http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.....group.html

http://www.humanevents.com/201.....e-group-2/

Civil war easily will erupt when the pain and suffering from living under a plundering and controlling government exceeds the pain that people perceive will come from confronting it violently. If you look at the official bonded debt of the US government it exceeds per capita that of Greece. If you add in the obligations under Social Security and Medicare then the actual debt is six times bigger than the bonded debt alone, something that cannot possible be paid. So default in some form is inevitable, and that will come on the backs of those depending on Social Security and Medicare.

If you look at the distribution of wealth, it resembles more a slave plantation than a free society. This is because of years and years of legislation, lobbies for by special interests and voted for by venal politicians, which effectively rigs the economy to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

If you look at history, there are parallels today to the lead up time to the American Revolution and the Civil War. Each was preceded by an awakening to political conditions and a reevaluation of these arrangements. The Ron Paul “revolution”, the Tea Party, and the Occupy movement are simply the early, peaceful efforts to address what has essentially become a fascist system, particularly from an economic point of view, and as these efforts fail, the avenue will open to violent resolution, the outcome of which cannot be know.

http://www.govtrack.us/congres.....l=h111-645
http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84

North patterned the plan [of Rex 84] on a 1970 FEMA report written by [then] FEMA chief Louis Giuffrida which proposed the detention of up to 21 million American negroes in the event of a black militant uprising in the United States.

From 1967 to 1971, the FBI kept a list of over 100,000 people to be rounded up as subversive. This was known as the ‘ADEX’ list. The reason given for such installations usually ranges from “emergency centers” that are used for the “protection” of American citizens during a national emergency, to holding centers to detain illegal aliens.

http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx0529b07
See National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20

But then I turned 12.

I agree with your dissapointment in regards to Saudi Arabia, nothing makes us look quite like the hypocrites we become when our national governments condemn human rights abuses in places like Afghanistan while giving the Saudi monarchy pretty much whatever they want so long as the oil keeps flowing. Our dependancy on oil in general is a weakness in that regard, in the same way that China is empowered by our dependancy on their cheap labour and products.

A large number of Arab nations during the early and mid twentieth centuries took what seemed to be promising steps toward more democratic, secular and progressive policies. Arab Socialism, especially in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, while not atheistic or even strictly socialist, attempted to overcome tribalism, feudalism, religious extremism and the oppression of women while maintaining a separate identity from the Cold War spheres of influence. Other nations like Turkey attempted to put forward the same while taking a more traditional Western approach. These reforms were not entirely successful, and many were later overturned with the rise in Islamic fundamentalism throughout the region, but they do demonstrate that the possibility of internal change exists. Turkey is still struggling with its secular and religious values almost a hundred years after the republic was formed as a secular nation.

In response to what you mentioned to Ruslan about the Berbers in North Africa, don’t forget that the Roman Empire had mostly collapsed in Europe and North Africa well before the spread of Islam began, and that even the Roman presence was largely restricted to the coastline and to land expropriated from the Berbers for Roman settlers. Indeed, Rome required an entire network of fortresses, walls and garrisons to protect these holdings from the native population of the area. The Germanic Vandals, who were Arianist Christians, took over the region from the Romans and managed to induce a good deal of religious bigotry and violence attempting to suppress and convert the non-conforming Christians in Northern Africa. The Byzantines took back the region and expelled and enslaved the Vandals less than 200 years before the Muslim conquest of the area began.

It is important not forget how recent the values expressed by human rights are even in the Western world. Women’s sufferage was basically ensured in the USA after 1920, while in the Canadian province of Quebec, at the time more or less controlled by the Roman Catholic church, full sufferage wasn’t granted until 1940. These days, Quebec is still mostly Catholic, but the stranglehold of religious dogmatism has been mostly broken in Canada at the legal and increasingly at the civil levels. Sadly, this is not fully the case in many American states and it is most definately not the case in the Muslim world.

I can’t help but laugh at your ludicrous claims. Shrill and pathetic? Those are the words that are best used to describe the Muslims who went berserk, rioted and rampaged when those amazingly hilarious caricatures of prophet Mohamed were published in Denmark in 2005. And when some people tried explaining to Muslims that in Europe there’s freedom of speech and expression, what was their response? “Freedom go to hell” and “Islam will conquer the World” were just some of the gems. As 1/4 Berber (and the rest of my ancestry being Hungarian, French Huguenot and Lithuanian), I’m proud of my indigenous North African roots, and I also know that North Africa will permanently be a land of Islam and Arabs. And how the situation will never be reversed due to Berbers being rendered a minority in their own homeland. But Europeans at least are still in control of their own lands and are still in a position do defend themselves, but most of them are too ignorant to realize wherever there’s Islam there’s no freedom. And it isn’t just in Muslim countries, but due to Islamic immigration, increasingly in the West also. After all, Theo van Gogh’s murdered by a pious Muslim immigrant. Or a few days ago Kurt Westergaard, one of the authors of Danish cartoons, was almost killed by a Somali. I still remember a nasty incident few years ago, when in solidarity for the Danish cartoonist’s freedom of speech, I wore a shirt with one of the Mohamed cartoons. While coming from college, I was confronted by a burly Palestinian Arab guy who was a foot taller than me. He proceeded to accost me, as I tried to reason with him to no avail. Enraged, he raised his fist to take a swing at me. As soon as he did that, I immediately grabbed both of his hands and headbutted him in the face with everything I had. I thought then how perhaps this was one of the reasons why my Tunisian grandfather renounced Islam and became a Christian. While I watched my would-be assailant go down with a broken nose and blood jettisoning down his face, I thought to myself if only all of my Berber ancestors had the same courage to stand up to the Muslim Arab aggressors 14 centuries ago, today North Africa would’ve continued being an integral part of the Western civilization as it was during the Roman times, instead of becoming Islamized and Arabized. Or if the Persians had successfully stood to the Muslim Arabs back in 7th century, today Iran would never have been an “Islamic Republic”.

Actually, there was a period during early to mid 20th century, when some Arab states (such as Syria and Lebanon) embraced Western liberal values such as secularism and gender equality. However, due to its immense oil wealth and never having been under Western sphere of influence, Saudi Arabia (the birthplace of Islam) has been able export its Wahhabism and the Shariah law throughout Middle East and the Islamic nations elsewhere. And Wahhabi Islam is not a Saudi innovation. It’s merely Islam being practiced exactly as it was during the times of Mohamed. With the child marriage, polygamy, Jew hatred, and everything else included. It’s only shame that because of so many Western nations’ dependency on Saudi oil, it makes world leaders turn a blind eye.

I don’t deny that the Koran contains passages that specifically promote intolerance, but this seems to be endemic in the Bible as well as the Koran. The Old Testement contains within Deuteronomy God ordering the Jews to commit genocide against the Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites; and at 7:1-2 specifically forbidding treaty or mercy (or tolerance as we would see it today); or in the New Testement Luke 27:19, which reads “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”

As for the Reconquista, one of the first acts the Christians took upon reclaiming Spain in 1492 was to sign an edict expelling all converts to Islam along with all Jews from Spain, citing the “great harm suffered by Christians from the contact, intercourse and communication which they have with the Jews, who always attempt in various ways to seduce faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith.” Indeed, expelling non-Catholics from Spain was one of the key driving forces behind the Inquisition, and modern estimates of the number of Jews who left Spain at the time are actually lower than the estimates given by Christian sources at the time. Though some schollars, such as Bernard Lewis, do argue that the accounts of co-existance in Islamic Spain are merely the work of apologists, the truth has been debated for centuries by Western schollars with little conclusive results. The massacre you cite is a good example. Some schollars, such as Lewis, label it as typical; others consider it to be as unusual as the circumstances that led to it; with the Islamic mob storming the palace where Joseph ibn Naghrela, a Jewish Vizer to a Berber king, had sought sanctuary.

Funny you should mention the Crusades, since they provide an excellent example of how religion can be used to justify violence on both sides. The Arabs destroyed the Christian Church of the Holy Selpulchre; and between that time and when it was rebuilt pilgrims were attacked and killed. The Arabs eventually realized that there were economic benefits to the pilgrimages and stopped the killing, but by then the Byzantine Empire had suceeded in getting the Papacy’s support, and the First Crusade was called. In the following 200 years wars were fought mostly against the Muslims, also against the pagan Slavs, Jews, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites, Waldensians, Old Prussians, and political enemies of the popes. Byzantium was sacked by its fellow Christians, helping to weaken it further (eventually the Muslims would lay a bloody siege and conquer it and the Byzantine Empire, yet more violence). Neither side showed any interest in following the more peaceful passages in their religion, and most of the admirable elements of Islam and Christianity were sidelined in favour of a bloodbath.

Christianity and Islam both contain within them the seeds of violence, namely passages that directly state that followers of other religions are inferior, that their religion is the only path to salvation and goodness, and at least in some passages that it is perfectly acceptable to kill these non-believers. Both religions have acted on these beliefs in the past, and fundamentalist Islamists continue to use these passages to ‘justify’ their campaigns of terror and violence today.

Since I don’t think either religion (or any religion) is likely to go back and remove those passages from their holy texts; the best we can hope for is that Muslims (like more and more Christians) learn to just ignore such passages entirely. Regrettably, I don’t see it happening any time soon, most people would much rather be right than compassionate.

I agree that for both Islam and Christianity, there’s a history of intolerance and violence. However, the events and circumstances surrounding them are completely different. While the Hebrew and Christian Bibles condemn paganism and polytheism, intolerance and hate of non-Muslims is something that’s actually ingrained in Koran as in the chapter 9, verse 29;

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

According to prophet Mohamed’s teachings, Muslims are truly ordained by Allah to go and invade the lands of non-Muslims and enslave and slaughter their inhabitants. The only way those non-Muslims could save themselves were either conversion to Islam or paying the jizya money, as you pointed out. However, those who could not (or would not) pay the jizya were murdered or enslaved, along with their families. In layman’s terms, today that would be called racketeering. Religiously endorsed racketeering. Throughout the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries, the Arabs assaulted all the major European towns and cities along the Mediterranean coast. These incursions were carried out with the sole purpose of collecting plunder and slaves And that’s discounting their conquest of Spain, Portugal and Southern Italy. These attacks (called ghaza in Arabic) didn’t happen just once or twice. They occurred every other year for three centuries straight. These Islamic brutalities were the main cause of the Europeans’ hardened attitude towards the non-Christians. The idea of “Islamic Golden Age in Spain” is nothing more than myth created my the Islamic apologists who wish to paint a rosy picture of something that never existed. The whole time Spain was ruled by the Moors, the Christian and Jewish population were required to pay jizya, or else. The most infamous example of the Islamic “tolerance” towards Jews was the Granada massacre in 1066, where the Muslims viciously murdered over 4000 Jews in one single day. A feat such as that would not to be repeated until the
Shoah during WWII. And the Reconquista? It was an agonizing 700+ year war that the Christian Spaniards were FORCED to wage, because they have had enough of the Muslims destroying their churches, plundering their cities, and raping their children. Likewise, the Crusades were originally a response of the Christian Europeans to the continued Muslim assaults upon them. After getting a taste of their own medicine, the Muslim Arabs’ bemoaning of the Crusades (which is something that they do to this day) is equivalent a bully crying after getting his nose bloodied.

I’m afraid your history of the early Muslim conquests, which you describe as being the first (as in before Christianity) religion to spread itself with the sword gives something of a one-sided perspective. In regard to Egypt, the Coptic Christians had already found themselves a minority denied equal rights, not by Islam but by the Byzantine Empire which practiced a different form of Christianity. When the Muslims came to Egypt there was indeed violence, but rather than being forcibly converted the Christian and Jewish population were, under a system called jizya, allowed to practice their religion and exempted from military service. They had to pay taxes that Muslim citizens were not subjected to, but this was a system that had already existed in the Middle East for centuries and was only adapted by Islam. During the pagan years of the Roman Era, the Copts in Egypt had been subject to it, as had been non-Christians following the conversion of the Roman Empire.

Speaking of Rome, following the conversion of the Empire officially toward Christianity, a process which began with Constantine, pagan citizens of the Empire found themselves subject to increasing restrictions. These included first the closing of temples and the stealing of religious treasures, and later the banning of pagans from employment and institutionalized violence. This violence was well before Islam existed, and indeed many of the Middle Eastern areas you describe being taken from the Christians had in fact only become Christian by being forcibly taken from the pagan populations already living there. The Christians would continue this practice, peacefully where people willingly converted, by the sword where they would not, until all of Europe was Christian. In this regard, they differed little from the Muslims, save that in most Christian countries minority religions were subjected to far, far worse than added taxes. The history of the Jewish population of Spain during the Reconquista provides some examples of this, although neither Christian nor Muslim was tolerant of Non-Abrahamic religions. Sadly, blood stained pasts are a commonality shared by both of the world’s largest religions, and if Christianity’s violence began first, this is probably only because so too did Christianity exist first.

Saying that minarets are a specific symbol of Islamification is misleading. Laura Wilson’s above statement both enlightens and obscures in this regard. Yes, minarets are symbolic to a Muslim community in an area, but they are symbolic in the same way that the tall steeple of a Christian church in the middle of a town is a symbol to the Christian community. Equally unimpressive are arguements attempting to justify the ban because of bans against Churches in some Muslim nations or fundamentalist Islam. If we believe in human rights and we believe that this separates us from these nations, we must live in accordance with those rights, including freedom of religion.

A moral you abandon when you become uncomfortable or threatened is not a moral you truely hold. It does not take courage to be brave when we are not threatened. Is Islam a threat? Say instead that fundamentalist religion, including fundamentalist Islam, threatens human decency and human rights. I do not believe this is a threat that can be overcome by abandoning the values of equality, dignity, and freedom; banning minarets tells the Muslim community as a whole that when fundamentalists rant about the West attempting to destroy Islam, they are correct. By allowing Muslims to practice their religion, we make liars of those fundamentalists, and help the moderates within Islam who represent the best real chance of bringing the 1.2 or more billion Muslims in the world toward embracing human rights not because we tell them to, but because they observe for themselves that they are a better way.

Now as for Bob, who is one of the elite and not part of the “sheeple”, no doubt in part due to years of education by talk radio and Youtube videos, I am wondering about this “large powerbase that thinks Marxism is the way to go”. You see, the Democratic party(yeah, I know that’s who you’re referring to) is basically a party of rich people, funded by the same class as the Republicans. I’m pretty familiar with Marxism and general history, and I cannot think of a single example of when the ruling class of a country deliberately funded a Communist movement in order to overthrow and expropriate itself. If Obama and co. are Marxists, I hope you can explain as to why the major bank lobby donated something like $3 million more to his campaign than to John McCain.

Now I can’t ignore the comments by the fledgling WN JJohnson. First off JJ, “race” is not real to most people. That means that in “Asia”, there is no “Asian” race. Ditto in Africa and Europe. People immigrate to countries which are more industrialized and offer a higher standard of living, while capitalists in those countries welcome this because it is a source of cheaper labor. As a result, countries like South Africa, India, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Malaysia, and so on- all have masses of foreign immigrants. So stop pretending that someone is persecuting your poor “race”.