Freedom-of-the-Seas

I usually post Sunday Funnies on Sundays, but I'm running low on decent jokes, so I am only going to do them occasionally as they accumulate. Otherwise, I'll just post things that are fun or interesting. This Sunday, I'm going to post about the new Ocean Liner, Freedom-of-the-Seas. My interest in ocean liners began with the Queen Mary.



When I was a kid, I saw the movie "Poseiden Adventure". The ship in the movie was modeled after the Queen Mary, a grand old ship that was eventually retired to Long Beach, California, where it is now a floating Museum, Hotel, Restaurant & conference center.

As a kid I read all about the Queen Mary and other famous ocean liners. In 1997, I got to visit the Queen Mary in Long Beach; it was a long held dream-come-true. It was facinating and really fun.



With the advent of Jet planes, the popularity of large ocean liners declined; they couldn't attract enough passengers to justify their operating expenses. So cruise ships became smaller, and specialised in visiting exotic locations.

As these cruise ships became fancier over the years, offering more frills, they also started becoming larger again. The Cunard line's Queen Mary II is considerably bigger than the old Queen Mary, and quite luxurious:






Until recently, the Queen Mary II held the title of largest cruise ship. But this year, the Royal Caribbean cruise line will wrest that title away, with it's newest cruise ship, "Freedom-of-the-Seas":


From Fox News, an excerpt:

...Freedom of the Seas, which arrived this week in New York Harbor from Southampton, Britain, is 237 feet tall and 1,112 feet long with 15 passenger decks.


Standing upright on its bow, it would be taller than the Eiffel Tower. The ship comes in at 160,000 gross registered tons, a standard measurement of carrying capacity that is about 100 cubic feet for each ton.






Built by Norwegian shipbuilder Aker Yards ASA, the ship cost $800 million and can carry more than 4,000 passengers. The world's previous largest ship, the Queen Mary 2, can carry about 3,000 people and is 151,400 gross registered tons. The Titanic's gross registered tonnage was 46,329.



If you want to sail on the new ship, it won't be cheap.

Prices for seven-day voyages range from $1,900 per couple for an interior room during the low season to nearly $2,500 for the same-size cabin with a balcony during high season, said Cindy Dangel, an on-board sales manager.

A deluxe room that sleeps 14 and costs $22,000 during peak season is booked until 2008, she said.



A three-level dining room seats 2,140. There are more than 2,000 deck chairs and an ice-skating rink. The fitness center measures 9,700 square feet and includes a boxing ring. The spa provides luxuries from teeth whitening to massages and a 13th-floor deck offers a rock climbing wall and a big wave pool with simulated surfing.

Royal Caribbean's newest liner will be docked in New York Harbor and Cape Liberty in Bayonne over the next few days before it leaves on May 18 for a trip to Boston.



The ship's maiden voyage was last month, from Hamburg, Germany, to Oslo, Norway, but it won't have paying passengers until it leaves from Miami for the western Caribbean next month.



While the ship's New York area arrival is generating a big buzz, its grand scale might not appeal to everyone.

Bigger isn't always better, and a large ship can be overwhelming and impersonal, said Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor of cruisecritic.com, a Web site devoted to cruise travel information.

"You're always thinking about what you should be doing next," she said. "Expect lines. Expect congestion."

She said on a ship of this scale, passengers may be tempted to skip some of the ports.



"This ship, more than any other ship out there, represents the on-land resort experience. There's so much to do you really don't have to get off," she said.























The interior Promanade deck:




Some of the cabin rooms:











Ships have sure come a long way, in speed, safety and comfort. I'm not much of a traveller these days, but a ship like this would certainly be tempting.


Related Links:

About Your Ship: Freedom of the Seas

Freedom of the Seas: ship overview

Freedom of the Seas: Cabins

World's Largest Cruise Ship Christened in New Jersey

Our Immigration Invasion; a view from Europe, and a warning

Have you ever come across an article that references a lot of other topics you had been reading about, and neatly connects the dots for you? I have recently come across just such an article, at the Gates of Vienna blog, called:

"Another American Century or Another American Civil War?"

It's written by Baron Bodissey, and is a view of America from Europe. It begins by comparing situations on both sides of the Atlantic regarding illegal immigration.

At first, you might think the situations in the USA and Europe are very different; after all, Mexicans are not Muslims. This is very true. Yet the dynamics behind the invasion, the consequences of allowing it to happen, the circumstances that allow it to continue, and the ineffectiveness of governments to stop it actually have a lot in common. For example:

...even though non-Muslim immigrants are always preferable to Muslim ones, that does not necessarily mean that non-Muslim immigration in whatever numbers or form is always beneficial. Indeed, there are more parallels between the behavior of Mexican illegal immigrants in the USA and of Muslims in Europe than many observers appreciate. First of all, you have the aggression towards and disregard for the very country the immigrants want to live in. I have read Mexicans bragging about how little they care about US laws. Soon they will be the majority in the American Southwest and will simply change the laws to suit them, so why should they care what the laws say now? These laws are only temporary, anyway. This view of immigration as a means of demographic conquest of territory is similar to what Muslims are doing in Europe, only without the terrorism.

Second, you have the extreme amounts of hypocrisy, where Mexicans, just like Muslims, make harsh laws in their own countries, but scream “murder” and complain about racism if even a fraction of their laws are applied to themselves. In a paper published by the Center for Security Policy, J. Michael Waller points out that under its constitution Mexico deals harshly not only with illegal but even with legal immigrants “in ways that would, by the standards of those who carp about US immigration policy, have to be called “racist” and “xenophobic.” The Mexican constitution includes restrictions on foreigners in any way participating in the political affairs of the country. Equal employment rights are denied to immigrants, even legal ones. It denies immigrants the right to become federal lawmakers. Foreigners are denied fundamental property rights. Article 11 guarantees federal protection against “undesirable aliens resident in the country.” What is more, private individuals are authorized to make citizen’s arrests. Article 16 states, “In cases of flagrante delicto, any person may arrest the offender and his accomplices, turning them over without delay to the nearest authorities.” In other words, Mexico grants its citizens the right to arrest illegal aliens and hand them over to police for prosecution. The Mexican constitution states that foreigners – not just illegal immigrants – may be expelled for any reason and without due process.

Third, many Mexican immigrants have the same total lack of understanding of the fact that maybe, just maybe, there are some flaws in their own culture that create the problems they are trying to move away from. As long as they won’t admit this, it is quite likely that the same problems will follow them and be recreated in their new home country. Muslims believe that they can “conquer the riches of Europe.” But will they, or will the influx of Islamic culture ensure that Europe will cease being a wealthy continent, and become more like any other Islamic failure? Latin America’s love affair with Socialism, as exemplified by the three Cs – Chavez, Castro and Che Guevara – is even more pathological than Europe’s. Many of these countries, including Mexico, have serious problems with corruption. Will all of this be imported into the USA, too? When California has become majority Mexican, will it still be the economic powerhouse it has been for generations?...

The original article has embedded links, and ties together a lot of ideas and things I've read about separately.

Another uncomfortable parallel with Europe involves a movement for suppression of National identities. The European Union has been working to suppress the national identities of it's members in order to create a United Europe. This weakening of national identities has also led to a weakening of cultural identity as well, with a corresponding weakening of will to defend, protect or promote national self-interest.

Could the same thing be happening here? At first I thought not, but then how do you explain our inability or lack of will to control our own borders? Consider this:

...Just as in Europe, national symbols are increasingly dismissed as symbols of racism and bigotry. Echoing instances of similar bans of national flags in several European countries because “this could offend immigrants,” schools in California, Colorado, and Arizona will ban the display of American flags and patriotic clothing. School administrators claim that the bans were put into effect to ease tensions between Hispanic and non-Hispanic students during recent immigration protests.

As Victor Davis Hanson writes in his book, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, “the goal of assimilation that was once the standard, if unspoken orthodoxy in our schools and government is now ridiculed as racist and untrue.” At the same time, illegal immigrants were displaying Mexican flags in Los Angeles, and there were proposals of making a Spanish-language version of the U.S. national anthem. According to Multicultural logic, tolerance is always a one-way street where Western countries have to give in.

It is striking to notice how the political establishment on both sides of the spectrum are unwilling to do anything to uphold the territorial integrity of the USA. President Bush “has not pushed for greater enforcement of immigration law (he is the chief law enforcement officer), has mocked the Minutemen as dangerous vigilantes and has done little to discourage the tide of illegal aliens, in spite of the dangers of a porous border in the post-911 world.” While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen – and telling the Mexican government where they are. Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. “It’s unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing more than 10,000 Border Patrol agents, said agents have complained for years about the Mexican consulate’s influence over the agency. “It worries me (that the Mexican government) seems to be unduly influencing our enforcement policies. That’s not a legitimate role for any foreign nation.”...

...we may be entering a war that will be remembered as the Multicultural World War, with a Balkanization of the West caused by Multicultural insecurity about our own values and runaway immigration without assimilation. This may not be unavoidable yet, but it seems to be the direction in which we are now heading...

Bodissey also warns us that our enemies overseas are watching us closely for any signs of weakness or lack of resolve:

...There is a reason why some of the largest Islamic organizations in the USA came out in support of the rallies in major cities in support of illegal immigrants. Muslims see this as a way of weakening the Great Satan. And they are right. Americans need to understand just how much is at stake here. We are probably, as President Bush himself has hinted at, in the early stages of a world war with Islam. Muslims are working to get nuclear weapons and are openly calling for the physical destruction of the West. Your enemies are watching the way you are handling the illegal situation, and they are not impressed. Do you think the North Koreans or the Iranians are scared of a country that allows itself to be intimidated and held hostage by a bunch of Mexicans who shouldn’t even be in the country in the first place? When you’re a superpower, the line of separation between domestic and foreign policy hardly exists. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was impressed by the way Ronald Reagan handled an attempt of blackmail by the civil air traffic controllers. He simply fired them. This signalled to your enemies abroad that you were not going to give into blackmail anywhere.

What is at stake here is your credibility as a superpower. In the longer run, it could be your physical security from nuclear attacks, perhaps even your very survival as a coherent nation state. DO NOT give in to Mexican intimidation. Build the border fence, and deport the illegals. Yes, ALL of them. No amnesty. We are facing decades of what could potentially become the deadliest war in human history, where the very survival of Western civilization and perhaps human civilization in general hangs in the balance. We cannot win this without you.

You are the indispensable nation, and if you break down, the rest of the planet is in serious trouble...

There are plenty of communists and socialists in the world who would disagree with Bodissey; who think that American IS the problem. And the communists and socialists tend to side with America's enemies, even when they are totalitarian Islamists.

Bodissey has plenty more to say, you can read the whole article HERE.




Related Link:

Swedish Welfare State Collapses
as Immigrants Wage War

From the Brussels Journal blog. It begins with crime statistics, and interviews with the Muslim youths that commit them. It makes an interesting case for crime as an act of war and invasion. An excerpt:

...It is interesting to note that these Muslim immigrants state quite openly that they are involved in a “war,” and see participation in crime and harassment of the native population as such. This is completely in line with what I have posited before. The number of rape charges in Sweden has quadrupled in just above twenty years. Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six times as common today as they were a generation ago. Most other kinds of violent crime have rapidly increased, too. Instability is spreading to most urban and suburban areas. Resident aliens from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia dominate the group of rape suspects. Lawyer Ann Christine Hjelm found that 85 per cent of the convicted rapists were born on foreign soil or from foreign parents. The phenomenon is not restricted to Sweden. The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations is so extremely high that it is difficult to view these rapes as merely random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. This is happening in most Western European countries, as well as in other non muslim countries such as India. European jails are filling up with Muslims imprisoned for robberies and all kinds of violent crimes, and Muslims bomb European civilians. One can see the mainstream media are struggling to make sense of all of this. That is because they cannot, or do not want to, see the obvious: this is exactly how an invading army would behave: rape, pillage and bombing. If many of the Muslim immigrants see themselves as conquerors in a war, it all makes perfect sense...

...What happened to the famous Swedish nanny state, you say? Don’t Swedes pay the highest tax rates in the world? Yes, they do. But tens of billions of kroner, some say several hundred billions, are being spent every year on propping up rapidly growing communities of Muslim immigrants. Sweden has become the entire world’s welfare office, because the political elites have decided that massive Muslim immigration is “good for the economy.” Soon Sweden’s “army” may comprise no more than 5,000 men, five thousand troops to defend a nation more than three times the area of England. Moreover, it may take up to a year to assemble all of them, provided they are not on peacekeeping missions abroad. That Sweden might soon need a little peacekeeping at home seems to escape the establishment. In 2006 the celebrated Swedish welfare state has become the world’s largest pyramid scheme, an Enron with a national flag...

There's more, with lots of details about Swedens particular situation. They seem to be digging their own graves. Sweden sounds like a scary place to live nowadays. In some ways it may be an extreme case, but it can be argued that the rest of Europe isn't that far behind.

You can read the complete article HERE.

Related link:

Ramadan Rioting in Europe's No-Go Areas

Why are we funding terrorist monsters... AGAIN?

Hat tip to Cox and Forkum for the cartoon. You can read their related commentary and links HERE.

Just when I thought we had finally wised up, we seem to be reversing course, and funding terrorists again! We are giving them humanitarian aid so they don't have to work to sustain themselves, and can spend their time and money on more worthy activities, like bombs, weapons and terrorism.

If they want charity, let them get it from the arab terrorist states they admire so much. Let Iran and our "friends" the Saudis support them with handouts.

Is this any way to ask for our "help"?...



Are these the sort of people we need to reward with financial aid? Looks to me like they have WAY too much free time on their hands. Honestly, I sometimes have to wonder if the the Muslims are right in thinking we are just too weak and stupid to even deserve to survive.

Mary Cheney's new book

Mary Cheney's new book is out, and Tammy Bruce has a post about it. In Tammy's last book, "The New American Revolution", she had high praise for Mary Cheney, and that praise continues. An excerpt:

...She's a true American patriot, in the Classical Liberal style, an Authentic Conservative committed to true American freedom.

There's lots of behind the scenes stories in the book including what her father's debate prep was like, as well as her parents reaction to her revelation when she was a teenager that she's gay.

Mary, like I, also knows what it's like to face the Gay Gestapo and how ugly and vile the "tolerant Left" can be when homosexuals don't conform to the Leftist worldview. Her stories are great, her courage inspiring, and her book worth supporting. I personally know about the compassion and generosity of American Conservatives, it's time to show the nation the value and importance of Mary's message by making her book a terrific success...

(bold emphasis mine - Tammy's experience is similar to my own)Tammy also provides a link to an excerpt of the book by ABC news. It's a fairly long excerpt, I'm only going to quote one part of it, which was kind of amusing and weird.

When Dick Cheney was anounced as the VP candidate, the press began to hound Mary and her partner, Heather. They saved some of the messages on their answering machine. Here is a sample of what happened:

...As Heather and I watched the announcement on the television in our living room, our phone started ringing and we found ourselves inundated by calls from reporters and producers who wanted to interview the gay daughter of the Republican vice presidential nominee.

There were well over a hundred calls in the first twenty-four hours, all of which we let the answering machine pick up. As amazing as the volume of calls was the fact that everyone left work and home phone numbers. It wasn't just the producers. Maria Shriver, Diane Sawyer, and Connie Chung all left their home phone numbers, but Heather and I didn't return any of the calls. These reporters only wanted to talk to me about my sexual orientation, and they only wanted to talk to me about that because my dad was a candidate for vice president. I had better things to do. Heather and I did write down everyone's name and number, however. We toyed with the idea of auctioning off the list on eBay, but decided that it probably wasn't a good idea to alienate all of those reporters at the start of a national political campaign.

Without a doubt, the most persistent reporter was Diane Sawyer. She called, or had someone call on her behalf, five separate times. Because we were so impressed by this level of determination, we saved those messages.

Message 1
"Hi, Mary. This is Mark Robertson calling from Diane Sawyer's office. Diane would really like to talk to you. Please call me back at xxx-xxx-xxxx, and I'll connect you."

Message 2
"Mary, it's Mark Robertson again from Diane Sawyer's office. Hope you don't mind, but I gave your number to Diane. She really wants to talk to you and just see how you're doing with everything. You can reach me at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Talk to you soon."

Message 3
"Mary Cheney. This is Diane Sawyer. I've known your parents for years and can't imagine everything you and your family are going through right now, but would love to talk to you and see how you're holding up.Hope you saw the piece I did on Ellen. Please call me — xxx-xxx-xxxx."

Message 4
"Mary, hi, this is pesky Mark Robertson again in Diane Sawyer's office. I'm so sorry to bug you but was watching the Today show this morning and they sort of put all of this into play by saying, you know, Dick Cheney's openly gay daughter, which we all cheered for, but I just wanted you to know if you ever want to see the piece Diane did on Ellen or the thing she won a GLAAD award for this year on Billy Bean the professional baseball player who had to deal with this publicly, I'd love to send them to you, and Diane was wanting to talk to you. I think she called and left you a message and she's at home today and I wanted to leave you her home phone number, which is xxx-xxx-xxxx. I know she just wants to say hello and somebody else, Ellen, has asked me for your phone number 'cause she's friends of mine and Diane's and she's heard about this and just wanted to wish you well I think, so if it's OK just if you'd call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx, I'll give her that number and if not, I won't. So thanks so much. Bye."

Message 5
"Well hello, Mary, this is someone you don't know. It's Ellen De- Generes and I just spoke with Mark, Diane Sawyer's producer, and they tell me you're going through a lot of stuff, so I thought I'd call and see if I can be of any help at all. Just support, I guess, and so call me if you'd like to. It's xxx-xxx-xxxx and we'll talk, all right? Bye."

The only person I was tempted to call back was Ellen DeGeneres. I was a fan, and I appreciated her willingness to call a perfect stranger to offer her support, but mostly I was curious to find out what stuff Mark Robertson had told her I was going through. As far as I was concerned, my only problem was that the media wouldn't stop calling...

You can read the entire excerpt from Chapter One HERE.

You can order the book at Amazon.com In the comments section at Amazon, the liberals are already trashing it. Of course, they haven't actually READ it. They all just "know" what it says, without reading it. It saves them a lot of time - and completly wastes the time of everyone else who's actually interested in what it says.


Related Links:



From Born Again Redneck:
Cheney interviewed on NBC

From the Washington Post:
Out and About: The Vice President's Daughter Tells The Inside Story in Her New Book. But the Subject Is Politics.

 
   

Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes out of hiding to speak at Harvard

Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali had gone into hiding when Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the street in broad daylight, for making a film called "Submission", about muslim violence against women. Ayaan had collaborated with van Gogh in making the film, and a note pinned on to the dead mans body with a dagger said that she would be next.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an ex-Muslim from Somalia, and an advocate for protecting women from violence. Recently she spoke at Harvard, where some Muslim students gave her a hard time. Here are some excerpts from Michelle Malkin's site, from a reader who attended the event:

...The Q&A was marked by the number of Muslim students who objected to Hirsi Ali's criticism of Islam. One student was strident, claiming that as a Muslim from Pakistan she knew nothing about the kind of Sharia Law, strict upbringing that Hirsi Ali claims to have had. One was fairly polite, questioning why any Muslims
should now listen to Hirsi Ali, who is now an avowed atheist, rather than to those who still follow Islam. One was insistent, asking why Hirsi Ali did not criticize all violence against women (she did and referred to articles she had written about numerous cultures and the origins of repression of women in each of them).

But the questioner persisted. Why didn't she criticize Christianity and its sacred texts in the context of violence against women in America? Why only Islam in that context?

How can I capture what it felt like? Hirsi Ali said things that you or I would take as the purest of common sense. For example, her film contains a scene of a battered woman, praying to God, tattooed across her broken body with the specific verses in the Koran that advocate that brutal kind of treatment by a man for his wife. It's wrong for a man to do that to his wife. It calls for the genius of Harvard graduate students of Political Science to somehow equivocate around that simple fact.

One telling moment came when an early questioner asked about the overall issue of assimilation versus cultural isolation in Europe. Hirsi Ali answered that she did not think in terms of assimilation and isolation but rather in terms of individualism and collectivism...

...Near the end, somewhat exasperated, it seems, by the wave of denial that Harvard's Muslim community had brought to the forum, she commented offhandedly to her interviewer "what are they learning here?" or something close to that...

(bold emphasis mine) You can read the whole thing HERE.




Related Links:

LGF Reports on Ayaan Hirsi Ali At Harvard
From Tammy Bruce, with some good links.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "I Really Wonder What You Are Doing Here at Harvard"

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's blog

Western weakness; nature abhors a vacuum

The Brussels Journal has a couple of articles about Belgian churches harboring illegal immigrants. Most of the illegal immigrants are Muslim. A few excerpts:

...Most of the immigrant squatters in the churches are Muslims. They display banners in the church showing the name of Allah (picture taken in the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Brussels).

The Belgian Bishops are so ignorant that they do not see what is going on: their churches are being turned into mosques before their very eyes.

The Muslim squatters hold Islamic prayer services in the church. The altar has been moved and the statue of Our Lady covered by a cloth to hide her from the eyes of the Muslim believers.

The squatters are living in the churches. "Church occupations" by illegal immigrants have been going on for a number of years in Belgium. They are not really "occupations" because the Bishops condone the actions and actively support them. Chris Gillibrand visited a number of Brussels churches to take these pictures...

You can can read more, and see more photos and links too, from the source article here:

Allah Takes Over Church

I see some similarities with our own immigration situation, and the granting of amnesty. Something I also found shocking, was the way Belgian Catholics themselves are being treated by their own Bishops:

...However, many Belgians, including many Catholics, do not agree with the “church occupations.” Belgium has one of the most hospitable policies towards immigrants in Europe. Illegal immigrants are hardly ever expelled. Six years ago the government issued a collective amnesty for illegal immigrants, granting everyone who could prove they had lived in the country for five years the right to “regularise” their status and stay. Over 50,000 did so. The 2000 regularisation was a response to a previous series of church occupations, which had shocked many conservative Catholics, such as Father Herwig Arts, an Antwerp Jesuit and well-known author. “Black families entered our chapel and turned it into a dormitory,” Father Arts complained to the press (Gazet van Antwerpen, 21 November 1998). Father Arts saw men and women sharing beds and cooking in Antwerp’s Jesuit chapel. “They removed the tabernacle, installed a television set and radios, depriving us of the opportunity to pray in our own chapel and say Mass. [...]. It has upset me very much. For me the place has been desecrated,” he said. “I feel I cannot enter it anymore.” At the time Father Arts was severely criticised for his comments. Today he remains silent, as do all Catholic priests, given that the Bishops support the church occupations by the illegal immigrants...

...For Catholic believers the situation is all the more painful as the same Bishops have never bothered to take any action to change, let alone, protest Belgium’s legislation regarding abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and gay adoption. On the contrary, when a Catholic organisation asked for permission to organize a Mass against the impending euthanasia legislation in Brussels Cathedral on 2 March 2002, the use of the Cathedral was prohibited by Cardinal Danneels because it was feared that (Catholic) politicians of the anti-immigration Vlaams Belang party would attend.

(bold emphasis mine). The reference to the Amnesty echos our own situation here in the US. Note how the Belgian amnesty did nothing to solve the problem of church occupations as it was meant to; it perhaps has even increased the problem. Why immigrate leagally when you can just occupy a church instead, until you are given amnesty? You can read more from the source article here:

Belgian Church Organizes Illegal Immigrants



I'm seeing a common thread in western countries; and inability or unwillingness to enforce their own laws. If we do not respect our own laws, we can hardly expect anyone else to respect them, either. If we don't value and respect our own culture, politics and religious background, neither will anyone else.

For all the talk about Muslims and radical Islam, they are only one part of the equation. Islam has been the same for hundreds of years; it hasn't suddenly become agressive. If the Muslims seem more aggressive to us, it's because we have become flabby and weak. They see the west as a bunch of decadent libertines who drink and take drugs, abort our own children, and abandon our own religion; people who are lost in materialism and sensuality, with no will to fight. To the extent that they are right, is the extent they see weakness. Socialist countries with declining populations seem the weakest of all.

I've done a lot of posts about conservative verses liberal politics; many of the posts have been about Islam and Muslim related matters too. I have noticed a common theme that runs through them all; western weakness. I don't necessarily mean a military weakness, but a social-cultural one. A lack of will to fight the war on terror, a lack of will to secure our borders, a lack of will to enforce our own laws, to support our own culture. Nature abhors a vacuum; if we fail to support our culture and values, others will surely rush in to replace them.

Tammy Bruce recently did a post recently called White Guilt and Being Delicate with the Enemy, where she maintains our ability to fight and win the War On Terror is being severely hampered by politically correct multiculturalism and liberal self-loathing of our own culture and values.

Tammy references an article in the Opinion Journal by Shelby Steele called White Guilt and the Western Past: Why is America so delicate with the enemy?, which talks about the white guilt of the west and it's resulting influence of restraint and minimalism on our ability to fight and win a war, or even deal effectively with ANY of our most urgent problems. Some excerpts:

...Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, works by the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past so that America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. (The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons were the focus of such stigmatization campaigns.) Once the stigma is in place, one need only be anti-American in order to be "good," in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy and power in relation to America. (People as seemingly disparate as President Jacques Chirac and the Rev. Al Sharpton are devoted pursuers of the moral high ground to be had in anti-Americanism.) This formula is the most dependable source of power for today's international left. Virtue and power by mere anti-Americanism. And it is all the more appealing since, unlike real virtues, it requires no sacrifice or effort--only outrage at every slight echo of the imperialist past.

Today words like "power" and "victory" are so stigmatized with Western sin that, in many quarters, it is politically incorrect even to utter them. For the West, "might" can never be right. And victory, when won by the West against a Third World enemy, is always oppression. But, in reality, military victory is also the victory of one idea and the defeat of another. Only American victory in Iraq defeats the idea of Islamic extremism. But in today's atmosphere of Western contrition, it is impolitic to say so....

This stigmatization by the political left is weakening the western cultures in many areas of public life:

...Whether the problem is race relations, education, immigration or war, white guilt imposes so much minimalism and restraint that our worst problems tend to linger and deepen. Our leaders work within a double bind. If they do what is truly necessary to solve a problem--win a war, fix immigration--they lose legitimacy.

To maintain their legitimacy, they practice the minimalism that makes problems linger. What but minimalism is left when you are running from stigmatization as a "unilateralist cowboy"? And where is the will to truly regulate the southern border when those who ask for this are slimed as bigots? This is how white guilt defines what is possible in America. You go at a problem until you meet stigmatization, then you retreat into minimalism.

Possibly white guilt's worst effect is that it does not permit whites--and nonwhites--to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities....

I can see why Tammy Bruce liked the article; it's a subject she herself has tackled in her books. You can read the whole artilce HERE.

Sunday Funnies 05/07/06

Funny Sayings - Part 3

Sea captains don't like crew cuts.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor.

- Author Unknown


MICHELLE MALKIN IS AN ANDROID

This is so upsetting - I thought she was real! Learn the horrible truth at Beautiful Atrocities.





A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her poodle with her.

One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long, "Cuddle" discovers that she's lost. Wandering about, she notices a leopard heading rapidly in her direction with the intention of having lunch.

The old poodle thinks, "Oh, oh! I'm in deep shit now!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, she immediately settles down to chew on the bones with her back to the approaching cat.

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?"

Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. "Whew!", says the leopard, "That was close! That old poodle nearly had me!"

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, but the old poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard.

The young leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!"

Now, the old poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?", but instead of running, the dog sits down with her back to her attackers, pretending she hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old poodle says:

"Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"

Moral of this story..

Don't mess with old farts... age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill! Bullshit and brilliance only come with age and experience.





Subject: All Too Familiar?

While on a road trip, an elderly couple stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. After finishing their meal, they left the restaurant and resumed their trip. When leaving, the elderly woman unknowingly left her glasses on the table and, she didn't miss them until after they had been driving about twenty minutes.

By then, to add to the aggravation, they had to travel quite a distance before they could find a place to turn around in order to return to the restaurant to retrieve her glasses.

All the way back, the elderly husband became the classic grouchy old man. He fussed and complained and scolded his wife relentlessly during the entire return drive. The more he chided her the more agitated he became. He just wouldn't let up one minute. To her relief, they finally arrived at the restaurant.

As the woman got out of the car and hurried inside to retrieve her glasses, the old geezer yelled to her, "While you're in there, you might as well get my hat, and the credit card."



Now for the Ted Kennedy Children's book cover of the week:


Hat tip to the Kennedy forum thread at FARK.COM

"Congressman Patrick Kennedy crashed his car into a barricade on Capitol Hill at 3 o'clock in the morning yesterday. The head of his office said there was no alcohol involved. That's why it's a big story, a Kennedy, a car accident and no alcohol? That's never happened before." --Jay Leno





Inspiration:

The Magic of Hope

It's magic and it's free
It's not in a prescription
It's not in an IV.

It punctuates our laughter,
It sparkles in our tears,
It simmers under sorrows,
And dissipates our fears.

Do you know what Hope is?
It's reaching past today,
It's dreaming of tomorrow,
It's trying a new way,

It's pushing past impossible
It's pounding on the door,
It's questioning the Answers,
It's always seeking more,

It's rumors of a breakthrough,
It's whispers of a cure,
A rollercoaster ride
Of remedies, unsure.

Do you know what Hope is?
It's candy for the soul,
It's perfume for the spirit,
To share it, makes you Whole

- Author unknown



The following is from an email that was forwarded to me:

The Day God spilled the paint...



The east side of the Carrizo plain, in the Temblor
Range, about 50 miles due west of Bakersfield ,
California . Photo taken by Barbara Mathews
May 14. 2005

Nothing man can do could ever equal the glory of
God's creations.

The Day GOD SPILLED THE PAINT!

Have a good day, and God bless.

Farm Report 05/06/06

The baby chickens are getting used to their new home in the coop; they spend a lot of time passing in and out of the door to their run...


It's life in the fast lane here at Robin's Wood!

I remember when we were moving from San Francisco to rural Oregon, some people in the city were shocked. They couldn't imagine why anyone would WANT to do that. A typical response would be:

"But what are you going to DO? Watch the FARM Report?"

I found that funny, because that is exactly the sort of place we WANTED to move to; a place where something called "The Farm Report" would matter. Most of the things in the cities that people seem to find so appealing had lost their appeal to us long ago.

So here we are now. Do I watch the "Farm Report"? I am not aware that there is one to watch; there is only one local TV station, that shows old reruns and about 15 minutes of local news. So I get my weather information on the internet (from our local TV station) and I write my own Farm Report. Because it's a small farm, there isn't a lot to write. And that is probably a good thing, because what work that there is to do keeps me pretty busy.

The two ducklings have moved from their small cage in the spare room to their new spacious luxury condo on the back porch:



To call them ducklings anymore seems ridiculous; their feathers are coming in fast, most of their down is falling off, and they are growing fast. I guess they are still baby ducks - six weeks? But they seem to get a little bigger every day.



The chicks are also growing into young hens quickly. The Barred Rock chicks seem to be a bit larger than the others, I don't know if that is because the breed is slightly larger, or if perhaps these chicks were slightly older than the others when we got them. They were all supposed to be the same age, but who knows for sure? Cecil, the Rhode Island Red Rooster, watches them all with great interest...


The chicks are now living in the nursery part of the coop full time now. They have a heat lamp over them inside at night, because the nights are still quite cold.


Meanwhile, the Three Stooges, the Barred Rock un-sexed chicks given to us by our neighbors that I had mentioned in last weeks report, are assimilating. They are getting bigger than the adult Bantam hens they are living with...


The Bantams still harrass them, but not quite as much. The above picture is of the grey Bantam, "Misty", with one of the three stooges.


Here is one of the stooges standing on top the nesting box. Below in one of the compartments, sits Turandot, the Chinese Coachen-Bantam. She is sitting on a clutch of 18 Bantam eggs. If anyone can hatch them, she can.

End of Farm Report!



UPDATE 05/08/06:
A Blessed Event

Sunday night, I heard some peeping from Turandot's nest box. She has been successfu! It's now Monday morning, and we have seen the first chick:

Tammy Interviews Dr. Wafa Sultan

Hat tip to TammyBruce.com for the link.

Vik at The Big Picture was there and took some handwritten notes on what was said (not expected to be verbatim), here is an excerpt:

Dr. Wafa Sultan: I have lost hope for Islam and I think it is the duty of all free speakers to help in the effort to enlighten the Muslims.

...Islam should not be considered a religion, but a political ideology that applies its policy violently.

...Sometimes when I talk to American friends, I get so upset that they don't know anything. A friend [...] said, Islam is a religion of peace. The President of the United States said, Islam is a religion of peace. Do you read anything about Islam? Do you know anything about Islam? When I heard that I just wanted to close my eyes.

...Islam shouldn't be classified as a religion because as a Muslim you have to believe in Islam as a religion and as a state.

...As long as you are allowing the Koran to be read in your schools, you are in grave danger.

...You should force Imams to answer your questions publicly about Islam. Just have them open their book and read it. Many Muslims are embarrassed because the world is starting to ask questions about Islam, and the Muslims know they don't have good answers.

...Muslims at my house say, "wait a few years -- we will replace the U.S. constitution with sharia law, here in the U.S." They are working for that. They don't say it to your face, but they are working for that.

...The Internet is the beginning of the end of Islam. It is the beginning.

...You would be surprised if you knew how many people in Syria believe what I believe. Using fake names, and behind the scenes, they are supporting me. Because you are risking your life and the life of your family. Everyone is looking to the free world to get them out of their prison...

There is more of course, you can see the rest HERE.

This was Dr. Sultan's first English-language speech to an American audience. She delivered some prepared remarks, was interviewed by Tammy, then took some questions from the audience. I would love to see a video of the event, or read a transcript. Hopefully something like that will be forthcoming.


Related link:

Wafa Sultan and Nasar Khader both endure death threats
 
   

France and the Multicultural World War

An interesting article in the Brussels Journal, "The Fall of France and the Multicultural World War", looks at France's current predicament, and it's possible scenarios for the near future, with some interesting stats to back them up. Here are some excerpts:

...It is pretty clear to anybody following the developments in Europe that the situation in France is starting to become rather serious. President Jacques Chirac threw out part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions. The unemployment rate for youths under 26 is a staggering 22 percent nationwide, but soars to nearly 50 percent in some of those troubled areas with many Muslim immigrants. French Jews are leaving the country in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism. Nidra Poller, American ex-pat writer and translator in Paris, has written some appalling stories about aggressive anti-Semitism, such as the murder and brutal torture of French Jew Ilan Halimi early in 2006.


Muslim blogs are calling for violence against the Jews, the whites and the well-to-do. They say, “We must burn France, as Hamas will burn Israel.” The growth of the Islamic population is explosive. According to some, one out of three babies born in France is now a Muslim. Around 70% of French prisoners are Muslims. Hundreds of Muslim ghettos are already de facto following sharia, not French law. Some have pointed out that the French military are not always squeamish, but there are estimates that 15% of the armed forces are already made up of Muslims, and rising. How effective can the army then be in upholding the French republic? At the same time, opinion polls show that the French are now officially the most anti-capitalist nation on earth. France has chosen Socialism and Islam. It will get both, and sink into a quagmire of its own making. Some believe France will quietly become a Muslim country, others believe in civil war in the near future...

(bold emphasis mine)Will France become the new Lebanon? Are we witnessing the Balkanization of the West? There is also the nuclear question:

...People keep talking about the nukes that the Iranians may get, but what about the hundreds of nuclear warheads the French have? Will they be used to intimidate the rest of the West? How do we handle an Islamic France, still the heartland of the European continent, with Muslim control of hundreds of nukes? And how do we handle a Bosnia or Lebanon with a population much larger than either of these countries, and with hundreds of nuclear warheads at stake?


If Muslim immigration continues, the impending fall of France could mark the starting point of the Balkanization of much of Europe, perhaps later even North America. I fear this is a world war. Maybe future historians will dub it the Multicultural World War. Just as WW1 was caused by Imperialism, WW2 by Fascism and the Cold War by Communism, this one will be caused by Multiculturalism. The term “the Multicultural World War” has been coined by Fjordman. I find this to be more accurate than “The Islamic World War” because what will cause this world war is Western cultural weakness, through Multiculturalism and Muslim immigration, rather than Islamic strength. As poster DP111 says, this world war may very well be in the form of a global civil war, where you get a succession of civil wars instead of countries invading other countries. Multiculturalism and uncontrolled mass-immigration destroy the internal cohesion of the decadent West, which will slowly fall apart as it has lost the will to defend itself and the belief in its own culture. The wars in the Balkans in the 1990s will in hindsight be seen as a prelude to the Multicultural World War. Rather than a Westernization of the Balkans, we get a Balkanization of the West...

There is also a discussion of immigration patterns, and the social/political upheavals it can cause. We are seeing modern immigration occuring on a scale the human race has not experienced before. We are now finding Mulsim populations spread throughout the world, with civil strife following:

...Both Thailand and the Philippines, countries where the Muslim population is not much larger than it is in some Western European countries, are facing war. Countries such as France, Holland and Sweden could soon reach a point where the Muslim population will create something akin to civil war, as it already has in the above-mentioned nations. The Islamic world is now at war with most of the major powers on the planet at the same time, from the USA to India and from Russia to Western Europe. It is a real possibility that we will get a full-blown world war because of these events. If so, I don’t think this will happen 50 years from now, but within the coming generation.

There are several possible scenarios...

The scenarios offered are facinating in their details. Which ones are likely to come to pass depend a lot on what the Europeans themselves decide to do or not do. The article is full of embedded links, facts, and quotes from others.

Despite the grim nature of the subject matter, the article suprisingly ends on a hopeful note. Europe may yet save itself; but it will depend on the Europeans, and how they respond. You can read the whole article HERE.


Related Link:

VIDEO: French teacher Assaulted by a Muslim student - male student beats up on his female teacher. Shocking.


Hat Tip to the blog Anti-Dhimmi for the Brussels Journal article and also for the video link.

Democracy, Terrorism and Corruption

Hat tip to Cox and Forkum for the cartoon. You can read their related commentary and links HERE.

Our troops should have been allowed to kill this guy when they had the chance. Instead, he's been made a member of the government, and now we are seeing the awful consequences. Here is a partial quote of an excerpt Cox & Forkum printed from the LA Times:

Sadr's followers, who control as many as 35 of 275 parliament seats, representing working-class Shiites in eastern Baghdad and the country's south, already hold the ministries of health and transportation. But they are eyeing education, youth, commerce, agriculture and electricity as possible additions to their portfolio.

Iraqi and Western officials have criticized the ministries under Sadr's control during the last year as corrupt and ideological. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists say the health system is poorly run and deteriorating. Sadr's loyalists in the Transportation Ministry have removed alcohol from airport duty-free shops and put portraits of ayatollahs on the billboard in front of the Baghdad train station.

The thirtysomething cleric and his fast-growing movement have become a formidable political force. They agreed to forgo claims on the important ministries of interior, defense, finance, oil and foreign affairs and instead focused on building up power and patronage through public-sector jobs and services.

"We prefer to control only those ministries that serve the Iraqi people to build a strong base," said Fadhil Sharih, one of Sadr's deputies. "We will also be directly involved with the Iraqi society, to listen to their needs and serve them."
The formula is similar to the tack taken by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories...

(bold emphasis theirs) The biggest problem the Middle East faces in trying to build democratic societies isn't terrorism, as much as it is corruption, although terrorism and corruption often work together.

Liberals keep saying "You can't IMPOSE democracy onto people from the top; it can't work that way." Therefore, they say, we shouldn't even try... of course, they don't have a solution, other than saying we shouldn't try. But many contemporary "liberals" don't like democracy anyway; it just interfers with their leftist agenda.

Pre WWII Japan had no democratic tradition. We crushed them, imposed democracy on them, wrote their constitution for them, and sat on them until they learned how it worked. Today they are a strong, independent democratic nation and a good ally.

If we had not imposed democracy on them, the former facist goverment, with their shinto suicide-bomber religion most likely would have reasserted itself in another form that was even worse.

But we can't do that today, because of the Political Correctness of Multi-Culturalism, which is a favorite tool of todays political left. So the end result is, we have to include totalitarian dictatorships at the UN, and are expected to treat them as equals, and people like al-Sadr are encouraged to step forward and lead, when clearly he is a corrupt theocrat, at best.

I don't see why imposing secular democracy and the rule of law on people with no democratic traditions is such a terrible thing. People tend to want freedom, even more so once they have experienced it. Helping them to build a democratic, secular, non-corrupt representative government benefits not only them, but the rest of the world as well.

Of course I understand that the Middle East is not Japan. It is also gripped by a strong political/religious totalitarian pathology called Islam, which is no minor force to contend with. Because of this, many people say the thought of democracy in the Middle East is nonsense; it will never work.

With that sort of attitude, it certainly won't; it's defeatism at its worst. So what is the other solution? Tell me, what is it? The one that is better than trying to cultivate secular democracy in the Middle East?

We can't afford NOT to try; and try, and try again, until a way is found that works. If the effort we are making now fails, we must continue to try. If the rest of the world, the UN, backed us up in this effort, it would have a greater chance of succeeding. But that is impossible, as the UN is filled with undemocratic nations that have an investement in seeing democracy in the Middle East fail.

Perhaps the UN has limited use as an arena where we can talk to dictatorships and allies alike. But with so many dictators and totalitarians as members, it's not useful for accomplishing very much. So why must we continue fund it? We could put our money instead into another organization, that only allows members with democratically elected governments.

Democracy is not the answer to everything, especially if it just degenerates into mob rule. And many of our "democratic" allies aren't much better than enemies at times. But for all it's imperfections, democracy is better than any totalitarian system of government. Secular democracy, along with the rule of law, is always worth supporting. The alternatives are always too grim.

Will we play the game till it's too late?

Hat tip to Cox and Forkum for the cartoon. You can read their related commentary and links to several articles on this topic HERE. An excerpt:

...Over the weekend, Condoleezza Rice rejected a bogus Iranian offer for international inspections, saying that the Iranians are "playing games." They sure are, but they're playing the game we started: the charade of trying to establish the basis for war by going through a United Nations Security Council that is sympathetic to dictatorships and hostile to the US.

This is the same charade we played before the invasion of Iraq, and as with that game, the slowdown will only help our enemies, while carrying the real risk that the US will cleverly box itself into a diplomatic corner, permanently stalling our efforts to stop Iran...

March of the Useful Idiots

Here are some photos you most likely did not see in the MSM:


Michelle Malkin today has some excellent pictures of yesterdays protests, that are very indicative of the true nature of the people backing these protests, and what they are really about. Appalling, absolutely appalling. You can see more HERE and HERE.

I'm not sure which is worse; the leftist socialist and communist groups that organize these events; the useful idiots who participate in them; or the MSM, who somehow manage not to tell us that these groups are socialists and communists, even when they carry signs and placards clearly indicating they are. The MSM cameras somehow manage to miss showing those.


The photo above is a prime example of not only why I left the Democratic party, but why I have totally lost respect for most of them. The sentiment on this sign is one I heard repeatedly from customers while I waited tables in San Francisco. The same sort of people who would come back from vacations in Cuba, and remark how peaceful it was there, because nobody disagreed about politics: "Why can't we have that HERE? If only we could round up the Republicans and send them to re-education camps, like they do in Cuba." These folks would also often say: "It's VERY important that we ALL agree."

Too many Democrats seem to believe that nobody should be ALLOWED to disagree with them. I hear Republicans say a lot of critical things about Democrats, but I don't hear them saying they don't have the right to exist or disagree. Whatever happened to the concept of a "Loyal Opposition"?

The Republicans understand that we NEED political opposition in order to have a healthy democracy. I think the Democrats used to understand that, until they were over-run by totalitarian socialists and communists. Now it seems they believe political opposition is something wrong, to be attacked and destroyed. They prefer the "democracy" of Cuba, where there is only one political party; no competition, no political arguing. Just "peace", because everyone agrees... or else.

The views expressed at these protests did not just appear out of thin air. They are taught in our public schools as fact, without opposing viewpoints.

San Francisco was full of refugees from other countries, where they suffered real political oppression. When the parents became citizens, they would usually register Republican. But their children were another story; by the time they had finished going through the public school system, they were convinced that America is an evil, racist, greedy country that wants to enslave anyone who isn't white; they think like victims as their teachers taught them they are, and they register and vote Democrat.


The above sign is another example of distorted thinking. If the above description of Bush were true, the people who made and displayed this sign wouldn't be free to protest the way they are doing. And the reference to decapitation is one that I am seeing repeated more and more. An admiration for Muslim intolerance, something we need to adopt in our own culture? Isn't the person who made this sign projecting their own facist yearnings on to others?

Be sure and thank our teachers unions. They actively promote this crap.

On a more positive note, Tammy Bruce had Josue Sierra on her radio show as a guest, and posted about it HERE.

His blog, Latino Issues, is a breath of fresh air. On the front page, the blog is described as:

Latino Issues is a conservative blog covering news items that relate to immigration, ethnicity, integration, language, culture, and moral values and how they relate to immigrants and citizens alike.

At last, some sanity.


Tammy comments:

...Josue is an important blogger who reminds us that the ethic and commitment to America by legal Latino Americans is vitally important to this nation. He also takes exception to the argument that legal Latino immigrants support today's marching cheaters.

Overall, his is a blog for you to stay connected with this issue and many others, and from one of the more important perspectives--an American Latino perspective based in respect, dignity, capitalism, and the Rule of Law.

And a much needed perspective it is. Thank you, Tammy!


Related Links:

A Day Without an Illegal Immigrant
An imaginary exercise.
An excerpt:

...if illegal aliens all took the day off and were truly invisible for one day, there would be some plusses along with the mild inconveniences.

Hospital emergency rooms across the southwest would have about 20-percent fewer patients, and there would be 183,000 fewer people in Colorado without health insurance.

OBGYN wards in Denver would have 24-percent fewer deliveries and Los Angeles’s maternity-ward deliveries would drop by 40 percent and maternity billings to Medi-Cal would drop by 66 percent.

Youth gangs would see their membership drop by 50 percent in many states, and in Phoenix, child-molestation cases would drop by 34 percent and auto theft by 40 percent.

In Durango, Colorado, and the Four Corners area and the surrounding Indian reservations, the methamphetamine epidemic would slow for one day, as the 90 percent of that drug now being brought in from Mexico was held in Albuquerque and Farmington a few hours longer. According to the sheriff of La Plata County, Colorado, meth is now being brought in by ordinary illegal aliens as well as professional drug dealers...

You can read the whole article HERE.


Jose, Can You See?


Hat tip to Cox and Forkum for the cartoon. You can read their related commentary and links HERE.

Fashionable Communism?

Isn't this the perfect topic for the communist holiday May Day?

Tim Vincent, British BBC veteran and currently the New York correspondent for NBC's "Access Hollywood", has been seen twice now on TV wearing a shirt with one of Communism's most cherished symbols.


I'm sure he wouldn't be seen wearing a swastika, the totalitarian Nazi symbol; so why is it O.K., even fashionable, to wear a totalitarian Communist symbol? The Nazi's killed 21 million people, but the Soviet Union alone killed almost 62 million; communist governments in total have killed 100 million. So what is it that makes communism so fashionable and socially acceptable?

In the article "Totalitarian chic", Jeff Jacoby asks this very question. Here is an excerpt:

...communism rarely evokes the instinctive loathing that Nazism does. Prince Harry's swastika was way over the line, but Tim Vincent's hammer-and-sickle was kitschy and cool. Why?

Several reasons suggest themselves.

One is that in the war to defeat Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union fought with the Allies. World War II eventually gave way to the long-drawn Cold War, but America's alliance with Moscow left in many minds the belief that when it counted most, the communists were on our side.

Moreover, the Nazis didn't camouflage their hatefulness. Their poisonous rhetoric made only too clear that they loathed Jews and other "subhumans" and believed an Aryan master race was destined to rule all others. By contrast, communist movements have typically masked their malice and ruthlessness with appealing talk of peace, equality, and an end to exploitation. Partly as a result, the myth persists to this day that communism is really a noble system that has never been properly implemented.

Third, the excesses of Joseph McCarthy hurt honest anticommunism. In the backlash to McCarthyism, many journalists and intellectuals came to dismiss any strong stand against communists as "Red baiting," and conscientious liberals found it increasingly difficult to take a vocal anti-Soviet stand.

But perhaps the most compelling explanation is the simplest: visibility. Ever since the end of World War II, when photographers entered the death camps and recorded what they found, the world has had indelible images of the Nazi crimes. But no army ever liberated the Soviet Gulag or halted the Maoist massacres. If there are photos or films of those atrocities, few of us have ever seen them. The victims of communism have tended to be invisible -- and suffering that isn't seen is suffering most people don't think about...

(bold emphasis mine) Jacoby offers some good reasoning here, and also talks about some of the shocking venues and products that are making communism trendy and acceptable. Tim Vincent is just one small part of a larger movement. You can read the whole article HERE.


Hollywood values: Communism and fashion naturally go together. Could it also be that people who find Communism fashionable, also agree with totalitarianism, as long as it is politically correct; as long as it moves in directions they approve of? So many people in Hollywood embrace and praise one-party state communist dictators like Fidel Castro. I suspect totalitarianism is fine with these folks, as long as it's the "right kind". I find that attitude appalling. What ever happened to embracing freedom, multi-party democracy and the rule of law? Has it gone out of fashion? It seems to have among the American left and the Hollywood crowd.