White Working Class Death Rates and The Culture

I already posted about the increase in the death rate among middle-aged white people without college degrees and its tie to immigration.  Heartiste has done a great job in summarizes all of the causes behind the statistic:

Think about the ingredients of a happy life: 

Family — destroyed by welfare, feminism, gogrrl careerism, obesity, and sinking earnings for working class men.
Community — destroyed by population density and Diversity™.
Work — destroyed by open borders, automation, and oligarchic greed.
Faith — destroyed by SCALE-induced materialism and noblesse malice. 

The working poor and less-educated need these four pillars, perhaps more than effete SWPLs do, to feel like their lives have purpose. Instead, malignant elements in our ruling class have done everything in their power to knock those pillars over and smash them to dust.

SWPL = Stuff White People Like, but has become a term of derision for effete college-educated whites who identify as liberal as long as they never have to encounter an actual black man.

The lack of faith, as evidenced by rampant materialism, is driving down birth rates, which in turn become a source of depression.  We see this most rampantly in Germany, which despite being an economic engine of Europe now, won't remain so for long with a fertility rate of 1.4 (well below replacement of 2.1) and a mere 8.2 children born per 1,000 inhabitants over the last five years.  It is not coincidental that Germans are gutting churches to make room for Muslim immigrants.

Why Islam Offends Us

Over the years, I've learned to trust Mrs. Daddy's instincts. But she has a bad feeling about something, she's usually right.  She was on the military base today, and saw a woman in full Muslim head garb, and asked me "why did that offend me?"

After some thought, it occurred to me that Islam is not merrily a religion, it is a political movement. And, it is a political movement whose tenets are antithetical to American concepts of liberty, democracy and free enterprise.  The history of Islam as a political movement is well documented on the Internet, so I will not repeat it here.  Fundamentally, the key tenet I was why is the subordination of the non-believer to the believers.  In turn, the believers are subject to the absolute rule of the Caliph who receives his authority from God.  At its heart, Islam is essentially monarchist. Didn't we fight a revolution that overthrew a monarchy over 200 years ago? 

Although some adherents of Islam in this country may feel that it is merely a religion, it is not the essence of the worldwide movement.  The reason that misses daddy feels offense is that the appearance of the Muslim women runs counter to our culture of freedom and democracy.  They are seizing up on the benefits of a society that they are religion is actively seeking to undermine.  More specifically, the military base represents over two centuries of defense of freedom against a multitude of freedom-hating ideologies, Islam being merely the latest example.

As the entire world becomes more educated, the desire for freedom arises everywhere except inside Islam.  The inevitable is describe by Mark Steyn:

In India, it's Muslims vs Hindus. In southern Thailand, Muslims vs Buddhists. The world is a messy, violent, complicated place, but as a rule of thumb, as I said all those years ago in America Alone, in most corners of the planet it boils down to: Muslims vs [Your Team Here].
Millions of complacent westerners genuinely regard Islam as merely another exotic patch in the diversity quilt, but I find it hard to believe that the leaders of liberal progressive political parties can be quite that deluded. 

We tolerate personal freedom, but we have the right to take offense at the sight of burqa-clad women in our midst.

Our Duty to Offend

The strain of Islam that motivated the killers in Paris appears to be Wahhabism.  I say this because one of the killers is said to have been trained by al-Qaeda. This strain of Islam is clearly incompatible with western concepts of civilization.  While Francois Hollande may say that these attacks have nothing to do with the Muslim religion, that is like saying that an action by say, the Southern Baptists, has nothing to do with Christianity in America.  Wahhabism has been the most successful global cultural export in modern times.  From Frontline: 

For more than two centuries, Wahhabism has been Saudi Arabia's dominant faith. It is an austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that all those who don't practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies. Critics say that Wahhabism's rigidity has led it to misinterpret and distort Islam, pointing to extremists such as Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Wahhabism's explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi charities started funding Wahhabi schools (madrassas) and mosques from Islamabad to Culver City, California. 

This brand of faith has millions of adherents and its precepts infuse al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban with their religious fervor.  And the drastic interpretation of Islam contained in sharia law enjoys widespread support in Muslim countries. 

Overall, among those in favor of making sharia the law of the land, the survey finds broad support for allowing religious judges to adjudicate domestic disputes. Lower but substantial proportions of Muslims support severe punishments such as cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning people who commit adultery. The survey finds even lower support for executing apostates.

I infer that there are also many Muslims who believe that the publishers of Charlie Hedbo deserved death for heaping disrespect on the Prophet.  This belief system is the cauldron from which killers emerge.  This belief system is a threat to the west because its adherents tolerate those murder by select members of their sect.  It is unfortunate that their are other, more tolerant, Muslims who are offended by the images in Charlie Hedbo.  But as long there is a credible threat of murder in retaliation, then such images should be published, to hammer home the lesson that our right to free expression is inviolate.  I am sorry that the following image from Charlie Hedbo is crude and offensive.  I personally dislike giving offense to someone's religion; but if Muslims make a credible threat to murder in retaliation then it becomes a duty to offend them to defend our sense of the civilized order.  And the burden must be shared so that there is not a single convenient target for the terrorists to seek out.

I would prefer to live in a world where I could merely offer my indifference or hostility to cartoons that offend religious sensibility.  But today, it is only images that offend Muslims that have the remotest possibility of getting a publisher killed, so it is Muslim sensibility that will have to be offended.

And to answer my friend KT, yes, if a KKK rally was shot up by Black Panthers due to the presence of confederate flags, I would display a confederate flag.  But I note that even Black Panthers aren't provoked by mere symbols and drawings.

What You Should Be Reading:

• KTCat who has a different take on Charlie Hedbo.
• Dean proposes an 8 team college football playoff, which seems inevitable.
• A scholarly look at why Diversity Training backfires.

Letting Mohammed Out of the Closet - Hate and Intolerance from the AP

Dean has a great wrap up of the brouhaha over the maker of the "Innocence of Muslims." I wanted to look at their reporting from a different angle. The AP asserts as fact that the film denigrates Islam. They base this on the report that the film depicts Mohammed as a homosexual and a pedophile. One question. Is the AP rendering judgement that accusations of such predilections are denigrating? What happened to gay pride? Why aren't they celebrating Mohammed being let out of his closet? Why aren't we celebrating the diversity of Islamic culture, because we have learned that its founder was gay? I think the AP needs to rethink their assertions. They are flat out hateful and intolerant.

Meanwhile I saw a post from The American Muslim web site that I sort of agreed with until I thought through the moral equivalence being advanced. Judge for yourself.

Based on what was initially reported, it seemed that a group of extremist Jews produced and distributed a hateful film insulting Islam, Muslims, and the Prophet Muhammad to further their pro-Zionist agenda. This was FALSE, it was extremist Christians Muslim religious extremists drew attention to the film to further their own agenda. Extremist Christians promoted the film and held a “trial of Prophet Muhammad” event to gain publicity for themselves. Egyptian political extremists used the film to stir up the masses to promote their political agenda. The extremist political organization Al Qaeda used the film as further proof of their propaganda effort to say that the U.S. is at war with all Muslims to gain support for their cause. And, all of these extremists succeeded in provoking ignorant or extremist Muslims into carrying out acts of terrorism (hirabah). Update: Al Qaeda, or one of their affiliates actually seems to have been the perpetrator of the attack on the Libyan Embassy

The only figure that I know of in the Torah, the New Testament, or the Qur’an, who would be honored by the actions of any of these extremists is Satan.

These religious and political extremists use religion as a cover to attempt to justify actions that can only be called evil. They want to provoke a reaction, as it feeds into their narratives, or they believe they can use the suffering of others to aid their own political cause. All of the extremists have more in common with each other than they do with the majority of decent people of their faith.

There is some truth to what Sheila Musaji is saying, except for this. How can one draw a moral equivalence between offending someone's religion and suffocating and murdering an innocent person and dragging his body through the streets?

Note from Today's 9-11 Prayer

Our pastor prayed today on the subject of the 9-11 attacks. One part of his prayer caught my attention:

There will always be those who have chosen a way of life that is incapable of producing the great wealth and benefits of our society. Out of their envy, they seek to tear down that which they can not build themselves. This is part of why we are called not to envy others. For out of that envy springs anger and hatred towards our fellow man.

Amen.

Our attackers claimed to have attacked us in the name of Allah. Most Muslims claim that the attacks were a perversion of their faith. Fair enough. However, I have never heard a reasonable theological argument as to why they believe this is so. Christians would say that such an attack on the innocent could not be performed at God's direction, because, even though God is all powerful; He chooses to be bound by his promises and his word, the Bible, which forbids murder. Further, He is a God of reason; and the attacks on the innocent were unreasonable. I echo the questioning of the current Pope, who asked if Muslims believe that God is capable of ordering murder or even idolatry from his followers, because his will is all powerful. I have yet to see a cogent reply. With so much destruction in the current age done in the name of Islam, I think we are owed an explanation. (I know that horrific deeds were performed in the name of Christianity in past ages. But our answer is that those were contrary to God's law and we repent of them and actively abhor them in this age. I am asking for the philosophical or theological basis for the Muslim claim that the hijackers operated outside of the bounds of their religion.)

Response to Burning the Koran - Is Allah Good?

The killing of U.N. Aid workers in Afghanistan as a response to the burning of a Koran in Florida is unreasonable. That should go without saying, but unfortunately, it needs to be said. It is unreasonable to kill anyone over a religious desecration. It is unreasonable to kill those unconnected in any way to the burning. It is unreasonable to kill persons of a different nationality than those who committed the "offense." Because of these heinous murders, which were committed in the name of Allah, I must ask, "What do believers in Allah believe about the nature of their God?"

It is one thing to say that it is a sin to burn a holy text, quite another to murder as a response. It causes one to question the leaders of Islam theological questions about the nature of their God. They claim the same God as I do, the God of Abraham. But I have to ask some questions.

• We know that Allah (God) is all-powerful, but is he always good? As a Christian, my answer is an unequivocal yes, God chooses to always be good. Islamic theology is not so clear to me.
• Again, we know that Allah (God) is all-powerful, would he ever demand that we disobey his word? As a Christian, I say no, because he chooses to be bound by his word, the Bible. Is Allah bound by the Koran? It is not clear. Therefore, may Allah command his followers to commit evil to advance his purposes? Judging by the behavior of crowds whipped into a frenzy by Taliban in Afghanistan, the answer is yes.
  
• Can one apply logic and reason to understand Allah's (God's) will? My answer as a Christian, is of course. The Gospel of John states that in the beginning was the Word (in Greek λόγος or logos, which means both reason and the word) so we can apply reason to discern His will. Even in the absence of God's direct intervention, Christians believe that he has ordered the world through logic and it continues without God's direct intervention. In Islam, it appears that all manner of evil is ascribed to Allah's will because all that happens in the world is through his will. It lacks order without His constant intercession.
  

By failing to address these questions on the nature of Allah, Islam fails to be a religion that brings good to the world. Its defenders argue that it is a religion of peace, but they offer no fundamental condemnation of those who murder the innocent in Allah's name. I ask that they do so, to show the world that their religion deserves consideration as a force for good in the world. Their failure leaves one to question the legitimacy of Islam.

To give credit where it due, my thinking on these issues is highly influenced by Pope Benedict's speech at the University of Regensberg on September 12, 2006. A key passage:

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (sun logo [the "u" is long and the last "o" in logo is also long]) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

Who's Afraid of Islam?

The news story about a small Florida Christian group that plans to burn the Koran got me to thinking about all of the angst surrounding Islam. But first, some questions about their hare-brained idea. Why associate yourself with Nazism? Why pick September 11, when we should be remembering the bravery and sacrifice that prevented the tragedy of those attacks from being worse? Why give evidence to those who find a moral equivalence between Christianity and Jihadism? (Warning: Last link may induce vomiting.) Are you guys crackheads? I just can't figure out any other explanation.

But I digress. There seems to be a great fear of Islam among conservatives. My only fear is that some jihadist moron will slip through our crack security system and kill some of us. With regards to the larger issues, Western culture and religion will prevail over the medievalist interpretation of Islam for a number of reasons, religious, cultural and political.

1. Religion. Fundamental Islam has not reconciled itself with modernity. Its treatment of women is appalling, even if considered enlightened by 8th century A.D. standards. By contrast, Christianity fundamentally considers every man and woman equal in the eyes of God. Further, Christianity has thousands of years of intellectual tradition from some of the finest scholars to explain its tenets. The Bible is translated into far more languages than the Koran and there is not even general agreement in Islam that the Koran should be translated out of Arabic. Judeo-Christian values suffuse the moral compass of most of the world, even that of Western atheists, not that they would admit it. Christianity has a way of renewing itself to meet the challenges it faces in the world. African Episcopalians are leading the fight against Anglican church's acceptance of homosexuality, for instance, because they must compete with Islam for the hearts and souls the people on that continent.

2. Culture. The culture of Islam is too puritanical to succeed indefinitely. Even if Western culture is often too "decadent" or infused with the culture of pornography, it is not hopelessly so. Taliban prohibitions on alcohol, requirements for the burqa, and rules about which vegetables men or women may handle do not strike the educated as sensible. Further, Western culture is richer in content and more liberating than Muslim culture. But strict Islamists reject every facet of Western culture and cannot cope with the inevitable intersection of cultures that result from a global, networked economy.

3. Political. Fundamental Islam is antithetical to democracy. This was articulated during the insurgency in Iraq, where al-Qaeda in Iraq actually argued that they had to kill fellow Muslims to prevent them from voting, because by voting, they might commit a sin by voting against Allah's will. This is not a serious ideological challenge. No serious person, except maybe Thomas Friedman, thinks that any other form of government is preferable to democracy. How can one take seriously a political challenge from an ideology that advocates theocracy? Even Kim Jong Il call his country a Democratic Republic for crying out loud, but Islamists are unapologetic in their disdain for democracy. Are you kidding?

For these reasons and so many others, I am supremely confident that radical Islam is not up to the challenge of Western democracy, particularly as practiced in America. Fell free to build a mosque, but stand by for an onslaught of the most successful political-economic system the world has ever seen.

Burqa ban?

Hey, it's Dean - just doing some more guest-blogging for B-Daddy.



Lengthy, interesting but odd read in yesterday's National Review Online on banning the burqa where the author goes from against banning the burqa to being in favor of it but ultimately acknowledging that it's nigh impossible now on the grounds of political expediency. Here's the money paragraph towards the end of the article:

Headscarves cannot at this point be banned. It is politically impossible, and it is also too late: The practice is too widespread. But the decision to wear them should be viewed much as the decision to wear Klan robes or Nazi regalia would be in the United States. Yes, you are free to do so, but no, you cannot wear that and expect to be hired by the government to teach schoolchildren, and no, we are not going to pretend collectively that this choice is devoid of a deeply sinister political and cultural meaning. Such a stance would serve the cause of liberty more than it would harm it: While it is true that some women adopt the veil voluntarily, it is also true that most veiling is forced. It is nearly impossible for the state to ascertain who is veiled by choice and who has been coerced. A woman who has been forced to veil is hardly likely to volunteer this information to authorities. Our responsibility to protect these women from coercion is greater than our responsibility to protect the freedom of those who choose to veil. Why? Because this is our culture, and in our culture, we do not veil. We do not veil because we do not believe that God demands this of women or even desires it; nor do we believe that unveiled women are whores, nor do we believe they deserve social censure, harassment, or rape. Our culture’s position on these questions is morally superior. We have every right, indeed an obligation, to ensure that our more enlightened conception of women and their proper role in society prevails in any cultural conflict, particularly one on Western soil.

We think the author pretty much makes the case herself for not banning the burqa beyond merely, it's too late. Is the burqa that, in the author's mind, represents a culture of oppression any more explicitly repulsive than donning white bed sheets or goose-stepping around in an SS uniform which are Constitutionally-protected activities?

Do you know for whom it is too late? The countries of which have passed burqa bans and which are considering them: Europe. Europe, which has insistently refused to address the question of Muslim assimilation and which has acquiesced its culture for fear of Muslim reprisal finds itself in reactionary mode with their burqa bans.

And let's not confuse not wanting to implement targeted laws banning what can and cannot be worn in public with not wanting to engage in a cultural battle. We can sit here and argue the negative merits and implications of the burqa in an attempt to win the battle without passing laws to get our way.

We don't think there are any easy answers for how better to assimilate Muslims into American society nor are there any easy answers for confronting radicalization within the Muslim community but we are extremely confident that banning the burqa is not the way to go about doing it.


This article has been cross-posted at Beers with Demo

Faith, Reason and Regensberg

Over at Weaselzippers you can find multiple links to stories from the Muslim world of cruelty to Christians for perceived slights and to the killing of apostates from the Muslim faith. I usually don't bring this up, not out of any political correctness, but out of the belief that my readers are already aware, and it is such an everyday occurrence. I would challenge us to think about the nature of the faith that permits or condones such excess. Defenders of Islam may say that such acts are not the product of "true Islam" whatever that would be, but I don't see widespread denunciation, so I assume there is theological justification for this. Pope Benedict asked the same question, more eloquently in Regensburg lecture in September 2006, not long after his election.

In my church, the saying I hear most often is "God is Good." With the response being "All the time." In Islam, I believe the most frequent phrase is "Allahu Akbar" meaning "God is Great." The difference in emphasis is important. The Christian sees God first and foremost as good, all powerful, but defined by goodness and reason. The start of the Gospel of John states that in the beginning the λόγος, (logos) was with God. Logos can mean either the Word or reason in the Greek. Ours is a religion of both faith and reason. We see the coming of the Messiah at a time when both a knowledge of the Jewish faith and the idea of Greek inquiry were both known throughout the Roman empire. As the Pope states:

A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.

Our is a good God, who has chosen to be bound by the promises he puts in His Word, and we can therefor use reason to deduce his nature and character, even if not fully.

However, in Islam, we see reverence for the all powerful nature of Allah. The Pope states:

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

I once read that this meant that in Muslim teaching Allah could even require idolatry of us. This has profound implications for a dialog with Islam, because a dialog requires that we be able to agree to points of reason (dialog comes from διά and λόγος, there's that word again words and reason).

Additionally, the belief that Allah's will is involved in everything that happens, that rationality and causality are mere figments, leads to outcomes that are themselves not reasonable. Stephen Richter, in Taki's Magazine stated this in June 2007,

This moral fatalism helps to explain why many American Muslims—even some of those who seemed genuinely horrified by what had occurred—were unable or unwilling to condemn the September 11 attacks directly. If Allah approved the actions of the hijackers by causing the towers to fall, then to condemn the September 11 attacks is essentially an act of impiety. It is one of the many ironies of Islam that the Muslim insistence on the radical freedom of the will can lead to a moral fatalism which those who wish to wage jihad against the United States can use in order to silence dissent among their fellow Muslims.

Just as Christians believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God, Muslims see themselves as a reflection of Allah. And as we wish to conform our will to God’s Will, they attempt to conform their wills to Allah. But here, the similarities end. If Allah’s will, unlike God’s, is not bound up with rationality, then the discerning of that will takes a very different shape. In attempting to understand God’s Will, Christians can turn to the world around us, to natural law, to history, to tradition. We see the rationality—the consistent reasonableness—of God’s Will in the world that He created. But in Islam, the appearance of order is only that—an appearance. To the extent that the created world seems rational, it is only because Allah wishes it to appear so. His will could change at any moment, however—and the new order, or lack thereof, that he would create would be just as “right” as this one.

Hope you had a great weekend, I will return to political blogging tomorrow.