On this day 109 years ago, in another context, practically in another universe, William Jennings Bryan spoke these words. I am not writing this about Bryan himself, his character, his beliefs, or whether he was right or wrong in the context in which he spoke these words. I am writing this because he said many things that are good for all of us to keep in mind today -- all of us who struggle to defend civilization against jihad violence, in this age of official dhimmitude and cowardice:
I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty — the cause of humanity.
William Jennings Bryan was a product of Western Judeo-Christian culture. He was not afraid or ashamed to cast his struggle -- that of the free coinage of silver -- in the mantle of the Crusaders. Had he seen George W. Bush recant and recoil after using the word Crusade casually and in ignorance to describe the struggle against jihad terror, he would have been appalled. William Jennings Bryan knew the Crusades were a noble cause advanced for the most part by noble men. Does that shock you? That's because a great deal has changed since Bryan's day, and not all for the better. (For details, see this book.)
...Then began the conflict. With a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the Crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit, our silver Democrats went forth from victory unto victory until they are now assembled, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment already rendered by the plain people of this country. In this contest brother has been arrayed against brother, father against son. The warmest ties of love, acquaintance, and association have been disregarded; old leaders have been cast aside when they have refused to give expression to the sentiments of those whom they would lead, and new leaders have sprung up to give direction to this cause of truth....
It is time for us to make the same evaluation of our leaders, and to find those who will speak the truth, and act upon it, and not flinch or cower or temporize in the face of evil.
Already the voices are growing stronger: what have we done to arouse the ire of these people? What can we give them so that we can live in peace? It is a false conception. Whatever we have done, whatever sins we have committed, whatever evils we have perpetrated -- they are not what has aroused their ire. For the London bombers, the Madrid bombers, the New York bombers, the Bali bombers, the Beslan child murderers, the Nigerian church burners, the Pakistani church gunmen, the killers of restaurant patrons and young mothers in Israel, and all the rest, it is not what we have done. Nor is it that they "envy" our "freedom" or our "material success."
It is that they believe they have a religious imperative to wage war against unbelievers in order to impose on us their way of life, which they believe to be commanded by God. Non-Muslims, said the Pakistani theorist Maududi, "have absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines." If they do, "the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life."
They use our sins and offenses, real and imagined, to arouse the ire of their people to wage that war, but the contents of their litanies of injury always change: the one constant is the imperative to expand, to conquer, to subjugate.
The concessions began almost immediately after the London bombs went off: the G8 leaders, instead of declaring that they would resist the jihad to their last breath, pledged $3 billion to the Palestinian jihadists.
If only we had a politician who would today in our contemporary situation repeat these further words of Bryan:
We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defence of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!
"The concessions began almost immediately after the London bombs went off: the G8 leaders, instead of declaring that they would resist the jihad to their last breath, pledged $3 billion to the Palestinian jihadists."
Honest to God.
When I heard Blair saying that on television, my jaw dropped. The Islamist Extremists blow up bombs in his capital, he gives Palestinians $3 billion.
I was wondering to myself - would the Palestinians get more $$$ if the UK Jihadists blow up more of London?
The problem remains our world leaders still cannot address THE ISSUE - Islamist Extremism. These world leaders should be CONFRONTING the Muslim leaders of the world, not coddling them and encouraging them to do nothing about the Jihadists.
There is something seriously regressive, backward and idiotic about islam. Not only the writings of their last prophet but the way it is practiced.
Yet in the West we call islam a religion and create a air of untouchability around this ideology.
Arabs have a historic inferiority complex. Islam has become the defacto rallying point. As as result islam has inherited this victim mentality. Any modernisation of islam would now be seen as defeat - so don't count on islam becoming more progressive. Just the reverse, as can be seen with the hitherto more progressive islamic nations of south east asia.
Oh, but it's different when it happens in Israel, dontcha know. Sarc way on/
I will be calling the White House and my reps on Monday. I don't want one more penny of US money going to help the Palestinians.
As a parent, one sometimes has to step back and tell a child they have the pink slip on their life. You hope that they will make good decisions. However, if they don't, it's up to them to sort it all out.
Time to treat the Palis like grown ups. If they suceed in becoming part of the modern world, great. If they don't, well, adverse consequences are all part of the learning process, aren't they?
There is a welcome ambiguity in the last line, as applied to the situation the Infidels find themselves in today. First, it could be taken as defiance of the Muslims, the "immoderate" Muslims who act or who support acts of violent Jihad, and the so-called "moderate" Muslims who often for transparent reasons feign not to believe in the Jihad, and perhaps would prefer that it all take place in a manner a little less attention-getting, and more stealthy, so that the settling within the Infidel lands, the taking advantage, wherever possible, of whatever kindnesses -- welfare state, huge sums spent on education and now on the cloud-cuckoo-land policy of "integration" (i.e., teaching Muslims to use more effectively such weapnos as the local language to promote their own position and chip away at that of Infidels), civil liberties that arise out of an Infidel culture but could not possibly have arisen in the Islamic countries themselves -- all to use against those same unwary, or fearful, or confused, Infidels.
But it can also be directed at our leaders. For we are waiting for some of them, at least, to speak correctly. And to formulate policies that meet the case, that do not engage in further denial or appeasement or the innocently-conceived policy (well, it had a little help from all those nice, plausible Iraqis who, of course, are very glad the Americans got rid of Saddam Hussein, and would like us to stay to shore up their position -- but all 1,000 or even 10,000 of them just are not enough to make up for the remaining 25 million, and should not be so plausible as to prevent us from coldly exploiting Iraq for the purposes we must consider -- to weaken Islam, to demoralize Islam, to put one kind of Muslim against another, and Iraq is the ideal place to do that.
Some of us assumed that Bush's seeming appeasement was all part of some cunning scheme, that he really "knew what he was doing." But clearly he does not. His participation in this massive jizyah to the "Palestinians," his continued refusal to prevent the crazed withdrawal from Gaza by the obstinate old man, Sharon, his failure to use these years to rally support, not for finding a little more oil in Alaska, but for a complete transformation of the American energy mix, so that on a war-footing we tax gasoline steadily until the SUVs are removed, forget about making AMTRAK or any other railroad or mass-transit system "paying for itself" (what a silly notion, when what is at stake is the real cost, the full cost, of that oil that is bought from the Muslim OPEC countries). There should be nuclear plants going up everywhere, wind and solar energy too promoted, subsidized, pushed to the hilt. Instead we get this handholding with Abdullah at the Waco ranch.
But what grates most is the colossal misunderstanding of Islam that is shown in the Iraq policy -- where some watered-down Sharanskyism ("democracies....don't make war on other democracies"-- based on a history that does not extend back even a century, for there were hardly any full democracies, save for a half-dozen countries, before 1900, and since then, they have all been, until yesterday, part of the European-American orbit) is tied to a kind of fear of talking about Islam, or possibly it is simply the undue respect granted a belief -system because 1) it is called a "religion" (salaam-salaam) and 2) it is claimed, and some apparently accept, that a "billion" or 1.2 bilion, or 1.4 billion, or 1.8 billion people (pull any number you like out of any hat you like) believe in this "religion" and therefore there "must be something to it."
Is there no one with the wit to speak, not in code, not about some strange "extremist ideology" that is never quite identified, but about Islam itself, or using a verbal synecdoche for Islam, about "Jihad." Okay, start talking then, if you don't dare talk about Islam (but only that group of "fanatical exremists" with whom the "vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims" -- according to Blair -- have nothing to do, and detest just as much as the rest of us, a statement for which there is not the slightest evidence, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite), about the Jihad.
Say: we are fighting the Jihadis world-wide. Then, "the world-wide Jihad." Then "all those who believe in Jihad, or believe that their belief-system should dominate over all others."
Or, "those who believe in the Jihad to ensure the dominance of their particular faith over all others." And keep on doing it, ever expanding the phrases so there can be no doubt what is being described, but there is still that little deniability.
You know -- "of course I wasn't talking about all Muslims. I know the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims do not support Jihad. I know that just like us Muslims do not wish to dominate, to push their belief-system across the globe. Of course not. I know that Muslims have no desire to take over, as the fanatics tell them they should, the so-called "dar al-Harb" or Lands of the Infidels. I know that they do not believe either in violent Jihad, or in the other instruments of Jihad that the fanatics talk about -- propaganda, Da'wa, the money weapon, demographic conquest. Of course I know that.
And you know what else I know? I know that almost all Muslims are horrified at the treatment of women by some who claim to speak for Islam and allow women to be treated as inferior to men. Of course that is only a handful of fanatics. And I know that in the countries that are mostly Muslim Muslims themselves are careful to extend full rights to non-Muslims -- though there are always those extremists and fanatics who claim, falsely, that that is part of Islam.
Yes, and I know that there are extremists and fanatics who would ban music, and sculpture, and painting, and scientific inquiry, but of course the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims have nothing against music, or sculpture, or paintings of living things, and they produce scientists capable of free and skeptical inquiry just as we do. Again, it is only that handful of fanatical extremists, who so misuse Islam.
Go ahead, President Bush. You are accused of being stupid, especially in Europe, and by Muslims. Show them you are stupid like a fox, and make a virtue of your own supposed stupidity, by misstating Islam in this fashion.
What will CAIR, what will the Muslim Student Association, what will the ambassadors from Arab countries, what will the Arab League and the O.I.C. and Kofi Annan say? Will they all say -- Bush, you have it wrong. Will they own up to the Jihad, to the dar al-Islam/dar al-Harb opposition, to the ban on scultpure, music, painting, the ban on equal rights for women, on free inquiry? Will they?
So here's the plan. Act dumb. Start reciting what has been written above. It will clear the air. It will do wonders.
So, we are in agreement then, yes? We know that Islam is the problem, and we are infinitely upset that none of our leaders worldwide are addressing the problem point blank.
It would drive me insane if I did not long ago come to expect idiocy from government. For every three Ivy League diplomas I will show you one jackass.
Now Robert. You know this is called Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech. First Bush's use of the word "Crusade," and now this.
Aparte di mi este caliz.
Robert, your article was well written and researched. Bryan had more backbone than Bush.
What Blair did with the money going to the Palestinians, (which, of course, we know there are no such thing; thanks to the wisdom of PM Golda Meir), was to APPEASE them. During war, they call it, "appeasement;" other times, it's called, "brown nosing."
Hugh, please don't hold your breath waiting for CAIR to own up to anything, especially jihad.
Hugh,
I don't beleive that it is possible nor desireable to set up a social contract based on calling the islamic bluff as you appear to suggest.
The only people that this will fool is the very people in the west it is fooling today. The concept of a social contract and agreement that transend religion, ethnicity, and tribal believes is a west notion that islam will use tactically against the West but never bound by it.
From my vantage point the notion of a 'moderate Muslim' seems an aberration turned into a convenient political construct in order to attempt to sell the idea that our criminal system can deal with outbursts of fundamentalists of whatever ideology.
I liken it to an ant heap. Not all the ants are soldier ants, but all have a role to play to serve the cause. For if they did not play their support role, the army ants would loose their potency and protection.
Did any of you see Ibrahim Hooper (Doug Hooper) on MSNBC tonight? He said that they (CAIR or islam) are "constantly attacked on right-wing blogs". Are you reading this Doug? Tell the truth for once, admit what islam's aims are.
I still do not understand why I should be expected to tolerate Islam in any form anymore than I would tolerate Nazism or Communism.
Muhammad was very much like Caligula: deluded enough to believe his own lies.
I can not and will not accept Islam as part of my world any longer.
Period.
None of us should.
Jeffrey wrote....The problem remains our world leaders still cannot address THE ISSUE - Islamist Extremism. These world leaders should be CONFRONTING the Muslim leaders of the world, not coddling them and encouraging them to do nothing about the Jihadists.
...
You know it is a false facade. I know it. Everyone here knows it. How can our civilization survive when our leaders are obviously trying to mislead us, the electorate? It is not just the Republicans, but the Democrats. They know in their souls, but cannot bring it to the lips. But it grows in their souls, that selfdoubt about Islam. As they wonder and wander seeking advice from Muslims and their apologists, the dung piles high. Apparently, their nostrils can not detect the stench from the apologists.
Daniel Pipes stated on CNN tonight that France was actually tougher on muslims then the Uk is today ; is that because they allready recognize the encroachment of this totalitarian ideology since they have a much greater percentage of muslims in their country and they have begun to see the affliction?
Britain may began to wake up after the bombings, but the lull is still there as Pipes pointed out the possible passing of a law that will not permit criticizm of religion , namely Islam of course , the possibility of even allowing them to have 4 wives, and how easily Islamic clerics have been tolerated as they openly speak openly against the very country they are living in and plot against it as well as the United States..
Muslims' like Omar Abdul Rahman,Ibn Umar, and Abu Hamza who lost and eye and an arm making a bomb and got disability and welfare from the British people while he plotted against them, "GO FIGURE"?.
Yes there it sat; the Finsbury Park Mosque in the middle of London and it muslims plotting the overthrow of the kaffirs, formulating the attacks on US Embassies, the attack on the USS COLE , planning of the attack on the world trade center in 1993 right in good old Britain. And look what looking the other way has gotten you?
Britain has been given a wake up call, will they act or will they just go back to the same old stick your head in the sand and hopefully it will all go away dhimmified attitude? Oh if we only had a Winston Churchill now.
Bryan evokes humanity as a moral ideal. And, in Islam, there is no such ideal, only Muslim humanity, and non-Muslim lack of humanity, that is, lack of equal moral worth, by definition.
The moral dualism between Muslim and non-Muslim is unbridgeable; only 'the People of the Book', or perhaps those who are too numerous and troublesome, like Hindus in South Asia, hold out some hope for the status of dhimmis, protection and oppression in an Islamic society, according to the teachings of the Prophet in the Qur'an and Sunna.
Humanity, the rights of all persons, insofar as they are persons, obligations that all persons owe to other persons, insofar as we share membership in a common cause, the community of being alive and human, the Western ideal, the seeds planted in the Hebrew bible in the universal command, 'Don't kill', and the likeness of all people to the divine, nurtured in the teachings of the Nazarene, the Jew, the rabbi, who taught care, respect, compassion toward all people, developed further in the Roman Church by scholars influenced by Greek ideals of reason, excellence of human character, and flourishing ways of human life, and, finally, raised even above religion in the Enlightenment, a rational, moral ideal, regulating human laws, human commerce, anything human, simply human.
Humanity is not only dead to Islam but denied, and cursed. There is no humanity, only surrender to Allah, quasi-surrender from 'People of the Book', and damnation for all rest. Humanity as a moral ideal is obliterated, to be destroyed, an error of corrupt minds, a horrible alteration of divine law deserving not simply condemnation, but violent destruction. Humanity, the moral farce, is destined to burn in the fires of hell; only the faithful will live.
Muslim or non-Muslim, where do you belong? The answer to that question will, for the most part, seal your fate in this life and the next. That is Islam.
So, where do you belong? With humanity or with Islam and the Prophet? One cannot belong to both.
"Here's the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!" -Shakespeare (Macbeth)
"raven" - you are so right! the moderates the the ones we need to be afraid of - these fence riders, (who do it just to appease the west and try to infiltrate our society in a low key fashion). I would much rather know what side of the fence someone was on so i'd know how better to prepare myself.
JTF ~ I'm with humanity and know how to choose sides during wartime.
Go straight-a-way to VDH and read these two excellent essays.
Ron
*****
July 8, 2005
The Same Old, Same Old . . .
An anatomy of the London bombing.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
The British may react very differently than the Spanish did after Madrid — by doing nothing rather than by retreating from Iraq.
In the corrupt West these days, that is something.
We all know the score of this war now in the near four years since September 11. The London bombings should remind us how the old tired game works.
[...]
Anticipate Western leaders condemning the terrorists in the same breadth as they call for “eliminating poverty” and “bringing them to justice” — as if the jihadists and their patrons are mere wayward and impoverished felons.
In the short term, Bush and Blair will appear as islands in the storm amid an angry and anguished public. But as 7/7 fades, as did 9/11, expect them to become even more unpopular, as the voices of appeasement assure us that if they just go away, maybe so will the terrorists.
It is our task, each of us according to our station, to speak the truth to all these falsehoods, and remember that we did not inherit a wonderful civilization just to lose it to the Dark Ages.
Link Here
*****
July 9, 2005
Jihad Is Knocking
Another Episode in the War between Christendom and Islam
by Bruce Thornton
Private Papers
The slaughter in London is another grisly wake-up call that likely will go as unheeded as earlier ones. Already the standard narrative is being trotted out: evildoers created by what the New York Times predictably called the ?root causes of terrorism?: autocracy, or economic stagnation, or Palestinian suffering, or globalization's dislocations, or Western historical sins, or the war in Iraq (the cause will depend on the political prejudices of the pundit) have ?hijacked? Islam and distorted its peaceful message. And now they are using Islam to justify murder in order to further their own ambitions or dysfunctional psychic needs. Given this explanation, so the story goes, we must be careful not to demonize all Muslims and assure them that we respect their religion and culture. The tale is then wrapped up with fierce threats against the terrorists and protestations of admiration for Islam.
[...]
The next few weeks will show whether the British have advanced as far down the road of dhimmitude as have the Spaniards, who responded to the murder of their citizens not with the force and resistance their ancestors showed for seven centuries, but with fear and appeasement. As for us, we'd better discard our illusions that the jihadists, as Thomas Freidman put it, are ?a cancer within the [Islamic] body politic? and accept instead that jihad just may be a vital organ. Then maybe we can see this war for what it is: one more episode in the long struggle between what used to be called Christendom and a religion of aggressive conquest and colonization.
[...]
Link Here
The same old thing. That our institutions institutions have failed us miserably is an outrage. We have been kept in the dark about the history and characteristics of Islam.
Byrant did have the backbone that we had been develop quickly. I am now reading "White Gold" by Giles Milton. It is shocking to read how, in a manner similar to how they did to the Scandinavian "insurgency", Europeans appeased and encouraged Muslims that raided their costs for slaves, hence the title "White Gold".
Thus European appeasement doesn't surprise. What surprises and enrages is the attempt to hoodwink the American people and the veiled appeasement that we have offered these monsters. I am more than disappointed.
The same old thing. That our institutions institutions have failed us miserably is an outrage. We have been kept in the dark about the history and characteristics of Islam.
Byrant did have the backbone that we had been develop quickly. I am now reading "White Gold" by Giles Milton. It is shocking to read how, in a manner similar to how they did to the Scandinavian "insurgency", Europeans appeased and encouraged Muslims that raided their costs for slaves, hence the title "White Gold".
Thus European appeasement doesn't surprise. What surprises and enrages is the attempt to hoodwink the American people and the veiled appeasement that we have offered these monsters. I am more than disappointed.
"...the possible passing of a law that will not permit criticizm of religion , namely Islam of course , the possibility of even allowing them to have 4 wives..."
If such a law passes, then Britain is surely doomed.
With friends like this, who needs any enemies?
I wonder what the reaction would have been if after every V2 rocket attack on England, the world leaders were to just pledge more cash for the Nazis, maybe the Nazis would have ever so nicely vanished, and saved Europe all kinds of grief?
How nice for the world leaders to show such monetary support for anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity and terrorism all in one check!
I think Rudyard Kipling had it right 100+ years ago:
Danegeld
by Rudyard Kipling
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
to call upon a neighbor and to say,
We invaded you last night, we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.
And that is called asking for Danegeld,
And the people who ask it explain,
That you've only to pay'em the Danegeld,
And then you'll be rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say,
Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you,
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.
And that is called paying the Danegeld,
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Danegeld,
You never get rid of the Dane!
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear it should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to be pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say,
We never pay anyone Danegeld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost.