It’s not terrorism, crime, or wage depression. We don’t have nearly enough of them for those to be major issues (yet). The real reason many don’t like Muslim immigration is this:
This is an excellent propaganda piece for our side. It’s easy for people to say that our country isn’t defined by religion, race, or culture, but to see that picture is to behold the abyss behind those thoughts. “We the people”, it says, meaning this is a picture of us, a picture of Americans. And yet, the first thing you think when seeing that woman is that she is foreign. Not only does she belong to a religion alien to our civilization, she maintains the style of dress and standard of modesty of an alien culture. To notice this is not to criticize. There is nothing wrong with the hijab, but it is not how we traditionally cover our women. Islam is a false religion, but so is Unitarianism, and we easily recognize the former but not the latter as foreign. This woman is probably not a terrorist. She might be able to recite the Constitution from memory, and her political philosophy might be identical to that of James Madison. According to liberalism, according to the First Amendment, she is as American as any one of us, because to be American means nothing more than to be committed to a certain set of procedures of government. If in a hundred years, all Americans were to look like this, liberalism demands you accept that nothing fundamental would have changed.
And yet we immediately sense that the woman in the picture is foreign–her image was chosen precisely for this reason, to show us the implications of our tolerance. If she is “we the people”, than what are we, the people belonging to America’s traditional culture? We are nothing; no such “we” is allowed to exist. No region of the country, no profession, and no association can admit that this woman is foreign to it. People say that Islam is the dog that pisses on every tree; where it comes, it owns. But even if our Muslim American harbors no such designs for supremacy, she delegitimizes our culture just by the fact that we cannot admit her foreignness. A Muslim America wouldn’t necessarily be a bad place. It might have any number of virtues. But would it really still be our country, the same country that exists right now?
Once, it was taken for granted that the United States of America is a Christian country. Then the Jews and atheists rose to prominence and banned Christmas; now we’re not allowed to think that anymore. Yet, we continued to assume that the United States is a Western country, that we are, culturally speaking, a part of Europe. This is nowhere formalized, but we had hoped that this cultural memory could survive as a ghost of our Christian-European past persisting among us even with no establishment to stand upon. Our English language might still tie us to the home country. Churches and cemeteries might remind us of the faith we once had. Shakespeare in public schools–or, failing that, at least Disney princess movies in the theaters–might keep our literature connected to its European sources. But this is just cultural inertia, and it cannot long withstand a determined campaign to strip the country of any cultural particularity.
Immigration should be controlled, but travel bans fail to address the real problem, which is not their hostility, but our emptiness. We cannot remain Western by mere inertia; we must do so by explicit political will. The ephemera of European civilization–the Trojan War, Robin Hood, Cinderella, church bells, classical music–won’t stand on their own. We must affirm the bases on which our particular culture stood, the bases of throne and altar. What bothers people about Muslim immigration won’t be fixed until Christianity is publicly recognized as the state religion. (Most likely, this would be a generic Protestant establishment of the sort that informally existed in the early republic. Even people like me would be recognized as somewhat foreign to the majority culture, although not nearly so foreign as I am often made to feel now in an America based on propositions I don’t believe.) Only that will keep us part of the West. To secure our own particular Anglo-Saxon culture, we must attach ourselves to its root. We must join the British Commonwealth and pledge our allegiance to its Crown.
Having thus asserted our essence, we can look more generously and honestly on others. If we can admit this woman is foreign, we needn’t pretend that there is something wrong with her. Of course we don’t think she’s a terrorist. Of course we don’t think she’s a threat to democracy. We would be happy to have her as a friend, but so long as she maintains her foreign ways she is not one of us. Admitting this would make it easier to accommodate the Muslims we’ve let in. Many of us would be less bothered by their increasing presence and visibility.
The Orthosphere 
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You had me up until your suggestion of allegiance to the British crown. As a Canadian, I assure you that constitutional monarchy affords no protection from secularization, cultural emptiness, and even the notion of being post-national.
It’s sad, and not what my grandfather fought for.
That on its own isn’t the solution, I think; merely that no solution is possible without that as a part of it.
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You’re aware, I suppose, that almost this exact language was used to argue against Catholic immigration to the US in an earlier period. Yet somehow the Republic survived.
You seem to be unable to process the fact that America does not now look like any one type of person. And will probably not in 100 years. It never has been an ethnically pure state and there’s no reason to expect it will become one.
I hope you are aware that talking like that makes you sound like a lunatic.
So in order to save the US you propose to eliminate one of its founding principles.
The US is not an ethnostate and cannot become one.
Link needed.
Soviet psychiatry: threat or boon?
Psssst. Christianity was publicly recognized as the state religion at the time of the founding.
Psssst. Christianity was publicly recognized as the state religion at the time of the founding.
Hmmmmm, where did you read that? From what I’ve looked up it’s actually precisely the opposite.
Outside of the first amendment I can’t recall anything in the founding documents addressing religion in any substantive way. When I tried to look it up, the earliest document I found addressing the issue of Christianity and its relation to the American government was the Treaty of Tripoli founded in 1797, when John Adams was President (so we’re talking as early as President number two). It was very clear in what it had to say about Christianity as a state religion:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
When was Christianity ever recognized as the state religion?
The Federal Government was barred from establishing a religion, but this was because several states had established religions (i.e. Protestant denominations)–some continuing to the 1830s. A state could bar itself from establishing a religion–and some did–but they were not forbidden to do so by the Federal Constitution (see Article 1, section 10). Any state could have established a religion up to the mid twentieth century, when the incorporation doctrine bound states to the Bill of Rights. Of course there was almost no chance any state would do this because no Protestant sect was sufficiently dominant, Americans were not a “deeply religious people,” and there was a widespread anabaptist suspicion of established churches. Prior to 1925, there was no legal objection to established religion (at the state level), only a strong cultural objection.
The most common argument against Catholic immigration was that Catholics would have divided loyalty, and would follow the Pope if push came to shove. As you know, the divided loyalty argument was first used by men who opposed Jewish emancipation in Europe. Discomfort with a “nation within the nation” has always been mixed up with anxiety over religious and ethnic nepotism and, under a democratic constitution, bloc voting. This comes out very clearly in opposition to Mormonism and the anti-masonic movement.
Behind all of these objections to diversity, one sees an intuition that republican government requires a relatively homogenous public. Absent this, it devolves into factional struggles to capture the central government and operate the state in the interest of the winning faction. Obviously no public will be perfectly homogenous, but the founders believed factions of section and class were all the system could handle. The system could accommodate small religious and ethnic minorities, but republican government required a British (later European) and Protestant (later Christian) supermajority.
You are correct that the U.S. is no longer an ethnostate, but I think you are mistaken to believe that this is somehow good for republican institutions, or “democracy,” or the class-based politics that you normally advocate. When a supermajority looses its grip, it becomes more selfish, not less; and every multiethnic state is either an empire or a racket.
Weren’t they right to oppose Catholic immigration? Yes, “the Republic” survived, but that doesn’t mean the people weren’t changed beyond recognition. I’ve already said that a Muslim America might continue the same form of government, but most people want more of what makes our people distinctive to survive than that. To figure out whether the Nativists were right, it won’t do to ask the replacement people if they think the country is okay. Of course they think they’re okay, just as 22nd century Muslim America will think it obvious that Muslim immigration was a good thing because it “helped shape this country” / “made this country what it is”. One must ask whether, if the original inhabitants could have seen what the Catholic hordes would do to the national culture, they would agree.
“America does not look like any one type of person.” Like I pointed out, the liberal always insists that we are nothing, nothing! No distinctive features. No identifiable qualities.
“In order to save the US, you propose to eliminate one of its founding principles.” Yes, you are right to highlight the paradox here, because this principle ultimately means the death of the people who adopt it.
Catholic immigration led to a covert psychological warfare state.
Bonald,
It’s nice of you not to kick the nativists’ reputation while it’s down, but do you really think the nativists were right about ethnic Catholics screwing up America?
As a Catholic reactionary, I would have expected you to think that America corrupted Catholics, not the other way around.
Though you could posit that the position just stated and the nativists were both correct—nativists knew that Catholics would change America for the better but did not want that to happen—but I don’t think you would defend nativists for not wanting a purifying force in their country. After all, error and sin have no rights, and a movement is hardly to be commended for wanting to keep out a people that would oppose those errors and sins.
As a Catholic and grandson of a Polish immigrant, I am of course grateful to the United States for admitting him so that I could raise a family in relative prosperity. But I’m not so deluded as to imagine that he had an unalloyed right to come here, or that this country would’ve been substantially worse off if he hadn’t.
Well said. I’m the great-great-great grandson of a German-Catholic immigrant. Who knows? The country might have been better off without us. It would have a more coherent idenity without us.
Catholic immigration is not analogous to Muslim immigration, since every Christian properly prays that all Christians will one day be reunited, but no Christian prays that Christianity will one day be united with Islam. Although post-Reformation hostility was still pretty lively in the 19th century, orthodox Catholics and Protestants have generally converged in the 20th, and it is not nonsense to speak of a general “mere” Christianity.
With Islam one might, I suppose, foresee a “mere monotheism,” but the example of deism and Judeo-Christianity are not at all encouraging. Protestants and Catholics might be likened to speakers of different dialects of the same language. Christians and Muslims speak different languages (albeit of the same language family).
I think it’s clear that Catholic immigration has brought with it a concept of “universalism” that is practically tantamount to an ideology of “equality” necessarily resulting in the death through diversification of a nation. It seems that traditional America was a place where schismatically-inclined Protestant white Christians could live without a crushing civil unrest due particular intrareligous schism. Catholic immigration could not have possiblly maintained this ideal ever and certainly does not do so now as we write.
Instead of “Who best to invest our spiritual resource towards in order to ensure their salvation?” It is simply, “All can be saved.” The former is an absolute concept of “universal” recognizing one man’s potential to help save another man’s soul. The latter is a concept of “universal” putting the matter of “saving” in one’s own hand. The inverted reality is a mad mass pretending to possess the desire to save all when said mad mass actually desires its own annihilation.
JM Smith:
Nope, and nope. In the first place, the country has internalized a Jeffersonian vision of what “freedom of religion” means; in the second, I share your lack of enthusiasm for so called Judeo-Christianity, which is largely responsible for the first point.
The woman can never be an American. Her hijab is a symbol that one half of the US citizenry are only half the value of the other. She does not wear it because she chooses but because she must.
a.morphous displays the typical naivity and gullibilityof the liberal. There is no reason that the US state, no more than any other, cannot become an ethnostate and this only requires this particular ethnicity to gain sufficient power and numbers to impose itself as has frequently happened before. We will have the opportunity to see this phenomenon in Europe soon, starting with Sweden.
It’s hard to imagine a more liberal paragraph than your first.
I don’t follow your reasoning. The point I was trying to make is that the hijab symbolises the Islamic view that any woman is legally half the value of a male. No Christian society has ever accepted this view of women. Why is it liberal to refuse to accept it?
Your paragraph critiques Islam because it violates 1) equality and 2) freedom. It is impossible to imagine a more liberal critique of Islam because the two central ideas of liberalism are 1) equality and 2) freedom.
” It is impossible to imagine a more liberal critique of Islam because the two central ideas of liberalism are 1) equality and 2) freedom.”
liberalism = freedom, equality and fraternity (fraternity for those who believe in the first two ideas).
The US cannot become an ethnostate because that sort of thing is expressly prohibited in its founding document. In theory, there might be an ethnostate on the territory that the US currently occupies, it might even call itself the United States, but it would be a different country (a much worse one).
In practice, I don’t see how that could work. The US consists of coastal areas that are generally liberal, cosmopolitan, and multicultural, and where all the actual innovation and technical productivity happens, plus rural inland areas that specialize in agriculture, resource extraction, resentment, and meth addiction. The former can’t be ethnically cleansed while retaining their economic value, and the latter areas would be nothing but a shithole without them.
Which founding document do you have in mind? The New Colossus? The Melting Pot? Fiddler on the Roof? I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that the U.S. is essentially cosmopolitan and essentially racist, but maybe that’s due to the ambient meth vapors out here in shitholesville.
“agriculture, resource extraction, resentment, and meth addiction”
Yeah, except for keeping us from starving, what do those flyover states ever do for us?
I’ve been to San Francisco. My flyover shithole doesn’t hold a candle to it.
The contempt for the people who perform difficult and dangerous jobs to keep food on your table, keep your car running, and keep your lights on when you flip a switch is simply breath taking. The country could live without Facebook, the latest app, or the latest creative debt accounting from Wall Street, but it could not survive long without food, energy, and raw materials.
You cannot argue for diversity and inclusiveness while simultaneously heaping scorn on all of non-coastal America, which has its own rich diversity, both cultural and economic.
I don’t have contempt for the people, just the places they live. The best of them feel the same way, and leave for the coasts and urban centers as soon as possible, leading to a further decline.
I thought you people were monarchists — you can’t have a monarch without a peasantry. But the country isn’t ruled or guided by the peasantry. The peasantry can’t exist on its own.
True enough, and if the business of the country was mere survival then all we would need are the basics of life.
I think I’m beginning to understand how you people think. You want well-defined and static countries where everyone is the same ethnicity and whose nature is, and an economy that is equally static, dedicated to survival rather than improvement. A medieval sort of world (in conception — the actual medieval world was not so simplistic).
The actual world, especially in its modern form, is anything but that. Peoples move halfway around the world and blend with others. Capitalism constantly undermines one way of economic life and replaces it with something else. Nothing is fixed, “all that is solid melts into air”.
There’s nothing very strange about nostalgia as a reaction to modernism. Or even objectionable, until it interferes with the actual management of the world.
There’s nothing like a line from the Good Book. The Communist Manifesto, I mean. But if we turn to reality, we find that “all that is solid” does not “melt into air,” only some of it. The longer passage from which this famous phrase is drawn is not historical writing; it is an apocalyptic vision in the tradition of Jeremiah and Zephaniah. It is Marx’s early conception of the nature of social revolution as comprehensive transformation. Back in reality-land, people see that modernism changes some things and not others, and that we would do well to resist some of the changes that modernism would bring about, were it not opposed.
I don’t believe anyone here has called for absolute stasis or perfect homogeneity, only for more stability and homogeneity than you might like, and that you say the great Gitche Manitou of Modernism demands.
If we were leftists, what we advocate would be called “resistance,” but since we are not, it is written off as psychopathy. I personally dislike speculation as to the psychological peculiarities of interlocutors, but since you’ve opened that door, why do you have this desire to be absorbed into the All?
On a per-county basis, counties that went for Clinton in the last election contribute about 64% of GDP to 36% from Trump counties. And yes, GDP is not the whole story of an economy, but it’s something to think about if you think about what rural america would be if detached from the metropolitan centers.
To have contempt for Iowa and Ohio while claiming not to be contemptuous of Iowans and Ohioans is really strange. Is there something in the rich soil of the Midwest that offends you? Is there something that makes the state of Oklahoma not OK? And it may come as a surprise to you, but they are still making things in the Midwest. Indiana in particular has emerged as the best state in the U.S. for manufacturing. At the end of 2014, Indiana was home to 8,485 manufacturers employing 515,526 workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (See http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/06/26/Manufacturing-Gathers-Steam-Midwest) The red states are some of the fastest growing. Texas and Florida are the fastest growing states numerically. Utah is the fastest growing by percentage. United Van Lines reported in 2016 that South Dakota was their leading state for in-bound household moves. New Jersey was their top out-bound state.
For the record, I am not a monarchist, nor do I long for a static or medieval world. I am by birth a Midwesterner, and I lived in the Midwest for most of my career. I intend to retire to the Intermountain West. When business took me to the South, I found the South to be warm and hospitable. You might be surprised at how modern, educated, diverse, and civilized your fellow Americans living between the coasts really are. I recommend a visit.
You forgot a significant economic sector of coastal areas: murder, rape, robbery.
Measuring GDP by county is a tricky thing. Is Exxon’s GDP attributed to its corporate headquarters in Manhattan, or its oil producing rigs in west Texas? Is Goldman Sachs really contributing to GDP in New York by trading commodities on the NYSE produced elsewhere? If those commodities did not exist, the “GDP” generated by trading them would not exist.
Meth addiction? Seriously? I guess you don’t include the inner city of the Coastal areas (probably 90+% Clinton voters).
The woman in the poster, be it noted, appears to be beautiful, to be sexually alluring. There’s something going on here with the mystique of “Eastern women.” The image designer surely knows how to attract (male) attention and try to get it on his side. I wonder if the model was Muslim at all, btw. It would have been interesting to see a design more representative of what one’s likely to see at the mall.
You bigot!
There’s an unfeminine hardness to her. I’m definitely not allured.
I understand, Bonald. But then that quality of unfeminine hardness is what the mainstream teaches men to find sexually interesting and women to want to identify with. The woman’s stare and the sexiness of the image are mainstream, but combined with “Muslim” headgear, to convey the impression that Muslims are people who — of course! — want around us. It’s a piece of propaganda worth taking apart. In multiple ways it has little to do with reality. In a carnal, promiscuous society such as ours Muslim clothing may be a means by which a woman conveys: I’m not interested in being sexually available to you. But the stare, the exaggeration of the lips, etc. convey a different message.
It’s rather clever.
Well, she is just a cartoon. But I’m on the alluring side of the fence, Bonald. If a substantial plurality of Middle Eastern women looked like that, I’d suggest leaving the immigration doors wide open… but only for the unmarried women, who would of course have to convert to Christianity before being granted permanent residency. But only a tiny minority do look like that, so the point is moot.
It seems to me that if racism is wrong , then racial identity as such must be wrong.
But, no one, not even leftists reject racial identity. So, what exactly is meant by “racism”?
They do reject it. They claim that it is a social construct forced upon us all by evil whites. The social construct exists, so we may discuss it. But, someday, after New Socialist Man emerges, race (or government or hierarchy or families or oxygen: I forget) will melt away as Lamarck teaches us that an organ that is no longer needed does.
But if they reject it, what is meant by the “African-American community” and the “Asian-American community” and the “Muslim-American community” and the the whole list of hyphenated Americans? Clearly, these are real and acceptable identities.
“African-American Community” means that group of people who, as a result of white racism, are forced together by their common othering by being called black, discriminated against, and essentialized by their “race.”
Like, if we created a fake category of people consisting of dwarves and left-handed people and then treated them as if they are essentially the same as one another and inferior to other people. You might imagine left-o-dwarves developing, in sympathy and reaction, an image of themselves as a real, coherent group. That’s the idea.
In this case, I would say left-o-dwarves really are a real, coherent group.
Race is a social construct, which means that it’s real.
Your race is your father… A biological construct with social implications.
Anti-racism is the attempt to turn The (F)ather into a social construct for the purpose of deconstructing the (f)ather.
DB,
But, I don’t think the Left or anyone else for that matter would agree that all those hyphenated Americans are ” fake categories”; they regard them as real because they regard them as legitimate- and that’s what I’m driving at. If people accept the legitimacy of racial (ethnic, national, etc) identity, doesn’t that legitimize the pursuance of self interest by said groups? And if that is so, hasn’t everyone, including the Left, tacitly accepted “racism”?
Completely off-topic. My wife and I are putting together a list of books to read to our children ages 3, 5, and 7; boy, girl, girl. The idea being we can introduce some literature that is somewhat more challenging stuff than they would read on their own. My wife has it easy as she is just rattling off classic fiction. I have been tasked to come up with history books that my seven year old will enjoy and from which she may benefit. I recall plutarch’s lives seeming accessible, but that doesn’t seem like a starting point for somebody who doesn’t know who Alexander the Great was or even really what the Roman Empire was. If anybody has any suggestions, that would be really helpful. I know some of the contributors and commenters have children older than mine. Thanks
Josh
Josh,
Here’s some ideas:
http://www.yesterdaysclassics.com/catalog/displaycatalog.php?catalog=world
http://www.mainlesson.com/displaybooksbygenre.php
We read Hillyer’s “A Child’s History of the World” and Van Loon’s “Story of Mankind” to our boys years ago. These books had somewhat of an (older) liberal perspective on history but are much better written than contemporary books.
Bruce
Josh, see the discussions following Alan Roebuck’s four part essay, A Father’s Advice to His Son on Becoming a Man where several titles are recommended by several commenters.:
https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/a-fathers-advice-to-his-son-on-becoming-a-man-part-four-the-dos-and-the-donts/
Also, I don’t recall whether I mentioned them or not under any of those essays, but you might be interested in Matthew Fontaine Maury’s Physical Geography series, and/or Noah Webster’s History of the United States. All of which are available online (I had several copies of all of the Geography titles in Maury’s series made and put into binder form for the kids several years back – they include a wealth of history, in addition to the geographical principles).
A little more on the Landmark series:
http://the-classical-homeschool.blogspot.com/2012/04/landmark-books-in-chronological-order.html
Josh, you might check out Bethlehem Books through Ignatius Press. I’m a Lutheran homeschooling father who liked things published by these Roman Catholic folks.
https://www.ignatius.com/Products/CategoryCenter/TCH!BBKS/bethlehem-books.aspx
They used to publish an interesting little magazine about worthy books for young readers that you might still be able to find in libraries.
The Landmark series was well thought of.
https://oldscrolls.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/landmark-books-first-rate-history-series-for-readers-and-collectors/
http://www.exodusbooks.com/american-landmark-books/5210/
You might be able to find some of them in libraries, in garage sales and thrift stores, etc. If there’s a homeschooling group in your area you might find that someone has some of these and would be willing to share them.
This book, Our Young Folks’ Josephus, might be of interest:
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Young-Folks-Josephus-Antiquities/dp/0974990000
Gets across a lot of Old Testament history, etc.
Thanks all. I’ll check out the links.
Philadelphia’s Archbishop Chaput, who is of Native American descent, recently said: “In Philadelphia I’m struck by how many women I now see on the street wearing the hijab or even the burqa. Some of my friends are annoyed by that kind of ‘in your face’ Islam. But I understand it. The hijab and the burqa say two important things in a morally confused culture: ‘I’m not sexually available;’ and “I belong to a community different and separate from you and your obsessions.’ I have a long list of concerns with the content of Islam. But I admire the integrity of those Muslim women. ”
Read the whole address at http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/time-christians-unplug-secular-culture
The Archbishop’s statement is offensive and a misinterpretation of the burka. One doesn’t need to don a burka to communicate that she’s “not sexually available”. There are plenty of ways to dress, within the parameters of American culture, and convey the same message. Is this woman saying that she’s sexually available?
What the burka wearer is really communicating is that she is a slave. A slave to her husband and a slave to Allah.
The bishop also misses on his second point. Islamic culture is full of sexual obsessions, and that is why the woman must wear the burka in the first place. It says that the merest show of skin sets men off in uncontrollable urges.
Finally, in American culture, there’s nothing wrong with a young woman communicating that she’s “available” (for courtship, marriage etc.) without communicating that she’s “sexually available”. That is something young women in strict Islamic cultures cannot do because the choice of a husband is usually determined by her elders.
And this institution, the sexual autonomy of the eligible woman, her right to say “no,” is one of the great achievements of Christendom. The chivalrous deference of the man is its counterpart, another great achievement.
Dr Bertonneau wrote:
And this institution, the sexual autonomy of the eligible woman, her right to say “no,” is one of the great achievements of Christendom. The chivalrous deference of the man is its counterpart, another great achievement.
I am guessing there would be quite a bit of prima facie disagreement among Orthosphere contributors before getting to the heart of what Dr. Bertonneau is addressing here. The point of contention as I see it would be that 1) there was in the past in general–and still exists in some cultures, particularly Muslim ones–some kind of suppression of women’s rightful exercise of their human will, and 2) while this suppression translated into oppression for women in matters sexual, it meant a disordered amount of options (animal house party time!) for men at the expense of women.
I’d be interested to see the disagreement, which seems to bubble up whenever the burka is mentioned, discussed more directly at this website sometime. I feel suspicious of my own ability to discern the matter, seeing the only way coming down to a conclusion being of dichotomous nature. This always makes me less than trusting that I am seeing things clearly enough to make a judgment. It does not help that thought on this sort of thing has been so commandeered by feminism.
Nothing in reply here thus far contradicts the erudite Archbishop’s statement. In fact, the Archbishop specifically said that such garments convey the message of belonging to a different and separate community and that he had a long list of concerns about the content of Islam, as do many. The Archbishop’s point was that Catholics need to recover their own sense of distinction from the surrounding secular meltdown. Advocating for a monarchy is certainly distinctive, at least in America.
The Archbishop’s book, Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World, will be available in two weeks (February 21st). Archbishop Chaput, OFM Cap., was named archbishop of Philadelphia in 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI.
“A Muslim America wouldn’t necessarily be a bad place.”
A most cogent essay, but in this one thing I must take issue with you, Bonald. A Muslim America would be as wretched and cruel as every other Muslim state.
Incidentally, the propaganda poster is a paradigm of what in Islam is called taqqiya: Lying to the infidel about Islam to make it seem negotiable and happy, so as, tactically, to disarm objections to it. The sword follows. Do we know of any other creed that requires its adherents to lie to others about its actual character?
It’s hardly taqqiya, as the propagandist in this case is, I believe, the atheist Shepherd Fairey.
From whence Fairey stole it is anyone’s guess:
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/
Liberalism (hence also atheism) and Islam are in alliance and have been for twenty years.
Yes, but Fairey acts for the third party, so it’s taqqiya.
Amazingly, and tellingly, the Formless One thinks that The Orthosphere is a defender of capitalism!
Not sure where you are getting that.
“If we can admit this woman is foreign, we needn’t pretend that there is something wrong with her. ”
A standing ovation for that line Bonald!
And I would humbly add to your excellent edifice: “If we can admit this woman is foreign, we needn’t pretend either that she is outstandingly wonderful [the liberals] or that there is something wrong with her [the standard-brand conservatives.]” She’s just out of place.
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The slogan is the more insidious aspect of this jihadi psychoptics as it characterizes those who are repulsed by Islam as in fear of it.
Islam is absolutely repulsive to free white men.
To “white liberals,” Islam will be tolerated to death.
It’s not terrorism, crime, or wage depression. We don’t have nearly enough of them for those to be major issues (yet).
Actually, I do think it is terrorism (or submission or dhimmitude, which is the end goal of terrorism). The whole point of not wanting them here now is so we don’t have to get to the point of “yet.” Like it or not, an honest reading of the Koran and Mohammed’s example is much closer to ISIS than the nice the third generation urban New Yorker who hits the bars on weekends and sees an Imam only at his own wedding (to please the grandparents).
Yeah, I agree with this. The shock of Islamic ‘honor killings’ (which we’ve seen plenty of already on American soil), Islamic self-flatulation ceremonies, and their strange prayer and cleansing ceremonies that are happening in a public restroom near you, are all repulsive to a large segment of the American public. These kinds of things are completely foreign and strange, and, well, disturbing to many Americans who do not want to see more of this kind of thing in the U.S. and prefer to see or hear about less of it. My State – Oklahoma – does not have a big Muslim problem as of this moment, but that hasn’t prevented people in the state from taking preemptive legislative steps to make sure we never do. All of the leftist insults for our trouble notwithstanding.
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