Principals & Accomplices
Compare it to this essay by Gerard Vanderleun.
What is similar?
What is different?
Are the authors' positions in conflict?
If so, can the two positions be reconciled?
Phrased alternatively, if Islam and national socialism are both antithetical to individual values, which is the greater threat?
Or are they equally threatening?
More on this subject later in the week.
posted by Concerned American | 3:19 AM
35 Comments:
They are two sides of the same face of a serial/mass/killer. What difference does it make, since they both want the same end? Total domination, total control, murder,rape,and loot, at will. Brigands with a non-smiley face. Whether you dress them up with swastikas or crescents and burkas, they want what they want, and I intend to deny them everything.
Wow, Tom is 110% spot on. He says what no one else wants to address, the elephant staring us right in the face, and all the people want to do is look in the other room for something smaller to chase.
One of the best articles yet, period!
Semper Fi, 0321
Socialism is the more immediate threat. Islam is the long term threat. Socialism will conquer liberty, then Islam will conquer socialism.
Baugh's take on this is so pedestrian and delusional it borders on the insane. He's usually pretty good at seeing things for what they are, but he's wearing at least three pairs of rosey red glasses on this one.
As best I can tell, his half-assed take on this is that once the muslems see our wealth and shiny things, they'll mellow out? Isn't this the same horseshit "doctrine" that got us 20th century muslem, religious-based terrorism in the first place? This is just Carter-Clinton appeasement and deniability all over again.
This really didn't work historically either. Ask the Eastern Orthodox Christians, Zoroastrians, or pre-islamic pagan/animists. Oh, wait, they've all been almost completely exterminated off the planet by muslems.
There's a disturbing amount of fluff in there reducing incredibly nuanced things to simple, often false, dichotomies. Sharia law isn't so bad because of our own terrible drug policy? He expects anyone he's talking down to to take this seriously? On your bike, kid.
This is the same anon from a few minutes ago (calling Baugh delusional and pedestrian).
I dug up my copy of Roland Barthes' Mythologies. Barthes was a lefty lunatic for sure, but he wasn't without his usefulness. I wonder what Baugh has to say about the following (bold emphasis mine, italics original):
"3. Identification. The petit-bourgeois is a man unable to imagine the Other. If he comes face to face with him, he blinds himself, ignores and denies him, or else transforms him into himself. In the petit-bourgeois universe, all the experiences of confrontation are reverberating, any otherness is reduced to sameness.
[edit]
The Other becomes a pure object, a spectacle, a clown. Relegated to the confines of humanity, he no longer threatens the security of the home. This figure is chiefly petit-bourgeois. For, even if he is unable to experience the Other in himself, the bourgeois can at least imagine the place where he fits in: this is what is known as liberalism, which is a sort of intellectual equilibrium based on recognized places.
[edit]
5. Neither-Norism. By this I mean this mythological figure which consists in stating two opposites and balancing the one by the other so as to reject them both. (I want neither this nor that.)
[edit]
We find again here the figure of the scales: reality is first reduced to analogues; then it is weighed; finally, equality having been ascertained, it is got rid of. Here also there is magical behavior: both parties are dismissed because it is embarrassing to choose between them; one flees from an intolerable reality, reducing it to two opposites which balance each other only inasmuch as they are purely formal, relieved of all their specific weight."
National Socialism is not a threat.
It is demonized and rejected nearly everywhere.
islam poses a greater threat, as it is gradually being forced upon us by a complacent, quisling, spineless government.
They are merely different shades of domination systems. One was crushed and nearly universally rejected. The other is government-sponsored, right here in our nation.
In summary, neither is a threat in and of itself.
A government that would force them or the mandatory acceptance of them upon us is the real threat.
Funny though, while National Socialism is universally condemned, communism is everywhere seen as more acceptable, even though it has killed exponentially more than the Hitler ever tried.
American society accepts former and current communists (See SEIU's recent "coming out"), but categorically rejects neo nazis and former nazis. We, as a society, accept "Che" t-shirts, but would largely not tolerate Hitler's image on one, even though communism has been by far proven to be the bigger killer.
Which is the greater threat?
AP
Man you ask tough questions.
Tom is looking at the larger impersonal detached problem of surviving the abomination of foolishness that is sweeping the world to ruin. It is not personal, the "enemy" is nebulous, untouchable, it just is...
Gerard sees a clear face of an enemy who is very much solid and subject to a reckoning by his hand if only figuratively. This enemy os not foolish it is wholly evil and no sentence however horrid is unwarranted for the evil perpetrated on us...
Though the same evil is the subject of both. One is the process the other the event within the process.
Tom takes no responsibility to bring correction only a means of survival of the "wise", natural law will dispense justice.
Gerard takes responsibility to bring a reckoning preferably with his own hands drenched in the blood of the despicable attackers.
Are they in conflict? Yes. Tom would instruct the Jew to survive the holocaust until they meet the inevitable end. Gerard would call on him to kill Nazis until the inevitable end.
Can they be reconciled? Yes, even though they are opposite ends of the spectrum. Neither is totally correct or wrong and discerning when one is called for and the other not is the problem.
This is the tough choice we are all facing now and in the possible future isn't it?
God grant us poor humans the wisdom to know.
the first simply drives and begets the second. The second conditions for continuation of the first. Simple.
Hegelian Synthesis meets the Planet of the Apes. I love it.
Does that look like Pelosi to anyone else? I was going tom say Obamy but I didn't want to offend anyone with.
The gulching is happening.
FTA:
How do you think governments across the world are going to react when they realize they’ve lost the ability to tax the public?
http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/11/with-the-napster-of-banking-round-the-corner-bring-out-your-popcorn
It was $5 a Bitcoin yesterday.
http://bitcoinwatch.com
Withdraw your consent. Starve the beast.
What Sean said.
Both Islam and National/International Socialism would like me to live the standard life of human history, as a serf. This grand experiment with freedom for regular (even poor) people in the united States of America is highly out of step with the past and their future plans for the masses of the Earth.
Calling this dystopian is too simple. It is the return of a boot on the neck of humanity forever. We can fight and still win at great cost. Our children may be fighting because it is better to die free than live as a slave.
Got concealed machine shops?
Cheers.
The cliche about "never letting a good crisis go to waste" has been around alot longer than Rahm Emmanuel. The Islam threat, accentuated by the 9/11 attacks have been heaven-sent times for the growth of government and the further destruction of our God-given liberties.
Baugh is playing devil's advocate in this piece. Islam will never prevail in America because the root causes of our revolution are still alive. Liberty, personal freedom, and economic self-determination are an anathema to Islam. The government encroachments that we have seen since the administration of Teddy Rossevelt will recede, once we really succeed in starving the monkeys.
Baugh's key question and anwsers seem to be:
Q) What is the difference between an Islamofascist and a Judeo-Christo-fascist?
A) None
Q) What is the difference between the Constitution and arbitrary totalitarianism?
A) None
This is where Tom loses me. I've been slipping more and more to the libertarian side and away from the God-Guns-Gays politics of my upbringing, but there is a difference between Islamic Shariah and Judeo-Christian legislated morality. The Judeo-Christians will back off. I know because I are one. Shariah still boils down to 'convert or die.'
My personal jury is still out on the second question, which is the umpteenth round of the Jefferson vs Hamilton Title Fight. Federalist vs or Anti-Federalist. Does the Constitution protect liberty or destroy it? Is the Bill of Rights a sop for fools or a meaningful codification of liberty? Have we gotten so far from the original intent of the Founders because
a) the founding principles were not proper or workable in the first place?
OR
b) because we didn't comprehend those first principles or defend them with sufficient vigor?
Stated alternately: Why are machine guns so darn expensive? Why is moonshine whiskey illegal?
Right now I have a great big pile of questions and very few answers.
The first guy is a psycho...whose writing is pretty knotted up. He lost me when he went back 200 years and declared us dead then. BS. Pure unadulterated bs...my suggestion to him is shoot yourself as nothing will ever be good enough for you.
That the elite are using Islam to beat us down is a given. So what? Both of them are evil. Both of them need to be defeated.
That first clown can't defeat anyone because no one is perfect enough for him to ally himself to.
Tell him and clowns who agree with him to go back into the corner and suck their thumbs whilst the adults take back our world.
The first piece presumes fear is the motivation to combat Islam.
For me and many I know, it's not fear.
It's resolve.
I'll take the Judeo-Christian ethic any day of the week over Shariah. In spades.
Judeo-Christians are pretty libertarian. If you choose not to believe, go your own way.
Not so with Islam as history will validate when studied objectively.
Collectivists of any bent are the enemy.
Methinks Baugh is attempting to stir the pot to generate interest in his site...but I could be wrong.
Where did you get that picture of Moochelle in a uniform?
You know, historically speaking, usury was one of the contributing factors for why we got out of the Dark Ages. It makes possible such evil things such as investment and development.
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I rarely comment but these articles struck home and I came up with a comparison that some may find useful.
Baugh's article made me think of Islam as an infection vector. Before the infection vector can kill its host the host must become weak much like HIV will do to a person causing them to succumb to any other infection.
The weakening of the host in this example is caused by the ever growing powerful centralized state. It weakens family bonds, saving and capital formation, morals, etc.
I see this clearly. If private property ownership was respected (non use of violence through government coercion) and a state that did not intervene so heavily in domestic and foreign affairs did not exist the Muslims would not be breading radicals while also being imported in large numbers. They would not be the threat they are today. Also we would be exploring local energy resources which would have disallowed the ME (Saudi Arabia in particular) to grow in influence to the degree it has.
I do not think his article is delusional but like chess you will have to see a couple of steps back and a couple of steps forward to understand what is happening.
The second article is personal for the author because he lived through the actual experience. I would not detract from anything he said.
Looking at things from a wider context I believe that Baugh's central thesis of a powerful central state being the gravest threat to US individuals is more real than Radical Islam at the moment.
I think it is true that radical Islam is being used by the omnipotent state to further the goals of control over the population.
So socialism, communism and a general rise in statism is killing the host making it more susceptible to falling prey to other things like domestic threats from Radical Islam.
I go back and forth on whether or not the creation of the Fed under the Constitution is better or worse than the original Articles of Confederation. Today's America is a feudalistic type of state with an oligarchy and fences going up every day to restrict movement in and out of the country in both capital and persons. Arguing that is just wasn't done right or the people just need to wake up sounds a lot like all of those f'ing professors saying the same about Marxism (it just wasn't done right). How about if there was never a central state to begin with?
How many takes can a group of people take from ONE article?
How many people are we talking about and you have your answer.
I know critical thinking went the wayside in public education but to read the above takes, I hadn't realized just how far gone it was.
Reading comprehension is apparently not a high point in todays society.
I promised myself and WRSA that I wouldn't read anymore of Baugh's stuff.
I did it anyway and now I know why I promised myself not to.
Baugh could get papers for being paranoid delusional. He mixes a little of truth w/a lot of 'maybe' and 'what if' and comes up with crazy talk. He's clinical.
NO WAY IN HELL can people of limited lifespan continue to control an expected outcome for 200+yrs. There are just too many variables.
Is the banking system screwing us? Yep.
Are we being screwed by socialists?
Yep.
Are muslims dangerous?
Yep.
But you could herd cats easier than you can manipulate these wide-ranging groups of people having their varied ideas, interests and motives.
His article was a psycho rant that led to nowhere.
I'm inclined to agree with Baugh insofar as the idea that western elites are using sharia as a boogeyman to rally us to their defense. The possibility which he (and pretty much every other commentator) overlooks, however, is that many of the actors on the other side who are stirring up the trouble may also be cynically using sharia to motivate their own useful idiots.
While al Qaeda, for instance, may appear on the surface to be fighting in the name of vanilla Islam, there are a few things about their ideology (reincarnation, numerology, etc..) which don't quite fit the standard mold. To me, it looks like the whole twisted mess is a mixture of Ismailis/Assassin or Sufi mysticism and Aryan/Thule nonsense the Muslim Brotherhood picked up during their collaboration with the Nazis.
Given their tactics, the level of brainwashing needed to drive someone else (but not the wealthy, hypocritical leaders, of course..) to suicide, and their penchant for general tinfoil hat nuttery, it seems to me that the top levels of the al Qaeda feel they are taking up the mantle of the Assassins. That is, rather than fighting for Islam, per se, that they wish to be their own secret society at the top of some esoteric food chain, be it real or imagined. To them, in turn, the "true believers" in Semtex panties would be nothing more than pawns.
And given the other conspiratorial and occult related oddities which seem to drive the mujahideen leaders, it would also stand to reason that they may imagine their "real" enemies are those they think are connected to the modern-myth-ical version of the Knights Templar(eg, the "Illuminati" bankers or what have you).
Granted, I may be wrong about most of this, but it makes just as much sense than the contradiction riddled premise laid out by the mainstream narrative..
AP writes: "National Socialism is not a threat. It is demonized and rejected nearly everywhere."
Except when the "nationalistic" part is called Republican and the "socialist" part is called Democrat. Then most people can't even recognize it for what it is. Here, let me edit: "islam poses a greater threat, as it is gradually being forced upon us by a [nationalistic socialist] government."
"The Judeo-Christians will back off."
So now the Americans Judeo-Christians didn't genocide the native Americans? Or a fifth of the population in the American civil war? Or enslave the Africans? Holocaust denier.
"Does the Constitution protect liberty or destroy it?"
You wonder if the Constitution is a hedge: sacrifice a little liberty now to preserve the rest later. Well, how did that hedge perform? That's your answer. Doesn't much matter what it was designed to do, it didn't function as a hedge and that's the answer you need today.
Doc Enigma writes: "Judeo-Christians are pretty libertarian. If you choose not to believe, go your own way."
So now the early New England colonies wern't all religious totalitarianisms? And the later Americans didn't hound the Mormons?
Regarding this -
"National Socialism is not a threat. It is demonized and rejected nearly everywhere."
... I really, really, really think this attitude is blind to something important, even critical.
German National Socialism and Hitler are dead. Whatever they were or wanted to be, it's gone. Killing them in effigy over and over again accomplishes nothing.
However, as symbols, they continue, and can even serve purposes that may or may not have been the ones they intended. To pick one particular example: on a French nationalist/anti-jihad site the other day - the overriding concern of the people there being their increasing annoyance at the incursions of Islam in what used to be their country, and a desire to see it reversed - one commenter said, "If the mustached guy had won, France might be a province of the Reich, but at least the people would still be the same." A few people responded with things like "Ah, you've just arrived! Congrats," and similar things. Other than that, no great outrage or other reaction. This is one example, but I've seen others, from a variety of places - American and Europeans - particularly among the younger folks - the ones for whom "Hitler" is a name safely in history, whose actual choices and goals are of academic interest if that. The very real and present USA government meanwhile is encouraging diversity and acceptance of more third-world "refugees" everywhere it can, whether that be Paris or Minneapolis, and whenever anyone says something that amounts to "I like living with people like me, and I think it's perfectly reasonable and right to enact laws to keep out people that aren't like us, and you have no right to try to force things to be otherwise", the immediate reaction is denunciation as a horrible racist, racist, racist. Or racial collectivist. Either way, just like Hitler, and to be hated just as much.
Young people who don't like the third-worldization of everything are noticing this, and noticing that Hitler was and remains the system's chosen Ultimate Enemy, and concluding: if Hitler was against this, he can't have been all wrong.
Any nation, importing large numbers of a foreign population, will have its nature changed. Just as southern California has been drastically changed by importing large numbers of Mexicans, who do not think, act, vote, work, or build like the white Anglos who built the California of the 1950s that was the envy of the world. But pointing this out is inherently racist, because it depends on the observation that people of different races and ethnicities tend to generally act and think in different manners, and that culture is not _just_ a matter of brain software that can be upgraded at will. Excuses get made - they're poor, they have a bad political system, they will improve under our tutelage. Uh-huh. Like our ancestors in Europe _didn't_ have those problems? Human nature exists, and isn't infinitely malleable.
(continued)
(continued)
The founding ideas of the United States - "all men are created equal", and so on, at least in their modern interpretation - deny this. The USA wants to be, claims it is possible to be, a universal nation, one that can function equally well for all kinds of human being, and that changing the nature of the population does not change the nature of the USA. Let millions of mexicans in, import Somalis to Minneapolis, Arabs to Dearborn, Indians to anywhere with computers - we're still the same USA! USA! USA! Nothing's changed, and nothing will continue to change, right? Because anything that might be changed by having Arab high school football players observing Ramadan, Somali cab drivers refusing to accept dogs in their vehicles, Indians building Hindu temples in formerly Christian neighborhoods, and Mexican high school soccer players leaving the field strewn with trash when they're done with practice - well none of that has ANYTHING to do with what being "American" means, right?
How's that working out?
If that's true, American nationality doesn't mean much of anything at all.
The question mainstream conservatism - and the libertarians who spit acid at anything they call racial collectivism - has resolutely refused to confront is, is it possible to recognize that people of an ethnicity are generally more similar to each other than to foreigners, and like it that way? Is there a third choice besides "everybody mixes completely and all local identity is obliterated because acting on any ethnic preference is racist" and "Hitler reborn"?
Because, if there is not, a lot of people WILL take up the Hitler banner again. It won't be their first choice, they won't be happy about it, but those who want to live, to preserve the identity that they have and love, will take whatever means is left to them - and this is the one symbol that best encapsulates opposition to the current system, and some of the ideas it is trying to destroy. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
CA,
Thanks for rejecting my earlier post. On reflection, it was a bit too much, just perpetuating disagreement instead of making a useful statement.
I would like to echo several of the folks who have posted here, however. Tom Baugh is really missing the point. I understand he feels he can work with anyone who helps to advance his agenda, but he is wrong to think he can "pal up" with the muslims and get them to change. That has been tried, and most of the folks who tried it either became dhimmis or died. Or both.
As Francis Porretto has said, any who possess the mental capacity to understand and yet still deny that we are at war with Islam is the enemy. Not necessarily an evil enemy who we need to shoot, but one we need to work against, for certain. If they can be educated to the danger, fine, let's do it. If they cannot be, then they cannot be trusted or worked with to save Western civilization. If that includes Tom, well, so be it.
Because the gates of Vienna have already been overrun this time around.
@ Anonymous5:43am
Your argument compares apples and oranges.
The "genocide" committed by "Judeo-Christians" were not committed in the name of the religion.
Currently, Judeo-Christians in the name of religion, are not the ones cutting people's heads off, attacking civilian targets in foreign countries, committing genocide all across the Middle East, are not threatening more attacks on civilian targets across the West.
Don't damn me and my religion and system of beliefs for sins committed before my great-grandfather was even born, while Islamic terrorists are killing people today because their own holy book commands them to. Their violence has not ceased in 1300 years.
Baugh's flippant dismissal of the evils of Islam as quaint, humorous, even fictitious and oversold, and irrelevant as compared to the trend toward tyranny in the West is disgusting. His tone is juvenile,taunting, as he cavorts about like the monkeys he wishes to starve.
As usual, he cares more for getting a rise out of his audience than he does for the truth or efficacy of his diatribe.
As Sean says, both threats are real. Trying to equivocate between them is fatuous and worse than useless. Which we will have deal with first, or whether we shall even have that option, is unknown.
We must prepare to act according to Reality at the time as best we may. To dismiss as a mere stalking horse any of the very real threats to our national identity and sovereignty is suicidal... just what all our enemies wish for us.
Jon III
Oh, yes... Mr. Vanderleun is, by orders of magnitude, the better writer, the deeper thinker and the greater advocate for the best of western values and traditions.
Jon III
Typical Baugh he ignores what does not fit his worldview.
This can be a positive trait in a scientist, writer, or engineer.
In a leader it will get others killed.
Baugh sees the broader picture. Vanderleun identifies an obvious enemy but overlooks the more dangerous adversary, smaller in number, but far superior in cunning, whose mastery of illusion and deceipt enables them to set the conditions for any given onflict, to pander to the baser instincts of both protaganists and antogonists, and to advance their profoundly nefarious agenda regardless of outcome. Passion and sincerity nothwithstanding, Vanderleun would unwittingly play his role.
Andrew
"You have been placed in a Judeo-Christian-Enviromento-Feminized cage,.. and then taught in school, at church and at work to make decisions which keep you safely within it. The only difference between the Islamic sharia cage and our Amerikan cage is that the shapes are different."
This entire essay is built on a logical fallacy--the tu quoque (Lat. "you also") argument:
A makes criticism P.
A is also guilty of P.
Therefore, P is dismissed.
But this is what we have come to expect of Baugh. Whether using the false equivalency of a "black and white aregument" or the moral equivalency of a "you too" argument, Baugh has few equals when it comes to false equivalencies.
MALTHUS
@Jon 4:56
"As Sean says, both threats are real."
Really? How is islam a threat? Do you guys seriously believe the Ayerabs are going to grab their Kalashnikovs and mount their trans-atlantic camels to invade?
Baugh is right on one issue: we are already being screwed by our own politicians and the banksters who own them. Some here seem to at least sense slight discomfort in their rear ends but, after applying vaseline (you are being billed for,) most of you happily divert your attention to the specters of "islamofascism" or "illegal immigrants" or "drug dealers" or some other such bull...
Hmmm. My comment asking where you found this picture of Moochelle didn't seem to resurrect itself following the Blogger outage.
But I'm sure it's just a co-inky-dink...
Jack sez:
Really? How is islam a threat? Do you guys seriously believe the Ayerabs are going to grab their Kalashnikovs and mount their trans-atlantic camels to invade?
No, I think they are winning a war of propaganda and incrementalism just as the left has done for a hundred years. I also think that they will bend every effort to deliver a nuke(s) to a major American city(s). They know as well as you should that kalashnikovs and camels will avail them nothing.
Ever hear of conquest by demographics? Ask European census takers about it.
Stop jeering long enough to let in a little knowledge.
Jon III
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