Muslims Immigration: Even Responsible People Think it's a Bad Idea

** Unhinged DeviledEgg Rant Alert! ** 
 

If the thought of an "honor killing" on American soil doesn't disgust you and make you boil with patriotic rage, you're brain dead! 

I live in Europe, I've lived in North America, and I've lived in that armpit they call the Middle East. No contest which I think is better!

Why the hell do Western nations continue to allow these troublemaking Muslims to immigrate? Look at a map.  Wherever there's trouble, angry turbaned men with beards are involved.

Our cultures are incompatible.  We enjoy pork bbq and beer, use toilet paper and refrain from female genital mutilation, for example.

Many Muslim immigrants refuse to assimilate, and the only way to have peace here in the West is to give in to their fleck spittled agitations at the expense of our cultural norms.  Not while I have breath in my body!  Better to close the gates...

ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE!!! DISAGREE AND I'LL KEEEEL YOU!!!

Unlike the DeviledEgg, foreign editor of The Australian Greg Sheridan is no xenophobe, but he declares, "Uncontrolled Muslim Influx a Threat to the West."

It is extremely difficult to talk honestly about Muslim immigration. All generalisations about it are subject to countless exceptions. Muslims are very different from each other.

Most are reasonably successful. But a much bigger minority end up with social, political, extremist or other problems resulting from a lack of integration than is the case with any other cohort of immigrants in Western societies. A lack of honest discussion about this results in bad policy.

He goes on to recommend a book by Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.

Jacob Laksin at City Journal recommends the book as well.

Polls show that some 70 percent of Britons believe that there are too many immigrants in their country. Majorities throughout Western Europe agree, and Muslim immigrants in particular are viewed with suspicion.

Europe is a Benignly Racist Continent
Despite the finger-wagging at America, many Europeans are fundamentally and unconsciously racist and insular. Here in Germany, people from the next village over are considered outsiders, fellow German speakers from Austria are treated as the enemy, and those who hail from farther afield have no hope of ever fitting in in the land of beer and bratwurst. 

Europeans are in a jam, trying to steer a course between the Charybdis of bigotry and the Scylla of cultural destruction. Worse, the entire continent is in denial. Muslims are to blame as well, especially when they display open contempt for their new home:

Yet the immigrants themselves are far from faultless. One of the immigration debate’s inconvenient truths is that Muslim immigrants have been so difficult to assimilate into European societies because they’re unwilling: many Muslims simply choose religious ties over national loyalties.

... 31 percent of British Muslims felt they had more in common with the people of Muslim nations than with their fellow Europeans.

I hope the US can learn the right lessons from Europe's immigration debacle. Reading Caldwell's book would be a good start.

I've got to stop now, that guy shouting from the tower is giving me a headache!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The DeviledEgg is prone to unhinged rants, childish outbursts, and fits of anger, but he's really a good egg once you get to know him. He is half German and half American and splits his time between the two countries. Western Hero is proud to add him to the team.

City Journal - Jacob Laksin
RCP - Greg Sheridan

Book Banning is Bogus

Book banning in America is a bogus issue used by leftists to tear down our American institutions and denigrate our traditional values

Last week was Banned Books Week, and the social libertines were out in full force.  From the website:

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries.  [...]

People challenge books that they say are too sexual or too violent. They object to profanity and slang, and protest against offensive portrayals of racial or religious groups--or positive portrayals of homosexuals.

Yes.  Nice summary.  I don't want these adult perverts peddling homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian screeds, and sex and violence to my children.   I am also against censorship.  The two views are not incompatible... 

See how liberalism works?  

They take the legitimate issue of enforcing community standards, conflate it with book banning, and conjure the specter of America as Nazi Germany censoring, burning and silencing. 

The reality is more benign

By the organization's own admission, the top 10 most-challenged books are challenged in a school or public library environment because they are not age appropriate.  And most are trash anyway, not a classic among them.

No one is challenging the right to publish and peddle trash in this country, a casual glance around proves that.  This is about parents maintaining control over what is introduced to their children.

If a teacher introduced pornography and graphic battlefield narratives to my first grader and I protested, I would be considered pro-censorship to these people.       

I love books and I do not want my government committing First Amendment violations.  And guess what?  Removing a book from schools or public libraries based upon community standards is not censorship.

An author has no legal right to have her book placed in a school or community library, and community members have no right to find there any book they desire.  Indeed, if it were otherwise, every public library would be legally required to stock every book; a clearly unreasonable standard.

Judgments must be made.  Some books are in and some are out.

Removing or restricting a book from a public library does not silence the author and it does not prevent people from acquiring the book by some other means. This is about the right time and proper place.

Parents and responsible adults have a duty to introduce only age-appropriate material to our youngsters.  I decide what's appropriate for my children, not some hippie pedo-perv or oversexed woman marketing her teen sex fantasies to high schoolers.

Want to talk censorship?  When is the last time someone was allowed to read a bible or say a prayer out loud in a public school?

http://bannedbooksweek.org/index.html
Time - Banned Books

Lone Survivor: Afghanistan Now

 
Lone Survivor, a book published in 2007, is Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell's story of a 2005 Afghanistan battle. It is highly relevant to the current debate over our involvement in that distant, mountainous land.

I just got done reading Lone Survivor, by Marcus Luttrell. He tells the gut-wrenching story of ill-fated Operation Redwing, a special ops mission in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan that went horribly wrong for Luttrell's four-man SEAL team.

If you want to understand what's going on in Afghanistan, read this book. If you want a white-knuckle story of heroism under unimaginable conditions, read this book. If you want to reaffirm your faith in mankind, read this book. It will make you proud of your armed forces and proud to be an American.


There's a reason why they call them Special Forces
You will come to appreciate just how elite our Special Forces are. Luttrell starts out by giving us his account of SEAL training. Many big, bad, brave men just can't take it and voluntarily drop out as they are pushed beyond the bounds of an ordinary human's mental and physical capacity. Those who survive get pushed even farther, requiring them to reach deeper than they thought possible.

Later, we learn why the training is so tough: Real missions are even worse, especially when things go bad. Luttrell's team found themselves facing off against a teeming, seemingly endless swarm of fierce Pashtun fighters in the worst of conditions on the steep rocky slopes of the Hindu Kush. Once you start reading about the battle, you will not be able to ungrip the book until it's over.

Prayer Works, and Choosing Life has Consequences
Interwoven into the story is a quiet testament to the power of prayer, although this is not a good candidate for the Christian Ladies Book Club, scattered as it is with salty language and blasphemous outbursts common to such men. It is also a story of people, Americans and Afghanis, who choose life amid the violence and then must bear the horrible consequences.

A Rare Glimpse of Afghan Village Life
In the last part of the book, Luttrell provides an intimate, village level view of the Taliban-Pashtun dynamic in the remote regions of Afghanistan. These are a fierce and honor-bound people who dislike all outside intrusions. It is not as simple as us versus them. Everyone is armed, it's all tribal, and the lines between villager and fighter are blurry. It is a symbiotic relation between the Pashtun people and the fighters that spring from them. The Taliban is a potent, but mutant offshoot, and Al Qaida is not a natural ally.

It's Not Hopeless
This is a pessimistic view for those hoping to turn Afghanistan into a Central Asian "Little America." That ain't gonna happen.

But still there is hope. Hope for a patient strategy of prying the Al Qaida foreigners loose, restoring traditional tribal lines, funneling some cash and quality of life upgrades through the chieftains, and otherwise leaving their culture and traditions undisturbed so long as they do not tolerate plotting terrorists among them.

Finally, there is hope for an America that produces heroic lions like these great men of the Special Forces and their brothers and sisters of every race, creed, color, gender and religion who volunteer for the regular forces.  Go read this excellent book.

Group Picture on Left:
From left to right, Sonar Technician (Surface) 2nd Class Matthew G. Axelson, of Cupertino, Calif; Senior Chief Information Systems Technician Daniel R. Healy, of Exeter, N.H.; Quartermaster 2nd Class James Suh, of Deerfield Beach, Fla.; Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Marcus Luttrell; Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Eric S. Patton, of Boulder City, Nev.; and Lt. Michael P. Murphy, of Patchogue, N.Y. With the exception of Luttrell, all were killed June 28, 2005, by enemy forces while supporting Operation Redwing.

Picture on Right: GM2 (SEAL) Danny Dietz, of Littleton, Colorado, killed in Operation Redwing

Operation RedWing - Lt Murphy
American Special Ops - Operation Redwing
Patriotic Websites of America - Dietz
Sepia Mutiny

Hugo's Book Club

At the Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a book written by a US-hating Marxist. It has shot to #2 on Amazon.

From the LA Times:

According to reports, the Chavez-Obama exchange, the book offered by the Venezuelan leader was in Spanish, a language the U.S. president does not read. Why Chavez didn't give him an English version is anyone's guess.

Maybe because the little tinpot dictator is too stupid to realize we speak English up here...

Forget that crap sandwich between two covers that dictator Hugo Chavez pressed into the accepting hands of President Obama. It's nothing but a leftist, anti-US screed that blames us for every ill ever visited upon Latin America, from cholera to national insolvency. You could fill a library with such books. Hating America isn't just a cottage industry in Latin America, it is a major going concern on the continent, second only to oil and mineral exploitation.

My favorite book of this genre was one about how Uncle Sam crushed Panama under his cruel, hob-nail boots for 100 years. The author paints Panama as a slave colony under our rule. It was a best seller in South American capitals like Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Caracas. It did terrible in Panama, because the subjects of the book saw it for the farce that it was. Even Panamanian leftists wouldn't defend the book; doing so would have made them even more of a laughing stock than they already were in that relatively conservative country.

Anyone who had ever lived in Panama, one of the few countries in the region where you can drink the tap water, knew the book was BS. Those Latinos who had never lived there eagerly lapped it up, such is their simmering resentment of our country. Anything to avoid blaming themselves.

Here are a few recommendations from Silverfiddle to counter such socialist propaganda:

Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot. Aptly named antidote to the leftist claptrap written about our neighbors to the south. From Amazon's review: "Three Latin American writers, all ex-leftists, attack misconceptions about Latin America and ingrained sentiments of victimization and anti-Americanism among its people."

My favorite, The Penguin History of Latin America. No, it wasn't written by penguins, nor is it about those cute flightless neighbors to the south of South America. Written by University of Edinburgh Professor Edwin Williamson, it is an incisive overview of 500 years of Latin America history. It weighs in at a little over 600 highly readable pages, with each chapter devoted to a different subject or historical era, and is laid out mostly in chronological order.

A final word of advice: Don't read anything written in the US by any Latin American Studies professors, Chicano Studies doctoral candidates, or any other so-called Latin American experts from the world of academe. The closest most of these people have gotten to their area of "expertise" is eating a chalupa at Taco Bell.

LA Times: Chavez Gift to Obama
Amazon: Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot
Amazon: The Penguin History of Latin America

Apocalypse Soon?

Dystopian tales have always fascinated me. Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley being two of my favorites that describe an orderly but disordered and scary future.

Then there are the grim but morbidly fascinating predictions of an overpopulated, Hobbesean world where man devolves into unwashed, feral tribes at constant warfare with one another over dwindling resources.

For a more restrained view of what could happen if Europe were to be swamped by waves of poor immigrants, read Camp of the Saints, by Frenchman Jean Raspail.

Now comes Paul Farrell conjuring a fusion of catastrophic climate change and a demographic tidal wave that produces a global cataclysm making the fall of Rome look like a kids birthday party breaking up.

Thomas Malthus predicted as much almost 200 years ago, and people on the left and right have been hanging on his famous words ever since. This despite the fact that we have not yet seen his dire conclusions realized.

Our scientific minds have continued to pull our collective fat out of the fire for lo these many years, so I wouldn't yet be digging that bomb shelter with the 5,000,000 gallon water tank and a 100 years supply of MREs.

Nonetheless, Mr. Farrell does place his finger on an inexorable trend: Global population is increasing, and there are large swathes of benighted humanity that have not the technology to ameliorate the expansion of the teeming hordes. Wars are not fought for religion; wars are fought over resources, and the resource to person ratio is decreasing. Can science keep up?

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Five-reasons-population-boom-biggest/story.aspx?guid={66A7D394-5E73-4D74-8C22-4E1BC7BFB98B}

Silverfiddle's Canon

Blogger and teacher Ben Sutherland had a post a few weeks ago where he pondered new ways to make classical liberal thought (as opposed to modern liberal orthodoxy) accessible and cool to kids. We're just not teaching people how to think and analyze any more, we're teaching our kids what to think (indoctrination). Our ignorance of history and inability to put current events into historical perspective will lead us to ruin.

Here's what Ben said:

I've got some ideas. They're going to take work. A mix of Mark Twain and John Stuart Mill. With some Larry the Cable Guy, Mike Judge and Stephen Colbert thrown in for good measure.

I'm a little Mill-heavy and Twain-light, at this point. But I'll keep working on it.

Somehow we gotta make thinking fun, laid-back, and cool. They are, in the right hands. Now I just gotta translate that into something a bit more digestable for folks with less appreciation for classical liberal thought.

I'm curious to hear your own thoughts, Silverfiddle. Who are your favorite thinkers? Enquiring minds want to know.

Here's my answer:
I am not a philosopher, so I don't look to any one person or secular school of thought to guide my life. I am also not into hero worship; so I don't try to model my life after any human being. I think the Holy Bible is the greatest book in the history of the world and no greater guide to life can be found.

I'm also not a teacher, so it would be folly for me to give teaching ideas to Ben. Here's what I can recommend: Know how to think, know what you believe, know your history.

Know how to think
Logical, critical thinking is the most important skill. An easy way to introduce yourself to logic is to do a sudoku. A simple explanation of the syllogism is also a good start. Add to that some examples of logical fallacies and you now at least have a logical framework to analyze what someone is telling you. There are on-line resources that can get you started.

Know what you believe
A person with no moral code is a fire. Could do good, could do bad, depending on which way the wind blows. Any religious person should start with their religious text. For Christians, that's The Holy Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. The Bible contains every note in the key of life. It starts with God creating mankind and quickly goes downhill from there. The story of God leading the ungrateful Hebrews out of bondage is a story of each ungrateful person's struggle with obeying the creator. For those agnostics and atheists, there are many non-religious moral codes out there. Pick one.

Read history & the classics
I think history is the best teacher. Read enough and you will learn that there is indeed nothing new under the sun. You will also see that whatever you are going through is not the superlative event of its kind in the history of man. Things have been better, and things have been worse. We're living in higher luxury now, but the basic human condition has not changed over the millennia. The History of English Speaking Peoples, The Story of English, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and America, the Last Best Hope are good starters. Be sure to read things you think you will disagree with; it will stretch your brain and maybe change your mind.

Finally, a healthy dose of skepticism never hurt anyone.

See Silverfiddle's List of Great Books Here