In sum, whatever “Aw, shucks” Belhaven may have earned in a few spots here or there, they are far outweighed by the many “Atta Boys” he racks up over and over throughout this excellent book. For those younger folks who are actually and truly interested in understanding history, and how people’s views on race, religion, and income\ social standing changed over time in Britain and America, and how the Arabian Peninsula yet remains completely unchanged, The Uneven Road is a refreshingly honest and educational Exhibit A at the crucial time of the post-war 1950s.

Obscurity often means fascinating

Many years ago, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was an actual newspaper that reported much actual news, instead of having the entire paper be one editorial after another masquerading as news, which it does today, the New York Times published a series of articles based on the simple methodology of having a news reporter (another extinct species the younger generations have never seen) open the New York City phone book (‘And what, too, is that?’ the younger generations ask) and randomly place his or her finger on the page. This was done ten times over the course of a bit over a year, as I recall. Whoever’s name was there over the finger nail got a call from the finger’s news reporter, who then did a detailed report on that person’s life. As the subsequent reports showed, despite living almost entirely quietly and privately in the big anonymous city, each and every one of those randomly selected people had nonetheless led a fascinating and often deeply compelling life.

And so, here now we have similarly plucked out of historical obscurity a book long out of print and probably originally of interest to few beyond aging British soldiers and Foreign Service dignitaries. Yes, here in Lord Belhaven we have a man whom very few have heard of, and as he is an aristocrat he is presently out of favor for having violated some social construct or…thing, even though he was a reflective, self-deprecating, risk taking and self-sacrificing humble public servant who enjoyed breaking with his own social norms and elevating many downtrodden. His life was more than fascinating, it was bigger than life, as we say. It was certainly bigger than my life or anyone else’s life I know of, and I know some pretty adventurous people in military and law enforcement, as well as international hunters. And today outside of Britain and America’s special forces operating abroad, very few public officials do anything close to what Belhaven did. And given the opportunity, few today would take it. Pity.

It was people like Lord Belhaven who put the “great” in Great Britain. Given how far and wide Hollywood looks for true-to-life stories, why no one has done a movie based on this book or on Belhaven’s life is one of those mysteries that highlights how shallow Hollywood is. Because it is true that Indiana Jones was mere Hollywood fiction, whereas Lord Belhaven was for real.

Vegas

Los Vegas mass murderer Stephen Paddock may have converted to islam, and then conducted his mass murder as a political statement.

He may have already been a kook, without having converted to islam, and been just as determined to make some sort of bizarre crazy man statement.

Either way, one thing is certain, he is (was) one of an increasing number of angry Americans ready to step over societal boundaries to make a point.

We have seen increased violence from liberals, posing as “anti hate” street police who beat the hell out of anyone they disagree with. Kind of like the Sharia morality police across the Muslim world. These street thugs (“activists” to CNN and NPR) have the media and academia on their side, mainstreaming them, making them look more respectable, more justified.

Liberals have even gone so far to say that knowingly importing violent jihadist “refugees” brings a certain amount of expected violence, that is somehow statistically acceptable.

While the racist right may not be anywhere near the kind of bogey man the establishment media makes them to be, there is no question that they, too, are now increasing in number and in intensity.

After eight years of Obama’s divisive identity politics, America is polarized, and people with personalities already prone to extremes are picking their side and lining up.

Hate to say it, but after 18 months of liberal street violence, a murderous attack on Republican lawmakers, several Muslim attacks (night club, campus, community center, etc.), and now this guy, it appears that America is heading into uncharted territory.

Yes, the control freaks will use this as an excuse for gun control demands. Forget it. No gun control can or ever will prevent criminals from committing violence, just as some hypothetical limit on liberalism would not induce liberals to be less maniacal and violent. No, 350,000,000 people will not give up their gun rights, or their free speech rights, so some control freak politicians can feel good about themselves.

Fact is, crazy and angry people are going to act on their craziness and their anger, and in a free society like America, this is a sad fact. In this heated climate, where we are treated to daily demands that president Trump be murdered by Obama loyalists, this stuff is going to happen more.

My heart breaks for the innocent people gunned down and injured by this madman.

My heart breaks for America, an oasis of peace and prosperity increasingly challenged by a group of power-hungry politicians and their violent street thugs. With the help of the mainstream media, they have normalized violence here.

9-11, still happening in slow motion

“Nine Eleven” evokes images of smoky towers in lower Manhattan, and still photos of planes rocketing toward the towers, and people throwing themselves from the windows to escape the flames, heat, and toxic black smoke.

Finally, the twin towers fell, or rather collapsed, not long after the Muslim hijackers from Saudi Arabia had sacrificed themselves and the passengers on the planes.

Their goal was to attack America, as did their fellow hijackers on other planes that day. Flight 93 went down here in Pennsylvania, and it was my role to try to purchase or protect with conservation easements that landscape around the crash site. Working with staff from the National Park Service was mostly fun, sometimes frustrating, but in the end, the site was secured and the area set aside as a memorial.

Other memorials have been established at the Pentagon and in Manhattan.

But what is a memorial worth if the lesson it memorializes is lost?

After 9-11, our mainstream media did everything it could to cast Muslims as the actual victims of 9-11, not the perpetrators. Certainly not all Muslims can be painted with that hijacker’s brush that day, but it is a fact that throughout the Muslim world the day’s fiery images were greeted with shouts of joy and celebration. Including here in America.

Jihad groups like CAIR quickly went on offense, playing to defensive notions. CAIR and other groups played upon big-hearted Americans’ sense of fairness and justice. And so they demanded that we not only forget that 9-11 was by and for Muslims, but that we actually embrace Islam so that we could come to understand that it is actually a great belief system. Anti-Christian groups like CAIR actually used 9-11 to achieve greater inroads against Christians in America and against Christianity globally.

So far their approach has kind of worked. For example, the mainstream media refuses to report how the Muslim Students Association at a major university is actually holding a big celebratory bake sale today. You have to go one or two layers down into media sources to find this infuriating fact. Another example is that key Trump administration appointees are still cozying up with CAIR and other jihadist groups, in the hopes of makey-nicey public appearances translating into a protection scam on the ground, like the mafia used to do.

“Nice country you got here. Shame it’s so…Islamophobic. We’d hate for some Muslims to take all this Islamophobia stuff the wrong way and start cutting off American heads here…” goes the CAIR sales pitch. And so the State Department and Homeland Security Department are continuing the failed Obama policies, which allowed civilizational jihad to continue.

A new report shows that the government of Saudi Arabia funded a dry-run of the 9-11 events, helping its jihadists perfect their hijacking methods. Why we have not occupied Saudi Arabia and confiscated their oil reserves as punishment and reparations for the damage they caused America is a mystery. Any other self-respecting nation would do that. Like it or not, Russia does that kind of response. And it works.

So here we are, 16 years after 9-11, and the net result is that we are still under attack, just as we were that day. Except this attack is slower, quieter, and playing on our silly notions of fairness and justice, which are being bent and used back against us.

To millions of Americans, the 9-11 memorials are a huge red flag. They are a “WAKE THE HELL UP, AMERICA, YOU ARE UNDER ATTACK” sign, neon on a dark night. As any national memorial should be.

But do Americans have elected leaders who understand what it takes to remember 9-11 in a meaningful way, learn the lesson from that day, and apply that lesson to our laws and policies; that is the question.

Until that question is affirmatively answered in a way that protects and supports America, the answer is that 9-11 continues in slow motion.