I know this is not my usual position. But this is a war. Therefore I have come to believe there should be no immigration or visa waivers until the U.S. adopts a completely new system to stop radical Islamic terrorists from entering the country. A wartime lockdown. And a big change in my thinking.
ISIS and related Islamic terrorists are already here. More are coming. We must stop them.
Until FBI director James Comey gives us the green light, I say seal the borders.
Here’s what we must do: Completely reform the vetting process for immigrants and foreign visitors. Change the screening process. Come up with a new visa-application review process. Stop this nonsense of marriage-visa fraud. And in the meantime, seal the borders. I agree with Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, who argued many of these points in excellent detail on the National Review website on Friday.
Again, why am I taking this hardline position? In the past, I have been an immigration reformer, not a restrictionist. But we are at war. That changes everything.
Let me emphasize that my support for wartime immigration restrictions is not based on religion. I think Donald Trump made a big mistake here. Instead, I agree with this Rupert Murdoch tweet: “Complete refugee pause to fix vetting makes sense.”
Fortunately, the Republican House voted to tighten restrictions on travel to the U.S. by citizens of 38 nations who presently enter our country without a visa. This covers 20 million visitors a year who are allowed to stay 90 days. And of course this system is abused, big time.
But I say seal the borders. People hoping to relocate to the U.S. from Syria, Iraq, and anywhere in the Middle East, and people coming here from France, England, Sweden, and wherever will be upset, at least for a while. There may be some unfairness to this. But I don’t care. Wars breed unfairness, just as they breed collateral damage.
We may set back tourism. We may anger Saudi princes whose kids are in American schools. But so be it. We need a wartime footing if we are going to protect the American homeland.
Of course, President Obama doesn’t get it. He never will. Already we should have led NATO into a declaration of war against ISIS. Already we should have pushed a resolution of war against ISIS through the UN Security Council. Already we should have convened meetings with our Mideast allies to formally declare war against ISIS. Already the U.S. Congress should have issued a formal declaration of war against ISIS.
Posted inImmigration|Comments Off on Larry Kudlow: I’ve Changed. This Is War. Seal the Borders. Stop the Visas.
Reality: It is anatomically impossible to breath into your belly! While many teachers offer this instruction as a metaphor to avoid shallow breathing or shoulder raising, students often take it literally which creates a downward pull in the torso and puts unnecessary pressure on the spine and entire vocal mechanism.
Solution: Update your breathing with an anatomically-accurate map based on your natural design.
MYTH #2: In order to sing, you must deliberately ‘take’ a breath
Reality: Deliberately ‘taking’ a breath creates excess tension and rigidity by interfering with the natural elasticity of your torso. You function most efficiently when you ‘allow’ or ‘let’ for a breath. Have you ever noticed how, at the end of a phrase, the air rushes back into your lungs naturally without effort? That’s because the breathing process starts with an exhale. The inhale will happen effortlessly if you ‘let’ it.
Posted inAlexander Technique|Comments Off on The Top 5 Breathing Myths for Singers…Debunked!
REPORT: Customs and Border Patrol analyst Phil Haney tracked members of the Islamist Deobandi movement with which Sayed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were affiliated. But the Department of Homeland Security deleted the records, then disciplined and retaliated against him when he blew the whistle, he says.
Haney said he worked in Passenger Analysis Units at the Department of Homeland Security in Atlanta and at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center, where he performed research into people and groups that might be linked to terrorism. He identified members of al-Huda and Tablighi Jamaat, subgroups of the Deobandi Movement, a century-old fundamentalist Islamic group originating in Pakistan, as they traveled into and out of the United States. An association with Tablighi Jamaat has been documented by the French in an estimated 80% of terrorism cases. Dar Al Uloom Mosque, frequented by Sayed Farook, is linked with the Deobandi Movement. Tashfeen Malik studied with Al-Huda in Pakistan.
Haney was given an agency award for his work identifying potential terrorists and he was asked to become part of the National Targeting Center, which works to connect the dots between radical figures and groups, he said. After more than six months tracking the Deobandi movement, Homeland Security halted the investigation at the urging of the State Department’s Office of Civil Rights, Haney said.
The agencies asserted that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations, tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the their civil liberties, according to Haney. “The administration was more concerned about the civil rights and liberties of foreign Islamic groups with terrorist ties than the safety and security of Americans,” Haney said. He met with the DHS Inspector General in 2013, in coordination with several Members of Congress. DHS and the Justice Department then subjected him to investigations, none of which showed wrongdoing, he said. In September 2014, they sequestered him, revoked his access to the database and revoked his security clearance.
In a televised interview with Megyn Kelly of Fox News, Haney said that if he’d been allowed to continue his investigation, Malik’s visa application would have been flagged for greater scrutiny.
Posted inIslam|Comments Off on Blockbuster Allegation: DHS, State Halted Investigation Into Islamist Group Linked To San Bernardino Terrorists
Israeli airport security officials routinely ask travelers what their religion is and often bar Muslims as a result. Last night, Chris Matthews was enraged by Trump’s recommendation that American immigration officials ask travelers if they are Muslim. But our own State Department has blasted Israel for denying “entry or exit without explanation”– notably to “those whom Israeli authorities suspect of being of Arab, Middle Eastern, or Muslim origin.” [emphasis mine].
Nour Joudah, an American who was deported from Israel, explained that Israel discriminates against anyone with an Arab name, at Electronic Intifada:
I think it is very clear that they want as few people with Palestinian origin in what they consider Israel and the occupied territories because they don’t even want the [Palestinians] that are there. So why in God’s name would they want us returning in any form or fashion, even if it’s for a limited period or for a visit? … They consider no one’s citizenship valuable if you have an Arab name, end of story.
Sadly, Israeli profiling is already being offered as a model for American ports: “What’s so great about Israeli security? Profiling.”
Israel also discriminates against non-Jewish refugees and immigrants. In an article titled, “Trump is no more racist than mainstream Israeli policies,” +972 states:
“[I]n Israel, there is already a law banning Muslims from immigrating — the ‘Law of Return’ which gives that right to Jews alone.”
Today, a Jew from any country can move to Israel, while a Palestinian refugee, with a valid claim to property in Israel, cannot…
[B]ecause my wife has a Palestinian ID, she cannot fly [into Israel]; she is relegated to flying to Amman, Jordan. If we plan a trip together — an enjoyable task for most couples — we must prepare for a logistical nightmare that reminds us of our profound inequality before the law at every turn.
Even if we fly together to Amman, we are forced to take different bridges, two hours apart, and endure often humiliating waiting and questioning just to cross into Israel and the West Bank….
Israeli law prevents my wife from living with me in Israel. This is to prevent what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once referred to as “demographic spillover.” Additional Palestinian babies in Israel are considered “demographic threats” by a state constantly battling to keep a Jewish majority.
Posted inImmigration, Islam, Israel|Comments Off on Trump’s religion test for immigrants is standard practice in Israel
* That Spaniard, Manuel Valls, knows full well that civil war – fought on racial lines – is more or less inevitable to occur on the territory occupied by European France, at some in determinant time in the future.
It is *inevitable* that France will end up as a majority black/brown Muslim dominated state.
Knowing the national character of the indigenous French, it is also very likely that the indigenous French will launch some kind of aggressive counterattack.
Valls knows this. The entirety of the French political class knows this. After all, they created and nurtured this situation for decades. They also know that they will likely be dead once it comes to pass.
Thus, they ‘can’t help’ but to let it slip sometimes. It’s all about Freudian projection and suppressed guilt and fear.
* Also worth bearing in mind a few differences between France and the US: France has maybe 10x as many Muslims as a % of its population, it’s more confident in the supremacy of its national culture, and its not as concerned about civil liberties in law enforcement.
* I am surprised Marine Le Pen is as successful as she is. Some time ago she gave an interview with the BBC in which they asked her what her response was to those calling her a fascist and a racist. In her reply she denied these charges, said she wasn’t a racist. She ought to have just said what she stood for, “To those who say I am a racist, I say that I stand for the right of France to retain its French character, for…” Or whatever she stands for. Trump would have had better instincts. Don’t apologise. Don’t fight on the battlefield chosen by the enemy. How are these things not obvious? I hope Trump’s example will serve as a lesson.
* Virtually the entire French establishment — media, intelligentsia, the other parties — are arrayed against the FN. Talk about ‘negative’ campaigning — it’s nothing but, 24/7 — the BBC never runs an article about the FN where they fail to refer to the party as “far-right”, a term as loaded as they get.
* French online magazine published a call – since removed – from a guy called Thierry Lecoquierre for right wing French women to be raped by “Blacks, Arabs, Gypsy people”.
Hopefully that will backfire and help the polling.
* An obscene tweet was posted by a doctor three days ago at the Twitter page of the left-wing journal Le Nouvel Observateur. It was quickly removed but Le Salon Beige managed to get a copy. It calls for the rape and impregnating by blacks of all those who sympathize with the Front National, and it is difficult to translate because of its obscenity. Here’s the general idea:
FN sympathizers assuredly provide us with sticks to beat them with. Since they like boots and macho, and loathe feminist ideas, let’s play their game: let’s beat them with our sticks (Note: “stick” refers to male genitals)… Let’s take them at their word, let’s just take them. Since they give us the recipe for mongrelizing the Blue Marine, let’s use it against her camp. Let’s dominate sexually the brainless little “frontists” (i.e., members of the Front National); let’s get them pregnant without hesitation for the survival of a smiling humanity. Since they are dumb and collapse easily before a deep argument, like woodcocks attracted to the hunter’s trigger, it should be easy. Let’s build a fuzzy-haired progeny (I was going to say curly, but I got scared!) for the party of the extreme right; let’s make a fuzzy chignon for those who say “France for the French”, terrorized by differences.
* A question about Houellebecq: How good is he (in French)? Or is his artistic advantage that he’s a fairly explicit Man of the Right in an era when other male top writers (e.g., David Foster Wallace) were in the closet about being rightists?
* FN has never been very good at politics, in addition to not having run anything. They have always reminded me of the American Paulist/Lew Rockwell/Libertarian types who seem to invest more in being weird for the sake of being weird than in learning how to be good at politics. My sense with FN is that the way to make them go away is let them win an election. Even running a small town would be enough to discredit them forever.
That’s what I find fascinating about Team Trump. They seem to be good at politics, despite their man’s grating style. Their manipulation of the free media has been as masterful as you will ever see in American politics. Progressives are the gold standard, but they own the megaphones.
Team Trump is using the tactics of the Progressives. David Horowitz has written a lot about how radicals have a different way of understanding the world. That even though he has left the movement, he still sees the world as a radical seed it. Whittaker Chambers wrote similarly about communism.
The Muslim business is a great example. Instead of trying to fit the events into his immigration proposals, Trump takes what’s there to shift the debate in his direction. If a nation is willing to debate a ban on Muslim immigration, it can debate bans on all other types of immigration so he spends some capital on getting the media to legitimize the debate.
It’s the same dynamic we saw with gay marriage, except that was orchestrated by the party and the media in a coordinated effort. Team Trump is doing this from outside the walls which is not something we have seen in our lifetimes.
* I’m sure most iSteve readers have noticed the tendency of the media to select unflattering photographs of nationalist politicians, poor Nick Griffin has one glass eye so they always managed to find a picture in which his eyes are pointing in different directions, I don’t recall seeing a bad photo of Marine Le Pen, however. What’s up with that?
* Except that Marine Le Pen is not well-regarded among the hardcore nationalists of the FN, whether Poujadist or Legitimist (her niece Marion is however very well-regarded by the traditional party cadres), especially since she cooperated in ousting her father earlier this year. I argued to a friend, “She’s not a nationalist; she betrayed her father and she’ll betray her country. The third commandment comes before the fifth; in my mind what she did was worse than murder.”
And I assure you it all goes far, far beyond some latter-day Ligue Catholique faction plotting in the midst of a last gasp attempt to put the Guise family on the throne. The general consensus among people “like us” in France is that she takes us for granted, knowing the only other option is the former UMP which with its new name “Les Républicains” does not seduce any nostalgic of imperial or regal glory. Her line of thought has been described in the mainstream press as a “cynical Gaullist co-optation,” though that’s not quite correct: notwithstanding her praises for Charles de Gaulle himself and her policy proposals which on reflection could fit into theirs, she does not hide her contempt for his protégés and political descendants. (On this point I have to agree with her, albeit with some qualifications.)
Meanwhile, her right-hand man, the flamboyant Florian Philippot (well-surrounded I might add by the passive would-be pénétrés of the FNJ) is a former protégé of the socialist-sovereignist Jean-Pierre Chevènement (who is little more than a dinosaur of old inter-war Radical nostalgia) willing to say or do anything to eat away at the left’s working class vote, admirably in one sense but without regard for the future cost of certain moves.
I definitely want Marion to win in PACA. I won’t be too upset if her aunt or Philippot lose in their respective fiefs.
* He’s bringing up civil war because he knows his people will start it in order to disempower the FN.
I know little about France but I know the analogous situation here would end very, very poorly for the left.
If leftists started a civil war against Trump supporters, it wouldn’t last all that long unless the police and military took the left’s side, which is unlikely.
* Compare and contrast these two clips, the opening of the 2012 London Olympics, and the opening of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
vice
(I just went with the first two short clips that came up for me searching “opening ceremony year place Olympics.”)
* I’m really glad other people have picked up on this. Those two opening ceremonies really neatly capture the difference between the eastern and western parts of what we used to call Christendom and now has no name. London’s ceremony was a sort of secular black mass meant to make us delight in witnessing a self-hating and dying culture while Sochi’s depicts a nation that’s been through hell but is getting back up again and starting to find its stride.
* From my reading of “Submission,” I understand Houellebecq as suggesting that Islam (at least in the novel) does not really put an end to Western civ, but rather provides a more vigorous, confident religious underpinning for Europe, once the social power of Christianity has evaporated.
My sense is that the civilizational “identity” of Europe is revealed by Houellebecq to be the Roman Empire–which can flourish in a pagan, Christian, and the projected Islamic form. It needs religion to sustain itself; but the religious underpinning is irrelevant doctrinally, so long as it promotes social cohesion and a “thick,” believable moral environment.
A key political fact in the book (which I found tremendously enjoyable) is that while the Socialist alliance brings the Moslem Brotherhood to power, all of the latter’s enthusiasts, and its most powerful actors, are associated with the French right. They seem to embrace Islam as the pathway–perhaps the last one left–to renewing French greatness, and perpetuating the big European idea envisioned by Augustus, Charles Martel, and now Ben Abbes.
* I wonder if the backlash against Trump’s call for a moratorium on Muslim immigration could lead to a less discriminatory call for a moratorium on all immigration? That would be a happy improvement.
* Everyone knows that if you don’t support the right of every person in the US to immigrate to the United States, you are literally Hitler and should be opposed by any means necessary.
* Why do nationalists — National Front, Stormfront — use “front” in their names? It reinforces the idea they are composed of warmongers and brownshirted thugs. They need a name with warm, positive associations. Instead of National Front, maybe something like the Brie Society (La société de brie).
* Even the world’s premier globalist propaganda organ, The Economist, concedes that the 11 towns with National Front mayors are very well run – as are towns with minor party rightwing mayors, such as Orange under the leadership of Jacques Bompard.
* I’ve noticed this strange phenomenon of dubious arguments for good policies being more acceptable/effective than good arguments.
Consider the Birther stuff. It’s silly to argue, in the absence of credible evidence, that Obama can’t be President because he wasn’t born in the US. But, as eccentric as it is, it’s based on an explicit constitutional requirement for the presidency, so, as weird as the Birthers’ premise is, their reasoning from that premise is not controversial.
A more accurate statement about Obama is that he is not a member of the American *nation* because of his assiduously cultivated hybrid identity of resentful minority/deracinated SWPL–the Henry Tudor of post-America, as Steve once said. But that hits the Left too close to home, so it’s inadmissible even though it is highly plausible.
Likewise, we have to argue that Mexicans and Muslims are dangerous criminals and therefore must be kept out. Of course, this isn’t true in the vast majority of cases, but it seems to be an effective line, judging by Trump’s great success thus far.
I don’t mean to minimize the reality of Muslim terrorism or Mexican underclass dysfunction in those cases where it exists, but the real reason we want to keep them out is because this is our country, and we want to preserve it for ourselves and our posterity.
Personally, I think this is a sane and normal point of view, but for some reason you can’t actually say that in America, so patriots like Trump have to resort to sensationalistic claims about dangerous foreigners.
* Trump is using the hard boiled everyman shtick he used to great success on The Apprentice. He is playing a role and playing it well, winning the hearts of the dwindling class of real white Americans who still love “baseball, apple pie, hot dogs, and Chevrolet.” It’s deliberately lowbrow. It’s what I like least about him, even though I recognize it for what it is. A kid at the New York Military Academy who spoke as Trump does in this campaign would have had the vulgarity beaten out of him long before being admitted to Fordham and later Wharton. I’ve wondered if before the general election we might see the real Trump seen by his family (all high achievers), friends, and off-camera business associates. But is the risk of alienating his base worth the gains he might make among better educated or cultured voters who don’t already understand his pretensions?
I’d love to be a fly on the wall at President Trump’s first private meeting with President Putin.
* It is ironic that you mention the French as the historical champions of clear prose because 20th century French intellectuals and continental philosophers in general were notoriously known for their obfuscation. (Derrida is the infamous one).
Posted inFrance, Nationalism|Comments Off on France Heads For Civil War
From Breitbart: After an Algerian and a Syrian living in the same migrant centre were jailed for raping a Swedish women multiple times, concerned locals held an anti mass-migration protest. Only then did an infuriated local social justice group hold their own demonstration… in support of more migration.
The horrific crimes occurred near the Blick Mälaren accommodation, a converted hotel, in the small town on Strängnäs near Stockholm – Just one of hundreds of such centres popping up across Sweden, which has absorbed nearly two per cent of it’s population in migrants this year alone, causing the famously “open” nation to close it’s borders in November.
The mother of one was initially raped on her way home from the pub by the Algerian man, just a short distance from the migrant shelter. She escaped, but was raped a second time not far away, on the same night, by the Syrian man and an unidentified assailant.
One of the men convicted of aggravated rape said to her, “I’m gonna f*ck you little Swedish girl”, before he finished by spitting in her face, court documents seen by the Free Times reveal.
At the beginning of this month the Algerian man was sentenced to two and a half years and banned from Sweden for ten years; the Syrian was given four years for the rape as well as a separate sexual assault perpetrated inside the pub.
Posted inRape|Comments Off on Migrants Gang Rape Women, Lefties Protest In Support Of Migrants
Daniel Greenfield writes: An interesting note from the FBI hate crime statistics. In this case 3 out of 4 is literally true because there are 4 murders as bias crimes, 3 of them were Anti-White, only 1 was Anti-Black.
This is interesting because obvious murder is the top tier of crime and bias crime murders are fairly rare. There were only four total this year. Most of the victims were white.
Anti-Black hate crimes are highest where they involve various versions of assaults, what one might call street confrontations. Anti-White bias crimes are highest in more traditional areas of crime, such as theft, robbery,
It’s been widely reported that the stats list anti-Semitic attacks as being a far more common problem than anti-Muslim attacks. What is also interesting is that if you dig into the numbers, the Islamophobia reports are dominated by the “Intimidation” category.
64 out of 178 anti-Muslim hate crimes involve “Intimidation”. Most of the rest are categorized as “Vandalism”. Bias Intimidation is a fairly slippery and subjective category. Which is also why it’s one of the more common. Less than a sixth of anti-Semitic attacks are classified as Intimidation, but over a third of anti-Muslim attacks are.
If a prosecutor is being leaned on to fight the scourge of bigotry, he’ll find some crimes where he can attach Intimidation. And Intimidation is the single highest category for anti-Muslim crimes.
NJ is one of the worst offenders when it comes to overprosecuting “Intimidation”. It got so bad that the law was trashed by the NJ Supreme Court.
The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the state’s unusual bias-intimidation law was unconstitutional, dealing a potential reversal to one of the most well-known hate crime prosecutions in recent history.
The state’s statute on bias intimidation was the only one of its kind in the nation in saying that defendants can be convicted of bias intimidation if their victims “reasonably believed” they were harassed or intimidated because of their race, color, gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
The court, the state’s highest, unanimously ruled that the 2001 statute was “unconstitutionally vague,” because it does not give defendants fair notice of when they are crossing the line to commit a crime.
This is scary stuff because it tosses out basic criminal justice standards and allows crimes to be defined based on what the victim thought. You can see how this was a boon to bringing a lot of false charges.
Posted inCrime|Comments Off on 3 OUT OF 4 RACIST MURDERS IN AMERICA ARE ANTI-WHITE
There are three ways a foreigner comes to the U.S.A. He comes on an immigrant visa, or on a nonimmigrant visa, or he comes illegally. Let’s ignore the last category there as being just a law-enforcement issue. What about the others?
You’re asking me? I write for VDARE.com. We want a moratorium on allnew permanent settlement! The U.S.A. has as many people as it needs, and some serious problems of assimilation. Let’s stop all issuance of immigrant visas for the indefinite future, and get down to assimilating the huge numbers we’ve let in this past fifty years.
What, exactly, is the case against this? There isn’t one. You can’t make one; although you can, of course, chant platitudes about huddled masses and “a nation of immigrants.” That’s not making a case, that’s just emoting.
When I first came here forty years ago the U.S.A. had 210 million people, who had somehow just managed to put men on the Moon. I traveled all over that 210 million America — actually drove coast to coast and back in my 1964 Chevy. Let me tell ya, in case you weren’t around, 210 million America was a darn nice place.
Now we have 320 million, a 52 percent increase. Is the U.S.A. 52 percent better off for that, discounting for things that would have improved anyway?
I can’t see it.
The ban on settlement needn’t be waterproof. I’m sure most Americans would allow some minimal family unification — spouse and minor children of citizens, subject to basic security checks. Likewise for foreigners with extraordinary talents. If the world’s greatest chess player wants to settle in America, I’d say let him. Personally I’d even allow Muslims in both cases, subject to security screening.
That would get you down to a few thousand a year accepted for permanent settlement, of whom a few dozen might be Muslims. But the current numbers—well over a million a year, ten percent of them Muslims—are insane. We don’t need these people; and with such huge numbers, we can’t do proper, thorough background checks.
So a moratorium on immigrant visas, Muslim or otherwise. What about nonimmigrant visas—business travelers, academic exchanges, diplomats, students, guest workers, tourists?
The first thing to be said here is that these nonimmigrant visa categories are all hopelessly corrupted, as spelled out at length by Michelle Malkin and John Miano in their book Sold Out. The whole system of nonimmigrant visas needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch, with proper entry-exit tracking to stop visa overstayers.
All right, but that’s not going to happen soon. Until it does, should we exclude Muslims, even as tourists?
Yes, we should, to the degree we can. It is true of course that most Muslims aren’t extremists planning terrorism. Only a tiny minority are. The world has a lot of Muslims, though. What’s a tiny minority—0.1 percent? There are 1.6 billion Muslims. Zero point one percent of 1.6 billion is 1.6 million. Keep ’em out!
All, right, but how?
First we need to scrap the Visa Waiver Program. Oh, you didn’t know about that? Citizens of 38 countries can come to the U.S.A. without a visa. These are all First World countries, mostly European; but that’s no protection. Britain, France, and Germany are on the list and now they all have big Muslim populations.
The Visa Waiver Program should be scrapped. Any foreigner who wants to enter the U.S.A. for any purpose should have to apply to his local U.S. embassy for a visa and submit to a personal interview and a background check. Visa officers should have total discretion; and they should be instructed not to issue visas to applicants they suspect of being Muslim.
They’d make a few bad calls in both directions, no doubt; but that’s no reason not to do what we can.
Passport control officers at points of entry are a second line of defense. They already have authority to refuse entry to people on watch lists or who otherwise arouse suspicion. Keeping bad people out is not insuperably difficult.
This is our country. We can admit or exclude anyone we please, without explanation or apology. Right now, with Muslim extremists causing mayhem in Western countries, we obviously have a strong interest in keeping Muslims out.
Again, the ban needn’t be totally waterproof. I’d allow diplomats from Muslim countries, for example; and if the King of Jordan wants to pay a visit, I’d issue him a diplomatic visa.
Beyond that, I don’t see any need. Most of what business travelers do could be Skyped. I can’t imagine Muslim tourism is a big sector even of any of our local economies. We admit far too many foreign students: our schools are a finite resource that should be preferentially for our own people. The guest worker visas are just a cheap-labor scam—read Michelle and John’s book.
The Trump ban wouldn’t completely solve our Muslim problem. We have stupidly been allowing settlement of tens of thousands of Muslims every year for decades now; and there’s a population of native converts, like the boxer Muhammad Ali and the senior Beltway sniper.
But the Trump ban would stop our Muslim policy from getting worse. That, it seems to me, is good sound policy.
It is a measure of how demented, how detached from reality our public life here in the Western world has become, that the Trump ban, which I have just declared to be good sound policy on, I think, calm and reasonable grounds, generated shrieking hysteria among political and media elites here and abroad.
Politicians from both wings of the Democrat-Republican Open-Borders cartel went into harrumph mode. Jeb Bush took a break from trying to lift his poll numbers up into double digits to tweet: “Donald Trump is unhinged. His ‘policy’ proposals are not serious,” with mockery quotes around the word “policy.” Hillary Clinton, also on Twitter: “This is reprehensible, prejudiced, and divisive … This makes us less safe.” I guess continuing to admit 100,000 Muslims a year for settlement makes us more safe.
Marco Rubio honked that “I disagree with Donald Trump’s latest proposal. His habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together.” End honk. Lindsey Graham lisped that: “Donald Trump has gone from making absurd comments to being downright dangerous with his bombastic rhetoric,” end lisp.
Perhaps Mayor Kriseman should attend to the beam in his own eye. According to the NeighborhoodScout website:
St Petersburg has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes … One’s chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 16. Within Florida, more than 93 percent of the communities have a lower crime rate than St Petersburg. In fact … NeighborhoodScout found St Petersburg to be one of the top 100 most dangerous cities in the U.S.A.
Where one’s personal safety is concerned, being banned from St. Petersburg looks like a good deal.
So it went. I didn’t read a whole lot of these responses, but I have not the slightest doubt that someone somewhere said: “That’s not who we are.” It wouldn’t be a full-blown outbreak of PC hysteria without that.
The politicians at least tried for a dignified style of disdain. The media Lefties were just, if Jeb won’t mind my borrowing an adjective from him, unhinged.
The Philadelphia Daily News ran a cover showing Trump with his arm raised and the headline THE NEW FUROR, F-U-R-O-R.
Having mixed with tabloid journalists considerably this past thirty years, I assumed the subeditor responsible was too stupid to spell Führer correctly, but apparently they were trying for a pun. That’s brilliant, guys.
Comparing Trump with Hitler because of the suggested ban on Muslims is actually a bit odd. Hitler seems to have gotten on well with Muslims. Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem when the Nazis took power, was a big favorite. Al-Husseini had an amicable meeting with Hitler himself in 1941; and one of his most treasured possessions was a photograph of him and Heinrich Himmler smiling sweetly at each other, with a friendly inscription by Himmler, taken in 1943. The common bond there was of course hatred of Jews.
It was the same all over the media playpen. I caught The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News Monday night. Bill had his two bimbo lawyers there to discuss Trump’s remarks. The first one started in by saying that not granting visas to Muslims would violate the Constitution. That got a smile from the Big Mick. Bill doesn’t know squat about immigration but he does know that foreigners in foreign countries don’t enjoy the protections of the United States Constitution.
So far as Muslims are concerned, it’s not even clear that Constitutional protections apply even in the U.S.A. Religious freedom isn’t absolute. The Constitution doesn’t protect polygamy, for example. And Islam comes with add-ons that fall outside the scope of Constitutional protections: its own law code, for instance, and extra-national loyalties. It’s not just a religion.
The Pew Research Center surveyed Muslims in 39 countries, asking them if they thought sharia law should be supreme in their countries. In Afghanistan, ninety-nine percent said it should. Pakistan, 84 percent.
Trump’s proposed ban is moderate, sensible, and prudent. The fact that it ignited hysteria among our elites just tells us how unmoored from reality our elites have become.
We need some new elites. Electing Donald Trump as President would be a good start.
Posted inIslam|Comments Off on Trump Has A Point–Why NOT Ban Muslim Immigration?
David French writes: There will be no doubt some hand-wringing about “Islamophobia” and further calls to continue the American elite’s fourteen-year track record of whitewashing Islamic beliefs and culture, but I wonder if the media is missing a powerful, largely-uncovered influence on America’s hearts and minds — the experience and testimony of the more than two million Americans who’ve served overseas since 9/11 and have experienced Islamic cultures up-close. Yes, they were in the middle of a war — but speaking from my own experience — the war was conducted from within a culture that was shockingly broken.
I expected the jihadists to be evil, but even I couldn’t fathom the depths of their depravity. And it was all occurring against the backdrop of a brutally violent and intolerant culture. Women were beaten almost as an afterthought, there was a near-total lack of empathy for even friends and neighbors, lying was endemic, and sexual abuse was rampant.
Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became. I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community.
I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he’d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said — in perfect Army English — “Sir, this s**t is f**ked up.” It is indeed.
While it’s certainly unfair to judge Indonesia or Malaysia by the standards of Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s very hard to shake the power of lived experience, nor should we necessarily try. After all, when we hear stories from Syria, Yemen, Gaza, the Sinai, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, Pakistan, and elsewhere they all fit the same depressing template of the American conflict zones. Nor is the dazzlingly wealthy veneer of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the other Gulf States all that impressive. Tens of thousands of soldiers have seen the veritable slave labor that toils within the oil empires and have witnessed first-hand their casual disregard for “lesser” life. But this same experience has caused us to treasure the Muslim friends we do have — in part because we recognize the extreme risks of their loyalty and defiance of jihad. That’s why American officers fiercely champion the immigration of local interpreters, even to the point of welcoming them into their own home. That’s why there’s often an intense connection with our Kurdish allies, the single-most effective ground fighting force against ISIS.
Posted inIslam|Comments Off on Why Americans Dislike Islam
* Nobody here, or anywhere else, is scared of the vast majority of Muslims either. It’s just that the vast majority of non-terrorist Muslims don’t provide any benefit to this country that outweighs the problems caused by the terrorist minority, so there’s really no reason to have any of them here.
* I would like to see Trump for President and Cruz for AG. I don’t know why more people aren’t talking up this rather obvious synthesis.
Trump would not give Jeb any job in his administration more prestigious than serving carved meat at a pool party, and even that would be an honor.
* Trump isn’t David Duke. Trump has spent yeeeeaaaaarrrrrss (Trump voice) on TV. As the laughable butt of jokes on Oreo commercials with the Manning brothers (“Double Trump!”) or hosting the Apprentice or feuding WWE style with Rosie O’Donnell. NBC promoted him for years, and now he’s an un-person?
The problem with that is that 99.9999% of US entertainment idolizes rebels. The street cop who does it “his way” with the loud Black superior screaming at him. Bruce Willis as a “rascal” (in the clean-for-tv version) in Die Hard 2, or all the Die Hard movies, Liam Neeson in Taken 1-23, every action movie ever made, most TV shows, etc. Conformity, toeing the line, going along, have been shown in American entertainment to be the province of either villains or weaklings.
Trump is just playing Dirty Harry, the Man with No Name, John McClain, Captain America, and Iron Man all in one. He importantly says “I love Muslims” and “I love Mexicans and will get the Hispanic vote,” so he’s not the bad guy. The difference between the villain and the hero is the latter is motivated by decency and former by power. Trump knows this story has been playing out in America for more than a century and plays to it very well.
Duke was a Klan member, he didn’t offer much of anything but the Klan, so he went nowhere and lost to the crook.
It seems that the GOP is planning a “floor fight,” with the establishment just throwing out the rules and refusing to acknowledge Trump delegates/votes, and choosing its own candidate. Rubio acts like he’s got the deal to be the nominee. Presumably the GOP can do that if it wants.
Which means it would be Trump vs. Hillary vs. Rubio. By no means is that a certain victory for Hillary. Many suspect that Bill Clinton out of rivalry with Gore sandbagged his electoral effort against W. Would Obama be happy to remain the Democratic Big Man leader instead of President Hillary? Does Rev. Wright live by a golf course in a lily White area? Moreover as noted above, Trump draws substantial amounts of support from Democrats. If you are a White union voter, would Hillary! be your candidate? If you were a lesbian, maybe. Outside the pantsuit set, not much. Nor would Boy Rubio be a choice either. Trump, Northeastern, employs union labor, fairly liberal in social attitudes but embracing Nationalism and White identity? Sure.
Trump would lose the Romney set, and also the Lindsay Graham Log Cabin Republicans (all five of them), as well as the cuckservative insiders. His gains among blue collar Whites however would IMHO more than offset losses. That’s because Trump is liberal enough in social areas to get blue collar White votes, while being assertive for White group rights but not pursuing racial conflict.
Indeed the coming defenestration of Rahm Emmanuel*, who is toast in Chicago and WILL be replaced by some Black candidate, is going to be instructive. The go along, get along, White leadership and Black votes of the past is no longer tenable, as divided as Republicans are Democrats face an outright racial split with Whites in the Northeast and Midwest being purged out of Universities and City leadership in favor of … Blacks. Chicago going full Detroit, with a general White purge of leaders in favor of Blacks, only gains more White blue collar votes for Trump and away from Hillary!
Posted inIslam|Comments Off on Do the benefits of Muslims in America outweigh the cost? Asking for a friend.
