Eric Trump Full Interview Fox & Friends On Donald Trump Brexit Speech, Fox News via YouTube, June 27, 2018
Posted tagged ‘Britain’
The EU-Progressive Paradigm is Falling Apart
June 27, 2016The EU-Progressive Paradigm is Falling Apart, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, June 27, 2016
In short, millions of ordinary people in America, England, France, and many other Western nations know that the paradigm of transnational hegemony and technocratic rule created not a utopia, but an arrogant privileged class that believes it is superior and thus entitled to boss other people around and lecture them about backward superstitions and bigotry. And it looks like these average citizens have had enough.
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Long-developing cracks in the Western political establishment’s century-old paradigm suddenly widened this year. In the US Donald Trump, a reality television star and real estate developer, improbably became the Republican Party’s nominee for president. Bernie Sanders, a socialist and long-time Senate crank, challenged the Democrats’ pre-anointed nominee Hillary Clinton, who prevailed only by dint of money and un-democratic “super-delegates.” Meanwhile in Europe, the UK voted to leave the European Union, perhaps opening the flood-gates to more defections.
These three events share a common theme: populist and patriotic passions roused by arrogant elites have fueled a rejection of Western establishments and their un-democratic, autocratic, corrupt paradigm.
That political model can be simply defined as technocratic and transnational. Starting in the 19th century, the success of science and the shrinking of the world through technology and trade created the illusion that human nature, society, and politics could be similarly understood, managed, and improved by those trained and practiced in the new “human sciences.” This new “knowledge” said people are the same everywhere, and so all humans want the same things: peace with their neighbors, prosperity, and freedom. The absence of these boons, not a permanently flawed human nature, explains the history of war and conflict. National identities, along with religion and tradition, are impediments to institutionalizing this “harmony of interests.” International organizations and covenants can be created to enforce this harmony, shepherd the people towards the transnational utopia, and leave behind the misery and wars sparked by religious, ethnic, and nationalist passions.
Technocracy, however, is by definition anti-democratic. So how can the foundational belief of Western governments – the sovereignty of free people and their right to be ruled by their own consent–– coexist with an administrative state staffed by “experts” and armed with the coercive power of the state? Quite simply, it can’t. As for the transnational ideal of a “harmony of interests,” it was repudiated by the carnage of World War I, when the Entente and Central Powers sent their young to die under the flags of their nations on behalf of their particular national interests. Yet the West still codified that transnational ideal in the League of Nations, even as it enshrined the contrary ideal of national self-determination, the right of people to rule themselves free of imperial or colonial overlords.
This gruesome war demonstrated that people are still defined by a particular language, culture, mores, folkways, religions, and landscapes, and that nations have interests that necessarily conflict with those of other nations. That’s why the League failed miserably to stop the aggression of its member states Japan, Italy, and Germany, and could not prevent an apocalyptic second world war that took at least 50 million lives. Yet the Western elites continued to pursue the transnational dream of technocratic rule after World War II, creating the UN as yet another attempt to trump the reality of national differences with some imagined harmony of interests. In reality, the UN has been an instrument used by states to pursue those interests at the expense of other nations.
Still not learning their lesson, the transnationalists created yet another institution that would subordinate the nations of Europe to its control, on the debatable assumption that the carnage of two world wars was wrought by national particularism. They confused genuine patriotism and love of one’s own way of living, with the grotesque political religions of fascism and Nazism, both as much avatars of illiberal tribalism as nationalism grown toxic. Thus was born the supranational EU, which began modestly in 1958 with the European Economic Community, and then relentlessly expanded over the years into today’s intrusive, unaccountable bureaucracy of anonymous technocrats that has concentrated power in Brussels at the expense of national sovereignty.
Similarly, in the US the progressives of the early 20th century began transforming the American Republic based on similar assumptions. They believe that economic, social, and technological progress rendered the Constitution––particularly its separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalist protections of the sovereignty of the states––an anachronism. “The age of enlightened administration had come,” F.D.R. proclaimed, and he set about creating the federal bureaus and agencies that have over the years expanded in scope and power, and increasingly encroached on the rights and autonomy of the states, civil society, and individuals.
But the Eurocrats and progressives forgot one of the most ancient beliefs of the West, and a fundamental assumption behind the structure of the Constitution––that a flawed human nature, vulnerable to corruption by power, is constant across time and space. As Benjamin Franklin wrote during the Constitutional convention, “There are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice: the love of power and the love of money,” which when combined have “the most violent of effects.” As much as the democratic mob, any elite, whether of birth, wealth, or education, is subject to power’s corruption and abuse. That’s why our Constitution checked and balanced power: to limit the scope of any part of the government, and thus safeguard the freedom of all citizens no matter their wealth, birth, or education.
In contrast, the conceit of progressives and EU functionaries is that they are somehow immune to the seductions of power. They think their presumed superior knowledge and powers of reason make them more capable and trustworthy than the fickle, ignorant masses and the elected officials accountable to them. History, however, shows that technocrats are as vulnerable to the corruption of power as elites of birth or wealth, and that power is, as the Founders were fond of saying, “of an encroaching nature” and must “ever to be watched and checked.” The expansion of the EU’s tyrannical regulatory and lawmaking power at the expense of national sovereignty is the proof of this ancient wisdom. So too are America’s bloated federal executive agencies aggrandizing and abusing their powers at the expense of the people and the states.
Thus the dominant paradigm that has long organized politics and social life in the West is now under assault, for history has presented this model with challenges it has failed to meet. The resurgence of Islamic jihadism and terror has been met with sermons on Islamophobia and therapeutic multiculturalism. A newly assertive Russia has pursued its national interest with state violence, only to be scolded by our Secretary of State for “behaving in a 19th century fashion.” The financial crisis of 2008 was caused in part by government political and regulatory interference in the market, the same policies that have kept economic growth sluggish for over seven years. Feckless immigration policies have been worsened by a failure to monitor those who get in, and to assimilate those that do. And most important, the redistributionist entitlement regime has weakened the citizens’ character, fostered selfish hedonism, and is on track to bankrupt this country and many in Europe. All these crises have in the main been the offspring of progressives and Eurocrats, whose only solution is to cling to the policies that empower and enrich them, but degrade their own cultures and endanger their own peoples.
Millions of citizens both in the US and in Europe have been watching these developments and living with the baleful consequences that the hypocritical, smug progressive and EU elites seldom encounter in their daily lives. This long-festering anger and resentment of those who smear them as stupid racists, neurotic xenophobes, and fearful “haters,” has now burst to the surface of political life. People can see that the “we are the world,” “global village” cosmopolitanism enriches and empowers the political, cultural, and business elites, but passes on to the people the risks of careless and often deadly immigration policies, and the economic dislocations of a globalized economy. They see that coastal fat cats, who can afford the higher taxes and the costs of environmental regulations, care nothing for the flyover-country working and middle classes pinched by higher electric and gasoline bills. People who live in tony enclaves of white professionals and hipsters support unfettered immigration, while others have to live with the crime and disorder that comes from thrusting into their midst people from very different cultures and mores, including some who have a divine sanction to kill the same people who have welcomed them in.
In short, millions of ordinary people in America, England, France, and many other Western nations know that the paradigm of transnational hegemony and technocratic rule created not a utopia, but an arrogant privileged class that believes it is superior and thus entitled to boss other people around and lecture them about backward superstitions and bigotry. And it looks like these average citizens have had enough.
England has spoken in favor of popular sovereignty and self-government. Soon it will be America’s turn. Our British cousins made the right choice. Let’s hope we do too.
Why Brexit Is More Entrance Than Exit
June 26, 2016Why Brexit Is More Entrance Than Exit, PJ Media, Roger Kimball, June 26, 2016
(The petition for a new referendum poll was apparently a scam.
The BBC, The Mirror, France 24, The Telegraph, Manchester Evening News, The Guardian… all reported on the bogus petition.
But they got punked. The poll was manufactured by 4Chan and Anonymous hackers who loaded up the signatures with fake names from The Vatican, Ghana, North Korea and elsewhere. [Emphasis in original — DM]
The petition fit the meme, so it deserved and got no fact-checking — DM)
Pop psychologists tell us that grief proceeds through five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Have been blindsided by the stunning victory of Brexit on Thursday, members of the camp of the Remainders are now vibrating somewhere between anger and bargaining. This followed hard on a brief period of stunned denial that often expressed itself as gulping incredulity. As the psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple observed in City Journal,
For a long time, Britons who wanted their country to leave the European Union were regarded almost as mentally ill by those who wanted it to stay. The leavers didn’t have an opinion; they had a pathology. Since one doesn’t argue with pathology, it wasn’t necessary for the remainers to answer the leavers with more than sneers and derision.Even after the vote, the attitude persists. Those who voted to leave are described as,ipso facto, small-minded, xenophobic, and fearful of the future. Those who voted to stay are described as, ipso facto, open-minded, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking.
At this point it is not clear exactly when the Brits will formally invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and officially begin the withdrawal negotiations. But Thursday’s vote made Britain’s congé in the most stinging and public manner.
As of this writing, early Sunday morning, the Remainders have yet to take that rebuke on board. They have, however, moved firmly from denial to white hot anger, as the movement to invalidate the referendum by holding a second referendum attests. As of last night, a petition demanding that Parliament force a new referendum had attracted some 2 million signatures.
The fatuousness of that effort is as patent as it is contemptible. Back in 2009, Barack Obama smugly observed that “elections have consequences.” Thursday’s vote was a non-binding referendum, not an election, but it most assuredly has consequences, as (for example) the immediate announcement by David Cameron, the prime minister, that he would soon be resigning demonstrates.
I expect that the Remainders will soon abandon the petition and move on to more circuitous, backroom maneuvers to subvert or nullify the will of the people. It is at that point, when the delayers and dispensers of red tape arrive with their megaphones, that we’ll know that the bargaining stage has been definitively reached. (I am no psychologist, but my observation is that most people, even if they do progress through the five stages described, do not entirely leave behind the earlier stages. There generally persists, I believe, a bit of denial and more than a bit of anger.)
Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, put his finger on one of the most extraordinary features of the Brexit phenomenon: that the vote turned out the way it did despite the Establishment’s mobilization of every resource at its command against it. “Never,” he wrote in an article for The Wall Street Journal, “has there been a greater coalition of the establishment than that assembled by Prime Minister David Cameron for his referendum campaign to keep the U.K. in the European Union.”
There was almost every Westminster party leader, most of their troops and almost every trade union and employers’ federation. There were retired spy chiefs, historians, football clubs, national treasures like Stephen Hawking and divinities like Keira Knightley. And some global glamour too: President Barack Obama flew to London to do his bit, and Goldman Sachs opened its checkbook.And none of it worked. The opinion polls barely moved over the course of the campaign, and 52% of Britons voted to leave the EU. That slender majority was probably the biggest slap in the face ever delivered to the British establishment in the history of universal suffrage.
I’d say that 52% is closer to “decisive” than “slender,” but Nelson’s point is well taken. The Remainders threw everything they had into this campaign, but it availed them nothing. The British people don’t like what the commissars in Brussels have been doing to their country. What is euphemistically called “immigration” — really, it is a sort of invasion – was part of the story, but only a part. Remainders seized on immigration as the motivating issue because it was easy to weaponize and use it to castigate those who favored Brexit as troglodytic nativists and reactionaries.
As I noted yesterday, the Brexit vote was less an “anti-Europe” vote than a positive assertion of freedom. Indeed, it was by accentuating the positive, by underscoring Brtain’s native strengths and potential, that Brexiteers like Boris Johnson were able to give affirmative voice to the people’s disenchantment. The unease that many Brits felt under the regulatory yoke of the EU is felt by many other people, including many Americans.
As has been often pointed out, that unease helps to explain the success of Donald Trump. Would that Trump had a scintilla of the insight and affirmative spirit of Brexiteers like Boris Johnson, Dan Hannan,Michael Gove, and Nigel Farage. Despite desperate howls to the contrary, the campaign these men waged triumphed not because of what they were repudiating but what they were saying Yes to. Sure, the campaign involved a No to officious interference by corrupt and unaccountable officials across the channel. But the main course was Yes: Yes to freedom, Yes to individual responsible, Yes to deciding for ourselves how we will govern ourselves.
There’s a moral here for politicians, and for political pundits. It’s unclear, however, whether many people are bothering to read the script.
A victory for patriotism
June 26, 2016A victory for patriotism, Israel Hayom, Dror Eydar, June 26, 2016
(“Patriotism” — what a silly, old-fashioned concept. Thus spake the left. — DM)
1.
Nationalism won in Britain — not “fascism,” not “xenophobia” and not any of the other pejoratives pseudo-liberals love to apply to anything that counters their beliefs. Yes, pure and simple patriotism is what drove Brexit supporters, the kind of nationalism that leftist-liberal elites in the West in general, and Britain in particular, do not identify with.
British nationalism preceded Europe. The late historian Adrian Hastings placed the emergence of the buds of this nationalism in the eighth century and the formation of a true English national entity between the ninth and 11th centuries, at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. So the claims that the pro-Brexit movement was fueled by of “populism” and “empty rhetoric” indicates the critics’ own worldview.
2.
Fear of foreign migrants was not the main motive behind Brexit, but the unchecked flow of such migrants did serve as a wake-up call. Many of the migrants flooding into Britain refuse to integrate into British society. They do not adopt the culture of their hosts and do not see themselves as committed to the long-standing British ethos. This cultural (and perhaps national) autonomy migrants have created for themselves within Britain has served as a catalyst for the reawakening of natural feelings of patriotism among native Britons — feelings that elites have been trying to kill in the name of universal ideas.
3.
Not surprisingly, and quite entertainingly in fact, much of the Israeli media showed sympathy for the “Remain” camp. Why, you ask, does this have anything to do with us? Let’s look at the similarities between the Brexit vote and the last Knesset elections in March 2015. One can see the same media denial of the will of the people, belittlement of patriotic and religious sentiments and adherence to leftist totalitarian thinking (even at the cost of detachment from reality and the people). For Israeli media figures, the aftermath of the Brexit vote was a mini-replay of the dejection they felt after the last Knesset elections.
4.
Just a few months ago, U.S. President Barack Obama called on Brits to vote to remain in the European Union. The results of Thursday’s referendum showed Obama’s complete lack of influence. Obama is a symbol of both the radicalization of Western elites, who since the end of World War II have been trying to dissolve the idea of the sovereign nation-state, and the attempt by these elites to impose ideology (euphemistically called “values”) on the reality they see, instead of engaging in a thorough examination of reality and the lessons of history. The drama in the U.K. will have implications on these subjects, too.
5.
When it comes to Israel, it is still not clear whether Britain’s departure from the EU will be good or bad. Anti-Israel activists on the European continent and inside Britain, who, seeking via a variety of methods (some sophisticated and some less so) to thwart the Jewish people’s return to Zion, will not disappear, and will perhaps even get stronger. However, seeing the hostile EU be weakened is not a bad thing. We will wait and see how things develop.
Brexit and Multiculturalism
June 26, 2016Brexit and Multiculturalism, American Thinker, Salim Mansur, June 26, 2016
The people of Britain made their decision by a slim majority of 52 percent to 48 percent to Leave the EU. After months of heart-wrenching debates and all the leverage that the Remain side with the Prime Minister David Cameron and his opposite, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, could apply, the people decided staying within the EU was not positive for Britain’s future.
The referendum’s outcome throws Britain into a period of economic and political uncertainties that the Remain side vigorously pushed as their main argument for staying within the EU. There will be a lot of soul-searching among the British elites in politics and business, in the media and in the universities, as to why the opponents of the EU prevailed. The referendum results will be minutely analyzed to understand why the British public was not sufficiently persuaded by their party leaders to back the status quo, and why on the other hand a majority of voters put aside their fear of uncertainty in favor of leaving the EU.
But the overarching reason why Britain left the EU, I believe, is plainly and simply understood if political correctness is set aside. A slim majority of the British public, primarily its aging population who remember what Britain was once like not too long ago as society and culture that open immigration policy severely, if not mortally, has undermined, decided that to save what remained of their island kingdom they needed to regain their full political sovereignty instead of losing more of it to the bureaucrats of the EU in Brussels.
Immigration, it bears repeating, and what it together with multiculturalism have done to Britain in incrementally unraveling its very special place in history, over-rode the arguments in favor of remaining in the EU. The peril of open-door immigration was foreseen many years ahead of the decision made to join the European Common Market (the predecessor to the EU) ratified by a referendum held in June 1975.
Nearly half-century ago Enoch Powell, a Conservative MP and a member of the shadow cabinet led by Edward Heath, spoke out on the perils of open immigration that came to be known as the “Rivers of Blood” speech.
At a Conservative Party gathering in Birmingham on April 20, 1968, Powell warned how unrestricted immigration was inexorably and unalterably changing the nature of British society. What is mostly remembered of Powell’s speech is what was at the time considered inflammatory. But for Powell it was about numbers as he stated, “bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent.”
The Birmingham speech ended for Powell a distinguished career in politics as his warnings went unheeded, and he was removed from his position in Heath’s shadow cabinet. In the aftermath of the July 2005 suicide bombings in London, and concerns over “homegrown terror” from radicalized Muslim immigrants or Muslims of immigrant parents born in Britain, Powell’s warning in retrospect was prophetic for contemporary Britain and the West in general.
In the forty years since Britain joined Europe, immigration from the “Third World” countries of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean have changed her urban landscape. According to Britain’s 2011 census, the foreign-born population constituted 11.9 per cent of the total population. But the cumulative number of the British public as foreign-born, or children of foreign-born, since at least 1961 makes the total in aggregate numbers or in percentage term substantively greater than the 10 per cent of Britain’s population that Powell had warned could significantly alter the character of the country.
It is not immigration alone of people of non-European ethnicity that has had a cumulative impact on the makeup of contemporary Britain. After joining Europe in 1975 Britain, in common with other Western liberal democracies, adopted the policy of multiculturalism as the basis of meeting the demand for equality with the country becoming increasingly multiethnic due to immigration and open borders.
The policy of multiculturalism is based on the spurious idea that all cultures are equal and, therefore, deserving of equal respect and treatment. In effect, this means that the liberal democratic culture of the host country, since multiculturalism as a policy or doctrine is nonexistent outside of the West, is equal to or no better than nonliberal or illiberal cultures of non-Western societies. Hence, multiculturalism is one of the most insidious assaults on liberal democracy based on the hard-won principle of individual rights and freedoms.
In the United States, among those most notable who warned against multiculturalism was Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in his book The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1991). The vulnerability of liberal democracies arises, however, from the situation that the tools by which liberals have advanced the principles of individual rights and secured them in law are equally available — and indeed, often provided for by liberals as a matter of principle — to those who either do not believe in liberal values or subordinate them to collective rights based on the arguments of group identity. The demand by vocal segments of the Muslim community for the acceptance of Sharia provisions by Western governments is, consequently, a logical outcome of multiculturalism adopted as a policy of treating equally people of different cultures within a liberal democracy such as Britain.
Such demands as acceptance of Sharia provisions, which have been incrementally conceded in Britain, might be ridiculous to the majority population of the host country. But for the British elites, the absurdity would be in denying the implicit logic of multiculturalism that they concocted and sold to the people.
The absurdity inherent in multiculturalism might be noted in the example of Bikhu Parekh, appointed to the House Lords in 2000 by then Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair made Parekh, a professor of race relations and of Indian origin, a life peer to secure ethnic Indian votes for the Labour Party. Parekh on his part went on to suggest that Britain should change its name because of the negative connotations for millions of people around the world and, moreover, since Britain has become increasingly multicultural, there remains no justification for it to be British anymore.
Open-door immigration and multiculturalism might also be viewed as the response of Western liberal democracies driven by a sense of guilt for past wrongs. This sense of guilt is uniquely a Western phenomenon, making liberal democracies vulnerable to claims of past injustices made by others, especially non-Westerners who were once ruled by European powers.
The French political philosopher Jean-François Revel observed, “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is working to destroy it… What distinguishes it is its eagerness to believe in its own guilt and… is zealous in devising arguments to prove the justice of its adversary’s case and to lengthen the already overwhelming list of its own inadequacies.”
In the post-referendum analysis to come of the vote in Britain for leaving the EU, it is unlikely that the issues of immigration and multiculturalism will receive due attention. These are sensitive issues, and there is a legitimate place for politeness — distinct from political correctness — when discussing sensitive issues in public.
But if the elites in Britain, and elsewhere in the West are not to get too disconnected from the public, they will need to be honest with themselves and understand how the twin policies of immigration and multiculturalism have divided their societies. It will be a tragic mistake to interpret the vote to leave EU by the British people as a populist and nationalist movement tinged with “white” bigotry.
Instead the Leave vote in this referendum was driven in some measure by the very respectable desire of the British people to demand a halt to the irreversible diluting of their national culture, rich in history and about which they have every right to be genuinely proud, by increasingly conceding to elite-driven policies of immigration and multiculturalism.
To equate a culture that has given to the world Shakespeare and Newton, the Magna Carta and parliamentary democracy, ruled the waves and defended freedom when it was most imperiled, with cultures that practice slavery or gender inequality or impoverishes the human mind, is demeaning. But in the post-9/11 world the British people, though they are not alone, have patiently suffered some living in their midst who take a pathological pleasure in insulting their hospitality, threatening their security, engaging in terrorism and openly espousing causes or doctrines at war against deeply embedded values of freedom and democracy cherished by them.
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, described in her book Londonistan how greatly, and not for the better, immigration and multiculturalism have changed her country. It should be a matter of pride and celebration when Sadiq Khan, born to Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, is elected the Mayor of London. This could only have happened in the contemporary West.
But if there comes a moment when immigrants from Pakistan, or India, or Nigeria and elsewhere, such as Bikhu Parekh, on the basis of multiculturalism push to turn large portions of Britain into cultural enclaves of their origins, then the tipping point of tolerance for diversity, or pluralism, on the part of the host population has been reached.
The Leave EU win in the referendum was brought about as a result of the tipping point reached by the people in Britain.
Freedom of Speech is not Free; it is Beyond Price
June 26, 2016Freedom of Speech is not Free; it is Beyond Price, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 25, 2016
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Accurate speech, considered “Islamophobic” or otherwise offensive to some, is now deemed “hateful” and punishable under distorted visions of law or university rules. So, apparently is the mention of God. Sometimes, those who dare to speak are silenced before they even begin.
The First Amendment provides,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Congress is not permitted to ignore the First Amendment, but the U.S. Airforce and other government entities appear to have done so. Recently, Senior Master Sergeant Oscar Rodriguez, Jr. (ret.) was forcibly removed from a private retirement ceremony at an Air Force base because he was about to deliver his flag folding speech. The retiree had heard the speech previously and had asked Rodriguez to deliver it.
When Roberson’s unit commander discovered that Rodriguez would be delivering the flag-folding speech, which mentions “God,” during the ceremony, he attempted to prevent Rodriguez from attending. After learning that he lacked authority to prevent Rodriguez from attending, the commander then told Roberson that Rodriguez could not give the speech. Rodriguez asked Roberson what he should do, and Roberson responded that it was his personal desire that Rodriguez give the flag-folding speech as planned. . . .
Roberson and Rodriguez tried to clear the speech through higher authorities at Travis Air Force Base, even offering to place notices on the door informing guests that the word “God” would be mentioned. They never received a response from the authorities. As an Air Force veteran himself, Rodriguez stood firm on his commitment to Roberson. [Emphasis added.]
Here is the speech, as Rodriguez had given it previously:
What an offensive word! True, it’s in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, but that’s gotta go. Thought experiment: what if Rodriguez had said “Allah” rather than “God?” Might that have been viewed as sufficiently inclusive to be acceptable? Why not? In its “unredacted” version of the Islamist Orlando shooter’s phone calls, the Department of Justice translated “Allah” into “God.” The DOJ probably didn’t want to hurt Islamists’ feelings by suggesting that the Obama administration thinks that Allah and hence Islamists have anything to do with terrorism.
Are we just beginning to enter a new age of fascism? No, we are already well into it.
Here’s a Bill Whittle segment about Obama, Guns, Islam and Orlando
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-linked “civil rights” organization, recently published an “Islamophobia” report. In Obama’s America, CAIR and its Islamist affiliates are the Government’s principal “go to” organizations for limiting access to the Muslim community in “countering violent extremism” efforts and during investigations of terror incidents.
According to CAIR, “Islamophobic” utterances are “hate speech;” it has provided a list of “Islamophobes” and their organizations. Below are comments about the list by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a reformist Muslim. He, as well as The Clarion Project (also an advocate for Islamic reform), are on CAIR’s list of “Islamophobes.”
Europe and its Western culture, and now to a somewhat lesser extent our own American culture (such as it is) are being surrendered to Islam. Allied with government authorities, our leftist “friends” are in the forefront of the war on free speech.
[I]n recent years, we’ve witnessed an unrelenting assault on free speech with a concerted effort by the regressive Left to curtail thought and restrict the free exchange of ideas. Last week, I wrote about campus terrorism and how conservatives and others who maintain views that are inconsistent with the leftist narrative have been subjected to campaigns of harassment and abuse by campus hooligans.
Often university officials are apathetic, turning a blind eye to these transgressions, while in other universities the administration is complicit by instructing campus police to stand down, allowing the agitators free reign to shut down speaking engagements through use of bullying tactics. In at least two instances, university presidents were forced to issue rather craven apologies to an alliance of leftists and Islamists for having the temerity to defend the right to free speech.
This disturbing trend of muzzling free speech has now substantially broadened to include criminalizing speech that issues challenges to the so-called science of climate change. Some seventeen left-leaning state attorneys general have launched investigative and intrusive probes against Exxon Mobil and conservative groups because of their involvement in debunking alarmist claims of imminent doom issued by hysterical climate change proponents.
The ringleaders of this anti-free speech witch hunt include Eric Schneiderman (D-New York) and Claude Walker (I-Virgin Islands). At a recent speech at the Bloomberg’s Big Law Business Summit, Schneiderman was dismissive of his critics, accusing them of “First Amendment opportunism.” The more he spoke the more he sounded like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s thuggish dictator who utilized the vast resources of the state to silence anyone who disagreed with him. [Emphasis added.]
I wish I could laugh at the next video. It’s funny in a way, but also deadly serious.
As the “best and brightest” from our top universities come of age and control “our” government, will the First Amendment be their principal target for destruction? Or will they also pursue with unabated vigor their war on the Second Amendment? Here is the text of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Our British cousins just voted to leave the European Union to restore democracy at home.
For my final broadcast to the nation on the eve of Britain’s Independence Day, the BBC asked me to imagine myself as one of the courtiers to whom Her Majesty had recently asked the question, “In one minute, give three reasons for your opinion on whether my United Kingdom should remain in or leave the European Union.”
My three reasons for departure, in strict order of precedence, were Democracy, Democracy, and Democracy. For the so-called “European Parliament” is no Parliament. It is a mere duma. It lacks even the power to bring forward a bill, and the 28 faceless, unelected, omnipotent Kommissars – the official German name for the shadowy Commissioners who exercise the supreme lawmaking power that was once vested in our elected Parliament – have the power, under the Treaty of Maastricht, to meet behind closed doors to override in secret any decision of that “Parliament” at will, and even to issue “Commission Regulations” that bypass it altogether. [Emphasis added.]
Rather like our own distended Federal and State bureaucracies.
I concluded my one-minute broadcast with these words: “Your Majesty, with my humble duty, I was born in a democracy; I do not live in one; but I am determined to die in one.” [Emphasis added.]
And now I shall die in one. In the words of William Pitt the Younger after the defeat of Napoleon, “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.”
. . . .
The people have spoken. And the democratic spirit that inspired just over half the people of Britain to vote for national independence has its roots in the passionate devotion of the Founding Fathers of the United States to democracy. Our former colony showed us the way. Today, then, an even more heartfelt than usual “God bless America!” [Emphasis added.]
I am less than sanguine that we remain as deserving of the high praise the author offers. In any event, we have another version of Brexit coming up in November. Will we be as brave and as far-sighted as our founding fathers were long ago and as the Brits were a couple of days ago?
Quo vadis?
Humor | Hitler finds out about Britain Leaving the EU !!!
June 25, 2016Hitler finds out about Britain Leaving the EU !!! via YouTube, February 23, 2016
Brexit: The Nation is Back!
June 25, 2016Brexit: The Nation is Back! Gatestone Institute, Yves Mamou, June 25, 2016
♦ In France, before the British vote, the weekly JDD conducted an online poll with one question: Do you want France out of the EU? 88% of people answered “YES!”
♦ In none of the countries surveyed was there much support for transferring power to Brussels.
♦ To calm a possible revolt of millions of poor and unemployed people, countries such as France have maintained a high level of social welfare spending, by borrowing money on international debt markets to pay unemployment insurance benefits, as well as pensions for retired people. Today, France’s national debt is 96.1% of GDP. In 2008, it was 68%.
♦ In the past few years, these poor and old people have seen a drastic change in their environment: the butcher has become halal, the café does not sell alcohol anymore, and most women in the streets are wearing veils. Even the McDonald’s in France have become halal.
♦ What is reassuring is that the “Leave” people waited for a legal way to express their protest. They did not take guns or knives to kill Jews or Muslims: they voted. They waited an opportunity to express their feelings.
“How quickly the unthinkable became the irreversible” writes The Economist. They are talking about Brexit, of course.
The question of today is: Who could have imagined that British people were so tired of being members of The Club? The question of tomorrow is: What country will be next?
In France, before the British vote, the weekly JDD conducted an online poll with one question: Do you want France out of the EU? 88% of people answered “YES!” This is not a scientific result, but it is nevertheless an indication. A recent — and more scientific — survey for Pew Research found that in France, a founding member of “Europe,” only 38% of people still hold a favorable view of the EU, six points lower than in Britain. In none of the countries surveyed was there much support for transferring power to Brussels.
With Brexit, everybody is discovering that the European project was implemented by no more than a minority of the population: young urban people, national politicians of each country and bureaucrats in Brussels.
All others remain with the same feeling: Europe failed to deliver.
On the economic level, the EU has been unable to keep jobs at home. They have fled to China and other countries with low wages. Globalization proved stronger than the EU. The unemployment rate has never before been so high as inside the EU, especially in France. In Europe, 10.2% of the workforce is officially unemployed The unemployment rate is 9.9% in France, 22% in Spain.
And take-home salaries have remained low, except for a few categories in finance and high-tech.
To calm a possible revolt of millions of poor and unemployed people, countries such as France have maintained a high level of social welfare spending. Unemployed people continue to be subsidized by the state. How? By borrowing money on international debt markets to pay unemployment insurance benefits, as well as pensions for retired people. So today France’s national debt is 96.1% of GDP. In 2008, it was 68%.
In the the euro zone (19 countries), the ratio of national debt to GDP in 2015 was 90.7%.
In addition to these issue all, European countries have been remained open to mass-immigration.
Immigration was not an official question of the British “remain” or “leave” campaign. But as noted by Mudassar Ahmed, patron of the Faiths Forum for London and a former adviser to the U.K. government, the question of immigration and diversity has been latent:
“In personal conversations, I have found those most eager to leave the European Union are also most uncomfortable with diversity — not just regarding immigration, but of the diversity that already exists in this country. On the other hand, those who are most eager, in my experience, to support remaining in the European Union are far more open to difference in religion, race, culture and ethnicity”.
In France, the question of immigration tied to an eventual “Frexit” is not at all latent. The Front National (FN) strongly supports leaving the EU, and that position is tied to immigration. In France, 200,000 foreigners have been coming annually for several years — from poor countries such as those in North Africa, as well as sub-Saharan countries. The growing presence of Muslims has brought a growing feeling of insecurity, and the cultural traditions of Arab and African countries has created in Europe a cultural “malaise.” Not to everyone, or course. In big cities, people accept diversity. But in the suburbs, it is different. Because those who were on welfare, who were poor, who were old — all these people are living precisely in the same neighborhoods and the same buildings as the new immigrants.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, celebrates the Brexit vote under a sign reading, “And Now: France!”, June 24, 2016.
In the past few years, these poor and old people have seen a drastic change in their environment: the butcher has become halal, the café does not sell alcohol anymore, the famous French “jambon beurre” (ham and butter) sandwich disappeared, and most women in the streets are wearing veils. Even the McDonald’s in France have become halal. In Roubaix, for example,all fast food has become halal.
An eventual “Frexit” vote by the poor, the old, and the people on welfare would mean only one thing: “Give me my country back!” Today, to be against the EU is to reclaim the possibility of remaining French in a traditional France.
With the Brexit, the question of the nation is back in Europe. Without immigration, it might have been possible gradually to create an eventual European identity. But with Islam plus terrorism at the door, with politicians saying after each terrorist attack, “These men shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar’ have nothing to do Islam,” the rejection is big.
This “give me my country back” seems frightening. And it is. It is tainted with chauvinism, and chauvinism is not a good thing for any minorities in any country. Jewish people paid a heavy price for chauvinism in WWII.
What is reassuring, nevertheless, is that the “Leave” people waited for a legal way to express their protest. They did not take guns or knives to kill Jews or Muslims: they voted. They waited an opportunity to express their feelings. The “Leave” may not look modern or trendy, but it is peaceful, legal and democratic.
Hope things stay like that.
Thank you, America!
June 25, 2016Thank you, America! Wattsupwith that, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley via Anthony Watts, June 24, 2016
(This is by far the best address I have read thus far on Brexit. — DM)
“Your Majesty, with my humble duty, I was born in a democracy; I do not live in one; but I am determined to die in one.”
And now I shall die in one. In the words of William Pitt the Younger after the defeat of Napoleon, “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.”
The people have spoken. And the democratic spirit that inspired just over half the people of Britain to vote for national independence has its roots in the passionate devotion of the Founding Fathers of the United States to democracy. Our former colony showed us the way. Today, then, an even more heartfelt than usual “God bless America!”
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For my final broadcast to the nation on the eve of Britain’s Independence Day, the BBC asked me to imagine myself as one of the courtiers to whom Her Majesty had recently asked the question, “In one minute, give three reasons for your opinion on whether my United Kingdom should remain in or leave the European Union.”
My three reasons for departure, in strict order of precedence, were Democracy, Democracy, and Democracy. For the so-called “European Parliament” is no Parliament. It is a mere duma. It lacks even the power to bring forward a bill, and the 28 faceless, unelected, omnipotent Kommissars – the official German name for the shadowy Commissioners who exercise the supreme lawmaking power that was once vested in our elected Parliament – have the power, under the Treaty of Maastricht, to meet behind closed doors to override in secret any decision of that “Parliament” at will, and even to issue “Commission Regulations” that bypass it altogether.
Worse, the treaty that established the European Stability Pact gives its governing body of absolute bankers the power, at will and without consultation, to demand any sum of money, however large, from any member state, and every member of that governing body, personally as well as collectively, is held entirely immune not only from any civil suit but also from any criminal prosecution.
That is dictatorship in the formal sense. Good riddance to it.
I concluded my one-minute broadcast with these words: “Your Majesty, with my humble duty, I was born in a democracy; I do not live in one; but I am determined to die in one.”
And now I shall die in one. In the words of William Pitt the Younger after the defeat of Napoleon, “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.”
Indeed, No-way and Nixerland having already voted down the EU, Brexit may well be swiftly followed by Frexit, Grexit, Departugal, Italeave, Czechout, Oustria, Finish, Slovakuum, Latviaticum and Byebyegium. At this rate, soon the only country still participating in the European tyranny-by-clerk will be Remainia.
The people have spoken. And the democratic spirit that inspired just over half the people of Britain to vote for national independence has its roots in the passionate devotion of the Founding Fathers of the United States to democracy. Our former colony showed us the way. Today, then, an even more heartfelt than usual “God bless America!”
All who have studied the Madison papers will grasp the greatness of the Founding Fathers’ vision. They were determined that no law and no tax should be inflicted upon any citizen except by the will of elected representatives of the people in Congress assembled.
They regarded this democratic principle as of such central importance that they wrote it down as Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States: “All legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Period. No ifs. No buts. No exceptions.
Except one. The Constitution establishes that foreign treaties ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate shall have the same force of law throughout the United States as enactments of Congress.
It is, therefore possible for any U.S. Government that can muster that Senate majority to ratify any treaty and thereby to thwart the central principle of Congressional democracy: that no Congress may bind its successors.
The Republicans, who are not always as lively in their understanding of the threat to democracy posed by supranational and global institutions such as the EU, the UN and its bloated climate bureaucracy, are too often snared or charmed by determined “Democrats” who fully understand and thirst to exercise the power to inflict perma-Socialism on their nation by bilateral, multilateral or global treaties.
It is astonishing how many of the GOP are willing to be cajoled and schmoozed into supporting monstrosities such as the Transatlatic Trade and Investment Partnership, which on its face sounds like a free-marketeer’s dream but is in its small print a series of outright Socialist measures which, once the Senate has ratified them, cannot be repealed. Its climate provisions, for instance, are highly dangerous.
It is no accident, therefore, that the bankers, the corporate profiteers, the Greens and the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Scotland – the corporatists and the communists together – made common totalitarian cause and heavily promoted the campaign to keep Britain in the EU, that paradise of vested interests and their poisonous lobbyists.
It is likewise no accident that precisely these same national and global vested interests heavily promote the campaign to subject Britain and the world to various unnecessary and damaging measures whose ostensible purpose is to control the climate but whose real ambition is to curb capitalism, fetter freedom, punish prosperity,. limit liberty and deny democracy.
The necessity to protect the flagile flower of democracy from the scythe of Socialism is now surely self-evident. Here are two modest proposals to ensure that the will of the people prevails over the power of the politicians, the Press, and the profiteers.
First, every new treaty, and as many pre-existing treaties as possible, should be made subject to repeal by a national referendum – and not just by a referendum called by the governing party because it thinks it can win it but by the people via the initiative procedure. Britain would have left the EU long before now if we, the people, and not those who govern us, had had the right to put referendum questions on the ballot.
Secondly, the governing bodies of all new supranational or global bodies exercising real sovereign power or spending taxpayers’ money from the states parties to the treaty that establishes them should be elected at frequent intervals by the peoples of those states parties.
Otherwise every international treaty, being a transfer of power from elected to unelected hands, diminishes democracy. Britain’s membership of the European Union effectively took away our democracy altogether, so that three new laws in five (according to the researchers of the House of Commons Library) or five in six (according to the German Government in a submission some years ago to the German Constitutional Court) are inflicted upon us solely because the unelected Kommissars require it.
Till now, our obligation has been to obey, on pain of unlimited fines.
The vote by the people of Britain to break free from this stifling, sclerotic tyranny has sent a shock-wave through every major international governing entity. It was no accident that the the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Corruption and Devastation, and various world “leaders” including Mr Obama, broke with democratic convention by openly promoting a “Remain” vote in a flagrant attempt to interfere in Britain’s decision.
Mr Obama’s intervention was decisive. The moment he demanded that Britain should remain within the EU, the polls began to swing against it. It was only when, in his maladroit fashion, he had sought to interfere in Britain’s decision that so many undecided voters woke up to the danger that the maneuverings and posturings of the international governing class represent to democracy.
What will Britain’s decision mean for the climate debate? Of course, it will break us free from the EU, whose governing elite had seized upon the climate issue as a purported ex-post-facto justification for the now-hated bloc’s continued existence.
We are left with our own British governing class, which has until now been no less determined than the EU to damage our economic and environmental interests by shutting down vital coal-fired power stations and carpeting our once green and pleasant land with windmills.
Now that the EU and its devoted poodle Mr Cameron have been consigned to the trashcan of history, it is near-certain that any new British Cabinet will take a more alert and less acquiescent stance than the present lot on the climate question.
It may even occur to the new Cabinet to check whether the rate of global warming is anything like what the profiteers of doom had predicted; to count the number of downstream businesses – such as cinder-blocks made from fly-ash out of coal-fired power stations – that have been destroyed by the EU’s war on coal; and even to wonder whether the forest of windmills that infest our once beautiful landscape are now extracting between them so much kinetic energy from passing storms that they are slowing them down, causing far more flash flooding than slightly warmer weather would (if and when it happened).
In the past, there was no point in our politicians asking any such questions, for our policies on all matters to do with our own environment were set for us by the unelected Kommissars of Brussels, whether we liked it or not.
Now that our politicians are going to have to learn to think for themselves again, rather than acting as an otiose, automated rubber stamp for directives from Them in Brussels, perhaps the Mother of Parliaments will begin to calculate the enormous economic advantage that Britain will gain by abandoning all of the climate-related directives that have driven our coal corporations, our steelworks and our aluminum works overseas, and have killed tens of thousands by making home heating altogether unaffordable.
We, the people, are the masters now. Our politicians will have to reacquire the habit of listening not to Them but to us. Here, and in the rest of Europe, and eventually throughout the world, let freedom ring!
Thank you, America, and God save the Queen!
Brexit – Backlash from mass migration and ISIS
June 25, 2016Brexit – Backlash from mass migration and ISIS. DEBKAfile, June 24,2016
In a historic referendum, millions of British citizens voted Thursday, June 23, to leave the European Union after 43 years by a margin of 52 to 48 percent. Many were undoubtedly moved into approving this pivotal step by three seismic world events:
1. The mass migration flowing into Europe from the Middle East and Africa under the EU aegis. Forebodings in the UK were fueled by figures released a week before the referendum showing an influx of 330,000 migrants to Britain in 2015.
2. The war on the Islamic State which poses a peril which most Western governments avoid addressing by name as World War III in the making.
3. The inability of those governments, beyond empty words, to grapple with the war on ISIS or cope with the mass of migrants expected to beat on the gates of Western societies for many more hard years.
Many Americans and Europeans are dissatisfied and resentful of President Barack Obama’s approach to the war on ISIS, which is to dismiss the enemy as a minor band of fanatics and thus, rather than a war against Islam. Neither do they accept German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s magnanimous invitation to take refugees in – 1.5 million in two years – as her country’s moral responsibility.
This popular disgruntlement has thrown up such antiestablishment figures as Donald Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in Britain and contributes to the rise of far right-wing movements and extremist violence on both continents.
Those two leaders, though different in most other ways, owe much of their popularity to the pervasive fear in their countries that surging immigration will forever alter the fabric of their societies.
Such social upheaval is the result of a trap deliberately set for the West by two Muslim leaders: ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Turkish President Tayyip Reccep Erdogan.
Al-Baghdadi conceived the idea of flooding the western world with waves of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East as a way to achieve three targets:
a) To change the composition of the population of Western countries by expanding the Muslim increment.
b) To plant networks of ISIS terrorists in the West.
c) To boost ISIS Middle Eastern arms, people and drugs smuggling networks as the organization’s main source of income. Migrants are willing to pay an average of between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars to reach the West even though they know that many never make it alive.
Al Baghdadi made up for the revenue shortfall caused by the US bombing of ISIS-held oil fields and money reserves by pushing over a new wave of immigrants.
President Erdogan’s motives are quite different.
He allowed the waves of immigrants to pass through Turkey on their way to the US and Europe – just as for years, he allowed Western jihadists joining ISIS to reach Siria via Turkey – because he was consumed with the desire to punish the US, namely, the Obama administration, for refusing to back up his hegemonic aspirations in the Middle East; Europe was punished for denying Turkey EU membership year after year.
The victory of Boris Johnson’s “leave” campaign – in the face of Obama’s personal championship of Prime Minister David Cameron’s bid to keep his country in, supported by the Democratic presumptive nominee Hilary Clinton – was a loud and clear signal for politicians running in future elections in the West, including the US presidential vote in November.
Republican candidate Donald Trump’s call to stop Muslim immigration into the US until proper screening measures are in place may sound like an unformed idea, but no other US politician has dared put it on the table, or directly challenge the hollow words and self-righteous hypocrisy of Obama and Clinton on the issues of terror, wars in the Middle East and mass immigration. This alone gives Trump a popular edge in widening circles in the USA over his rival.
Trump is not likely to lose votes either by his pledge to rebuild NATO for leading the West in the war against Islamic terror.
During the five months up until the US presidential election, the West can expect more large-scale ISIS terror coupled with dramatic events in the wars raging in at least seven countries – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Afghanistan. Refugees in vast numbers will continue to batter down the doors of countries that are increasingly unable and unwilling to accept them.
Wars in general and religious wars in particular, have throughout history thrown up massive shifts of population displaced by violence, plague, falling regimes, famine and economic hardship.
The year 2016 will go down as the year in which Middle East crises spilled over into the west, bringing social change and far-reaching political turmoil in their wake.
And this is only the beginning.
WarSclerotic 
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