I am glad that I am free but it distresses me that there are those willing to harm and kill because their religion commands it and subjugate me into their murderous ideology called Islam. What is more worrying is that those in free countries are appeasing this ideology that continues to cause havoc in the lives on non Muslims be they Jews, Christians, Hindus etc and their families. Nothing can justify the loss that these families will suffer. The victims families will be written off and Islam will again get a free ride. Islamic terrorists can keep killing because that is what the norm is, we do not want to offend them. Human sacrifice for appeasing allah in the 21st century.

Posted by: savsiv at November 27, 2008 8:37 AM

Oh my gosh, I am so thankful to be living in America, for my family and friends and for all the freedom fighters who gather here and inspire me to go out and do something about the jihad.

Thank you Robert, for keeping the light burning. God bless you and all here on this special uniquely American day.

Posted by: Isabellathecrusader at November 27, 2008 8:39 AM

Happy Thanksgiving to all and that l am grateful we have Robert and others like him to be a clarion call about the dangers of islam and the loss of our freedoms should they get their way.
Isabellathecrusader, in Canada we have our own Thanksgiving, which would be your Columbus Day in October, which is most likely due to our earlier harvest up here. It is a unique way to thank our God for the abundance that we have in the New World and the Freedoms that enables us to have it.

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at November 27, 2008 8:53 AM

Yes happy thanksgiving everyone and I am going to have lots of HAM yummy. Thanks Robert, Hugh and Raymond and all the posters.

Posted by: savsiv at November 27, 2008 9:16 AM

My thanks on this day go to those, long passed from the scene, who created the freest place on earth.

Many thanks to you, Robert, for the important role you are playing in keeping it such.

I have always been thankful to have been born an American.

Posted by: Vee at November 27, 2008 9:17 AM

Happy Thanksgiving to JW and friends and to those in the shadow of this onslaught. Keeping silent is not safe.

Posted by: Old Atlantic at November 27, 2008 9:25 AM

Happy Thanksgiving all.
As with savsiv, HAM ALL DAY LONG - like garlic to a vampire. Give thanks today that there are those in the west, despite others who willingly capitulate to the invading hoards, that will fight against the tide.
God bless.

Posted by: TRSTHNTR at November 27, 2008 9:25 AM

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

I give thanks for being in America just about anytime I see the news. The latest atrocity (not tragedy!) in India only magnifies it.
My prayer is that our leaders begin to understand what they are doing to America in the name of one world order.
The melting pot gave way to the salad bowl. The salad bowl became the mosaic.
We were given a gift, one it is our duty to preserve for future generations.

Posted by: PMK at November 27, 2008 9:33 AM

Let us all be thankful of being free, and unlike our misguided PC brothers, let us remember that the price of Freedom is eternal Vigilance.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Posted by: Herbrand at November 27, 2008 9:33 AM

I am thankful for the basics...'Living is my favorite hobby, breathing is also good',

God, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, and organic chemistry, all conspired to let me take my next breath on a more or less continuous basis.
For that I am thankful...

Breathing is special...blessed are those who breath...Those not breathing should lay down...

Posted by: duh_swami at November 27, 2008 9:41 AM

May all of us who come to this meeting place be aware of how blessed we are for it and our many other gifts, both personal and societal. May liberty and personal dignity continue to shine as a light unto all nations, creeds, peoples. Thank you to all who contribute here, in ways big and small.

May God bless us all and may He move all hearts toward cooperation and conciliation and away coercion and constant strife among us all.

May those who believe the ideology and support jihad have change of heart. It would be better for them and for all of us.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at November 27, 2008 10:02 AM

Let us be grateful to God for the freedoms we enjoy in this great country. I pray that someday those living under the opression of Islam enjoy freedom too!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Posted by: Captain America at November 27, 2008 10:31 AM

Happy Thanksgiving my American friends. Yes PMK melting pots incorporate , and mosaics are permanently fractured.

Posted by: KrazyKafir at November 27, 2008 10:33 AM

Yes, Happy Thanksgiving and all it stands for, but, I've been reading the over 300 comments at the NYT on the Mumbai bombing, and my heart feels a little broken. When did Americans become so brain damaged?

Of course my comments aren't printed. Gee, I wonder why. Here's an example:

A guy says, "Pakistan is to blame."

I reply, "No, Islam's to blame. It's the ideology, stupid. Read the Koran."

Now, I wonder why that hasn't been printed (sarc/on).

I have to conclude that a lot of Americans are just plain stupid, because the Islam thing is as easy to grasp as a three-year-old his ABC's. Good Grief - it's not complicated, you chuckleheads! What's wrong with you? Don't you know how to think?

Sorry, I just can't believe the comments printed on the NYT about the Mumbai bombings, and they've cast a pall on my day. Blame everybody and everything but Muslims and Islam.

Posted by: darcy at November 27, 2008 10:42 AM

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks for stopping by the blog!
Christopher Hamilton
The Right Opinion, for the Right Wing

Posted by: Christopher Hamilton at November 27, 2008 10:44 AM

Happy Thanksgiving to you and all of your readers.

May God the Father Almighty, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Bless us all.

Posted by: Zorro at November 27, 2008 10:48 AM

People, steel yourselves.

Comment # 307 on the NYT:

"I just finished speaking with an old friend in India, a Muslim woman.

She reminded me that many of the victims are likely to be Muslims; that the greatest number of victims of so-called Islamic terrorists are Muslims; that more Muslims died on 9/11 than the number of Muslims that perpetrated the attacks.

Let's not seal the deal for the terrorists and castigate the 99% of Muslims who are non-violent. They are our brothers in humanity and only humanism can defeat terrorism."

— John Gastright, New York, NY

Can you puke, or what? See why I feel broken-hearted. This stupidity is just utterly unbelievable.

Posted by: darcy at November 27, 2008 10:56 AM

People, steel yourselves.

Comment # 307 on the NYT:

"I just finished speaking with an old friend in India, a Muslim woman.

She reminded me that many of the victims are likely to be Muslims; that the greatest number of victims of so-called Islamic terrorists are Muslims; that more Muslims died on 9/11 than the number of Muslims that perpetrated the attacks.

Let's not seal the deal for the terrorists and castigate the 99% of Muslims who are non-violent. They are our brothers in humanity and only humanism can defeat terrorism."

— John Gastright, New York, NY

Can you puke, or what? See why I feel broken-hearted. This stupidity is just utterly unbelievable.

Posted by: darcy at November 27, 2008 10:57 AM

darcy,
our local Cdn radio news station, Windsor actually called the terrorists "muslim terrorists", that is really unusual that they can actually see the islamists elephant in the news story about these murderous killings in India. Next we shouls ask islamists appologisits, what did India do to the poor muslims to get attacked,, they are not Jews, nor Amer. or Brits,, why are Hindus the real victims now?

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at November 27, 2008 11:02 AM

Zena, here's another comment among the multitudes of dunces and oafs, blockheads and dopes, who commented:

"What did America and the UK do to provoke this?"

From an American. It's heart-breaking, really.

Posted by: darcy at November 27, 2008 11:24 AM

In the past several months, I've come to the realization that we will not allowed to continue to speak out. Yes, right now we still can. But I used to believe that we had at least decades of free speech ahead of us. I don't believe that anymore.

All the warning signs of the imminent loss of freedom are there, yet most Westerners refuse to accept those signs as dangerous. The poisons of political correctness and multiculturalism are eating away at our taken-for-granted freedoms.

I'm in a state of despair, but will not give up until I am FORCED to to do.

So, on this Thanksgiving Day, I will, as I did last year, again offer thanks for our freedoms. We'll be dining with my neighbors, and I'm sure I'll get that there-she-goes-again look and rolling of the eyes.

Posted by: Always On Watch at November 27, 2008 11:25 AM

Happy Thanksgiving to (almost) all who regularly post here, be it Hugh, Cornelius, undaunted, PMK, greatcomet of 1577, darcy, Isabellathecrusader, awake, Alaskan 1000, gravenimage, Richard the Lionheart (yep, I know you're British but HT anyway), ebonystone, Eastview and many others. Though we may have some differences here and there, we're on the same page respecting the mortal threat that Islam poses to our liberties and way of life. All the forces and factors that led to Thanksgiving being celebrated as it is are antithetical to the forces and factors that produced the Islamic faith. In short, Thanksgiving and Islam have nothing in common of substance. May the former last forever and may the latter eventually disappear from the face of the earth.

Posted by: Wellington at November 27, 2008 11:29 AM

"A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King Jr.

Words to live by.

Meanwhile, a sincerest Happy Thanksgiving to the zany cast and crew of the good ship 'Jihadwatch'.

Wellington old buddy, let's hope the Cowboys gets their asses handed to them today.

Got my big Turkey, my little family, and my ice bucket of beer. Don't get no better. Cheers.

Posted by: Cornelius at November 27, 2008 11:44 AM

We have much to be thankful for, because we live in freedom. Our rule of law protects those freedoms, including freedom of thought and belief, freedom of expression, and freedom to seek our life as we see fit without coercions from those who would enslave us body and mind.

However, there is a puzzling aspect of our freedom of speech that leads to its own de-evolution: Mainstream media insists on painting the most violently coercive ideology on Earth in the same equal balance as if it were a world religion like all the others, Islam. But world events, as just witnessed in Mumbai and thousands of other instances over the years, are forcing them to face the unpleasant reality that Islam is not a religion but a violent cult. How will the MSM wash this without making themselves ludicrously incredulous and disingenuous? It is not possible, not for academia, not for well intentioned political leaders, and not for mainstream media. The truth is that Islam is not a religion, and they should stop trying to make this Mohammetan cult of Allah into one.

We have much to be thankful for, because in our freedoms we are free to inquire and examine, and thus use that freedom to arrive at the truth. One hopes that in time even those who disingenuously paint Islam as a "religion of peace" will be shown by their own actions how it is anything but. We are not superstitious barbarians swayed by lies, so the MSM better get a handle, or prove themselves inept in their freedom of speech.

Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at November 27, 2008 12:00 PM

Can you puke, or what? See why I feel broken-hearted. This stupidity is just utterly unbelievable.

Posted by: darcy at November 27, 2008 10:57 AM

--

darcy, I can't eat nearly as much as that makes me want to puke.
No doubt an Obamaton.

Fasten your seatbelts, kids.

Terror is coming to the USA.

Look at India. They've been appeasing, appeasing and appeasing. And then some more.

Posted by: Ummah Gummah at November 27, 2008 12:02 PM

Hear, hear, Wellington!

Well said, as usual. Happy Thanksgiving to you, and to all here.

Posted by: Vee at November 27, 2008 12:20 PM

Now in the twilight of my life, I am thankful I have lived as a free man for all of it...

I am proud to have served from many years in the military to remain free and to protect those who deserve to be free...free from oppression, bigotry, hatred, tyranny, extortion, coersion, and relious hatred. If I could, I would be doing it now...

Semper Fi, and God Bless America...

Happy Thanksgiving to All free people, May you always remain that way..

Posted by: pulsar182 at November 27, 2008 12:55 PM

To Robert, Hugh, Marisol, All The JW/DW Staff, And All Who Post On The JW/DW Community, HAPPY THANKSGIVING DAY!

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at November 27, 2008 1:05 PM

I, too, want to extend wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving to Robert, Hugh, Raymond and Marisol, and to all my JW/DW friends, wherever you may be. Yours are the steady voices of sanity in a world that is becoming increasingly incoherent.

Posted by: Eastview at November 27, 2008 1:14 PM

Happy thanksgiving to everyone @ JihadWatch. And thank you Robert, Hugh, Raymond and Marisol for collating all the scattered information every day that points to the commonality of the Islamic threat to all of us.

And thank you for remembering everybody who died today in Mumbai. It's the price we all pay for not being allowed to publicly and explicitly identify Mohammedans as the enemy, and act accordingly.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at November 27, 2008 1:35 PM

I am so very grateful to those of you who post here daily. I get great insight into the issues Robert presents by reviewing each of your perspectives.

I do not post often, as I do not possess the requisite knowledge to be as clear and lucid as those who comment here. I consider Jihad Watch to be among the best, if not THE best, place to come and witness the quest for truth.

May we always be able to pursue that truth without fear of retribution.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by: derak at November 27, 2008 2:20 PM

Happy thanksgiving to all here. I feel extremely thankful that there are still people like you all who are willing to stand up for the freedoms we all hold so dear; especially when there are so many others who are ready to throw the white flag of surrender. While this thanksgiving comes with the backdrop of the Mumbai massacres, it only goes to show how interconnected we all are and how we should never take our liberties for granted. Indeed, I am certain that the Islamist Mumbai operation was chosen carefully to occur on thanksgiving eve so as to 'strike terror in the hearts' of us unbelievers in the USA & Canada. I am waiting for the day when it is us who can strike terror in the hearts of the Islamic terrorists instead of the other way around.

Posted by: Razdan at November 27, 2008 2:21 PM

Happy Thanksgiving--another blessed infidel national holiday. Happy Thanksgiving to American Muslims--this is your national holiday, too. Any imam who says otherwise, that our celebration is haram, let him be blasted to perdition for such monstrous ingratitude to God, the Author of all the blessings bestowed on America.

Thanks on high for Our Champion, Robert Spencer, a splendid human being and a voice speaking in defense of unalienable human rights--freedom of speech and of conscience, in opposition to Islamic supremacism, imposition of shari'ah, and jihad as cosmic war on human free-will.

Posted by: John C at November 27, 2008 2:58 PM

I am giving thanks, not just today, but every single day, that I still enjoy a degree of freedom, although this freedom is decreasing every day.
Keep going, Robert and all the others here at JW, just as I will never, ever shut up or be silenced. If you want me to shut up, you will have to kill me. That may be my destiny, but it does not stop me from speaking the truth: Islam is a satanic cult and its spread needs to be halted. By all legal means possible.
God bless the USA and all other freedom-loving nations and people. God bless the Counterjihad movement.
- ESW

Posted by: Eurodhimmi at November 27, 2008 3:04 PM

Here Here, Eurodhimmi,

When they fail to effectively gag individuals and sources(fairness doctrine or not) who refuse to submit, if even to some pop culture take on it all, there will be no choice but to up the ante. Be vigilant all, not only on this most joyous and thankful of holidays, but year round. Society's self proclaimed enemies are often as near as the next aisle in your local supermarket.

Posted by: We need G.C. Scott at November 27, 2008 3:14 PM

I searched through scripture and found 39 verses with the words "give thanks". All of the appropriate and in keeping with this day. The below verse is from the New Living Translation. I choose it because of the current and daily way that it phrases the wonderful thoughts.

2 TH 5:18
No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

2 ت 5:18
بغض النظر عما يحدث ، دائما يكون نشكر ، لهذا هو ان شاء الله لك الذين ينتمون إلى الرب يسوع المسيح.

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL! at November 27, 2008 3:47 PM

Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans out there. Eat, drink and be merry!

In Nova Scotia, radio coverage of the Mumbai attacks actually used phrases like, "muslim terrorists" and "islamic extremists" and guess what? The thought police didn't come after them!

I'd just like to point out, the Great White North isn't quite a "thoughtcrime state" yet.

Posted by: ImNoDhimmi at November 27, 2008 7:33 PM

Indeed, I am certain that the Islamist Mumbai operation was chosen carefully to occur on thanksgiving eve so as to 'strike terror in the hearts' of us unbelievers in the USA & Canada.

Razdan,

You may be right but if that was their goal, they failed. Seeing Mumbai on fire doesn't strike terror in me. It only steels my resolve.
My reserve of terror was used up on 9/11 sitting at a traffic light and listening to radio hosts react to the collapse of one of South Tower.

The Mumbai Mobsters got my attention but that was all.

Posted by: PMK at November 27, 2008 8:59 PM

Thanksgiving and Freedom

RIGHT NOW friend and foe here and overseas, want to subject the US MILITARY personnel to indictment and prosecution by the ICC.

GERMANY AND ITALY have actually already indicted US CIA agents for supposedly capturing radical islamic terriorists.

This is an infringement on our SOVEREIGNTY and a dagger aimed at our US MILITARY.

As a result, they may soon want to charge our troops overseas whom are fighting against terriorism, with trumped up "war crime" charges.

Charges like claiming Americans committed genocide, or claim we committed crimes against humanity. There's a leftist group in Paris, plus Argentina, Sweden, whom want to charge Rumsfeld for allegedly authorizing torture at Guantanamo bay, and abu Graib prison in Iraq claiming 1984 convention against torture, which FRANCE has used in previous torture cases.

it's really time to put the UN on notice that the days where the USA would mindlessly supply it with money, men, military equipment and blood without conditions are simply over.

In fact the latest---the new UN SEC GENERAL has already stipulated he wants NYC police officers to serve in UN peacekeeping mission in places like haiti, kosovo, and liberia.

here is one more reason why

CLINTON IN 2000 gave his blessing to the whole globalist thing on the UN "INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT (ICC). The DEMOCRATS all along want to make US citizens SERVANTS TO THE UN AS OUR GOVERNMENT instead of a country governed by WE THE PEOPLE.

Thankfully Bush saw the serious threat this Socialist star chamber posed to our military and he told them to stuff a sock in it. Apparantly at that time the UN was insulted by it. Although the REPUBLICANS tried twice to negotiate immunity for US peacekeepers thru the Sec Council.

Well, the anti-Americans at the UN wouldn't have any of it and the Abu Graib prison gave Kofi Annan the opening he wanted. The he tried to wrap himself in the human right mantle by claiming it would be unfotunate for someone to press for such an exemption given the prisoner abuse in Iraq.

We all know that if Mr. Amman really cared a thing about human rights he would have protested the revolving membership of certain countries with human rights track records. However, the Sanctimonious UN and Annan are always silent on the topic of human rights; except when it comes to taking cheap shots at the US

What they are really after is for the US to submit to the will of the UN and it's International criminal court. What they want is for the US to relinquish it's SOVEREIGNTY relagating WE THE PEOPLE of the US to the status of servants to the UN INSTEAD of being governed by WE THE PEOPLE

THIS would for example entail that any US servicemen serving in let's say Pakistan could be apprehended by local Muslim authorities for an offense, real or imagined slammed into the ICC and flown to the Hage, netherlands where they would rot for months waiting for trial and done ENTIRELY without due process. they would get not trial and no confronting of accusers, No protection from double jeopardy and no unanimous verdict for a conviction.

Take a second to THINK about this all of the globalists within and without the USA think the murderous Al Qaida terriorists should have these rights HOWEVER NOT OUR US SOLDIERS.

Even though we can't guarantee that no American soldier is ever taken prisoner by a foreighn state and put before the ICC, we at "least" make sure no US soldier and or civilian in some doomed-to-failure peacekeeping operation meets with this fate.

However, the ICC doesn't want to recognize the CONSTITUTIONAL rights that we as Americans are guaranteed. GET IT?? They too think our constitution is FLAWED.

Meanwhile the globalists Anti-American ICC supporters criticized Mr. Bush claiming we were "undermining international LAW, the reality, THEY were writing new INTERNATIONAL LAWS TO protect themselves.

Want to know WHAT were the "agreement on the Privileges and immunities of the ICC" ratified with the assent of ONLY 10 NATION--it flat out provides the ICC immunity from "every form of legal process anywhere".

They stated that the "property, funds, and assets" of the ICC "shall be IMMUNE from search, seizure, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference. And, the ICC and it's assets they said "are to be exempt from all direct taxes" including local taxes and customs.

Long and short of it----the ICC MEMBERS have declared themselves IMMUNE form "personal arrest or detention, Legal process of every kind and immigration restrictions.

Oh then then lastly, the "salaries, emoluments and allowances" of the judges prosecutor deputy prosecutor and the registras of the ICC ARE EXEMPT from taxaition.

What hypocrites, it seems to run DEEP in the UN, but it indicates the lengths to which globalists will go to undermine National SOVEREIGNTY.

There's no mistaking it, the ICC SEVERELY undermines our Sovereignty and has over the years placed our troops at great risk.

It CLAIMS complete jurisdiction over every person in the world and it makes no difference to them whether or not that nation has even ratified the treaty.

And, FRANKLY our own constitution may soon be up to the interpretation of 18 foreign -and for the most part hostile-ICC JUDGES.

Long and short of it, the ICC is literally a dagger in the heart of our US SOVEREIGNTY, our freedom and our independence.

DO you want to know what the ACLU thinks about how 'STUPID' they view Americans. Here is what Norman THOMAS one of the Founders of the ACLU says QUOTE Americans will never "knowingly" accept Socialism, but under "liberalism" Americans will accept every fragment; and one day wake up in a Socialist Nation and "wonder" how it all happened.

What we need to investigate is how the DEMOCRATS and ACLU think that they can continue to count on Americans being as stupid as the ACLU thinks Americans are.

Prior to elections we repeatedly had to complain to the REPUBLICANS that our posts were stonewalled by sites because no one wanted to know the truth.

to the present the problem exists.

What we as American's need to do is to LEGALLY and LEGISLATIVELY NOT LEAVE WASH DC alone until everyone of our FREEDOMS are iron clad protected from flag to allegience to seal to all freedoms.

Right now THE COALITION TO FIGHT AGAINST THE ACLU ---whom fights for all the freedoms of WE THE PEOPL will close if they don't get funding. Want to see how bravely they fight for the public go there and see. If they close, people, wake up there will be NO ONE to protect our FREEDOMS of WE THE PEOPLE.

We need to make sure that the only enemies our troops need to concern themselves with are the Islamic terriorists in their crosshairs not some New world order beauracrat in the Hague.

google OLIVER NORTH AND THE FREEDOM ALLIANCE site and see for yourself what we saw.

Feel free to cut paste and print it's a beautiful thing one can only type so much

Posted by: SassyFrassy at November 27, 2008 9:59 PM

To all Americans

I hope you have/ had a happy Thanksgiving, despite the terrible news from India.

Time, perhaps, to quote Oriana Fallaci from 'The Force of Reason', quoting Pericles:

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage".

And some wonderful passages from Fallaci's fiercely magnificent paean to America, in 'The Rage and the Pride':

"In my opinion it was ultimately never an issue of "if": it was always one of "when." Why do you think that on Tuesday morning my subconscious felt that anxiety, that sensation of danger? Why do you think that despite my habits I turned on the TV? Why do you think that one of the three questions I was asking myself while the first tower was burning and the audio wasn’t working was that of a terrorist attack? Why do you think that when the second airplane appeared I immediately understood?

"Since America is the strongest country in the world, the richest, the most powerful, the most modern, almost everyone fell into that trap. The Americans did themselves, at times.

"But America’s vulnerability comes precisely from its strength, its wealth, its power and its modernity."...

"When we met I found you almost stupefied by the heroic efficiency and admirable unity with which the Americans have faced this Apocalypse. That’s right. Despite all the shortcomings that always get rubbed in their face—that I myself always rub in their face (though those of Europe, and of Italy in particular, are even more serious)—America is a country with important things to teach us. "

"And having said this, let me explain where the ability to unite that characterizes the Americans comes from.

"It comes from their patriotism. I don’t know whether in Italy you saw and understood what happened in New York when Bush went to thank the rescue men (and women) who are digging in the ruins of the two towers trying to save some survivor but only coming up with the occasional nose or finger.

" In spite of this, they do it without giving up. Without resigning themselves, so that if you ask them how they do it they say: "I can allow myself to be exhausted, but not to be defeated."

"All of them. The young, the very young, the old, the middle aged. White, black, yellow, brown, purple...You saw them, didn’t you?

"While Bush was thanking them all they did was wave their little American flags, raise their clenched fists, and roar: "USA! USA!"

"In a totalitarian country I’d have thought: "Look how nicely organized this was by the Powers That Be!"

"Not in America. In America you don’t organize these things. You don’t manage them, you don’t command them. Especially in a disenchanted metropolis like New York and with workers like New York workers.

"New York workers are real pieces of work. Freer than the wind. They don’t even obey their unions. But if you touch their flag, or their Patria...In English the word Patria doesn’t exist. To say Patria you have to put two words together. Father Land. Mother Land. Native Land. Or you can simply say My Country.

"But they have the noun "patriotism." They have the adjective "patriotic." And apart from France, I can’t imagine a country more patriotic than America. God! I was so moved to see those workers clenching their fists and waving their flags and roaring USA–USA–USA, without anyone ordering them to..."....

"The truth is that America is a special place, my friend. A country to envy, to be jealous of, for reasons that have nothing to do with wealth et cetera.

"It’s special because it was born out of a need of the soul, the need to have a homeland, and out of the most sublime idea that Man has ever conceived: the idea of liberty, or rather of liberty married to the idea of equality.

"It’s special also because the idea of liberty wasn’t fashionable at the time. Nor was the idea of equality. Nobody was talking about these things but a few philosophers of the so–called Enlightenment. You couldn’t find these concepts anywhere except in big expensive books released in installments and called Encyclopedias. And apart from the writers or the other intellectuals, apart from the princes and the lords who had the money to buy the big book or the books that inspired the big book, who knew anything about the Enlightenment? The Enlightenment wasn’t something you could eat!

"Not even the revolutionaries of the French Revolution were talking about it, seeing how the French Revolution didn’t start until 1789, thirteen years after the American Revolution exploded in 1776....

"What’s more, it’s a special country, a country to envy, because that idea was understood by often illiterate and certainly uneducated farmers.

"The farmers of the American colonies.

"And because it was materialized by a small group of extraordinary men. By men of great culture, great quality.

"The Founding Fathers. Do you have any idea who the Founding Fathers were, the Benjamin Franklins and the Thomas Jeffersons and the Thomas Paines and the John Adamses and the George Washingtons and so on?

"These weren’t the small–time lawyers ("avvocaticchi" as Vittorio Alfieri rightly called them) of the French Revolution!

"These weren’t the brooding and hysterical executioners of the Terror, the Marats and the Dantons and the Saint Justs and the Robespierres!

"These were people, these Founding Fathers, who knew Greek and Latin like our own Italian teachers of Greek and Latin (assuming there still are any) will never know them.

"People who had read Aristotle and Plato in Greek, who had read Seneca and Cicero in Latin, and who had studied the principles of Greek democracy like not even the Marxists of my day studied the theory of surplus value. (Assuming they really did study it.)

"Jefferson even knew Italian. (He called it "Toscano".) He spoke and read in Italian with great fluency

". In 1774 as a matter of fact, along with the two thousand vine plants and the thousand olive trees and the music paper which was rare in Virginia, the Florentine Filippo Mazzei brought him multiple copies of a book written by a certain Cesare Beccaria entitled "Of Crimes and Punishments."

"As for the self–taught Franklin, he was a genius. Scientist, printer, editor, writer, journalist, politician, inventor. In 1752 he discovered the electric nature of lightning and invented the lightning rod. Is that enough for you?

"And it was with these extraordinary leaders, these men of great quality, that the often illiterate and certainly uneducated farmers rebelled against England in 1776. They fought the War of Independence, the American Revolution.

"Well, despite the muskets and the gun powder, despite the death toll that is the cost of every war, they didn’t do it with the rivers of blood of the future French Revolution.

"They didn’t do it with the guillotine and massacres at Vandea.

"They did it with a piece of paper that, along with the need of the soul, the need to have a homeland, put into effect the sublime idea of liberty—or rather of liberty married to quality.

"The Declaration of Independence. "We hold these Truths to be self–evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."

"And that piece of paper that we’ve all been copying well or badly from the French Revolution on, or from which we’ve drawn our inspiration, is still the backbone of America.

"The vital lymph of this nation. You know why? Because it turns the plebes into the People.

"Because it invites them, rather orders them, to govern themselves, to express their own individuality, to pursue their own happiness.

"All the opposite of what communism did, prohibiting people to rebel, to govern themselves, to express themselves, to get rich, and setting up His Majesty the State in place of the customary kings.

"My father used to say, "Communism is a monarchic regime, and it’s an old–school monarchy. Because it cuts off men’s balls. And when you cut off a man’s balls, he’s no longer a man." He also used to say that instead of freeing the plebes, communism turned everyone into plebes. It made everyone starve to death.

"Well, in my view America frees the plebes. Everyone is a plebe there. White, black, yellow, brown, purple, stupid, intelligent, poor, rich. Actually the rich are the most plebeian of all. Most of the time they’re such boors! Crude, ill–mannered.

"You can tell immediately that they’ve never read Galateo, that they’ve never had anything to do with refinement and good taste and sophistication. In spite of the money they waste on clothes, for example, they’re so inelegant as to make the Queen of England look chic by comparison.

"But they are freed, by God. And in this world there is nothing stronger or more powerful than freed plebes. You will always get your skull cracked when you go up against the Freed Plebe.

"And they all got their skulls cracked by America: English, Germans, Mexicans, Russians, Nazis, Fascists, Communists. Even the Vietnamese got theirs cracked in the end, when they had to come to terms after their victory so that now when a former president of the United States goes there to visit they're in seventh heaven. "Bienvenu, Monsieur le President, bienvenu!"
The problem is that the Vietnamese don’t pray to Allah.

"It’s going to be much harder to deal with the sons of Allah. Much longer and much harder. Unless the rest of the Western world stops peeing its pants. And starts reasoning a little and gives them a hand."...

Thank God for America.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at November 27, 2008 11:21 PM

PS - on the theme of giving thanks - I would like to mention, here, with gratitude, some of those American writers whose books I - an Australian - have enjoyed enormously, and who have, therefore, shaped my understanding of, and response to, their country.

Most, you will note, are authors of books for children and young people. But it is books of that kind, read at that age, that can have a deep and abiding effect...as witness Ayaan Hirsi Ali reading English-language children's books, in the school library, in Kenya.

1. Edwin Muir - My Summer in the Sierra (non-fiction). Gloriously poetic 'environmental' writing.

2. Mary O'Hara - My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, and Green Grass of Wyoming. DO NOT confuse these with the films. The books are quite demanding intellectually - in Thunderhead, O'Hara quotes passages from St Augustine's 'Confessions'. Through these books, I fell in love with the Rocky Mountains without ever having seen them.

3. Laura Ingalls Wilder - Farmer Boy, and the entire 'Little House' series - Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, House at Plum Creek, Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, Those Happy Golden Years, and The First Four Years.

Again, NOT to be confused with the TV series later loosely based upon them. They are exquisitely well written. They read aloud beautifully. Read 'Shores of Silver Lake' for the unforgettable description of the building of the railway.

'The Long Winter' I commend to all English and Indian readers, in particular. It sums up, in one lapidary book, the strengths - and, I think, some of the potential weaknesses - of America: see the chapters 'Free and independent' and 'For Daily Bread'.

4. Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird. I had to study this one at school. Despite that, it remains a book I enjoy rereading every now and again. The film, with Cary Grant as the lawyer of integrity, Atticus Finch, is a good companion for the book.

5. Madeleine L'Engle - her fantasies for children, such as 'A Wrinkle in Time' and 'A Wind Through the Door'; her teenage novel 'A Ring of Endless Light'; and her reworking of the 'Southern Gothic' genre, The Other Side of the Sun. Flawed, but has great moments.

6. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Not 'great literature' - but it made a classic film, which I have also seen, and it built up a rich picture of a certain kind of world.

7. Rocket Boys (non-fiction) by Homer Hickam Jnr. It inspired the film October Sky. Both are good.

8. A Man on the Moon (non-fiction), by the journalist Andrew Chaikin - interviews with each of the men who actually walked on the moon during the Apollo missions.

9. Catherine Marshall - Christie - semifiction, based on the author's mother's experiences as a teacher in an Appalachian mountain community.

10. Zane Grey westerns (!!!).

It's a pretty eclectic list but - since I grew up, until the age of 16 or 17, in a TV-free environment, and most of those books, except for Hickam's and Chaikin's, were read in that environment - that's what has helped shape my imaginings of America, its history and its character.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at November 28, 2008 3:28 AM

To Robert, his family, his friends and his fans ..
thank you and Happy Thanksgiving.

Posted by: Tartine at November 28, 2008 1:28 PM

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We do have a lot to be thankful for. Despite our problems things could be much worse.
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absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
don't ever say thanks

to any of your Gods
they have done nothing for you

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absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
don't worship freely

or take long dangerous trips
just to follow God your way

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All real freedom starts with freedom of speech. If there is no freedom of speech there can be no real freedom.
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Philosophy of Liberty Cartoon
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Help Halt Terrorism Today!
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USpace
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:)
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Posted by: USpace at November 28, 2008 6:22 PM