I think you know how much admiration I have for you. You are one of the few people I know who shares my spiritual outlook so closely. And I believe you to be a person who values honesty and integrity. But frankly, I see a disconnect between those values and some of your politics. I think it’s because you have not had access to the same information as I have. Not surprising, given the degeneration of the MSM into a propaganda agent hostile to liberty and truth. This is why I keep e-mailing you with information that I find truthful and relevant. And I say this not out of a feeling of superiority. I take the principle of open-mindedness very seriously and I admit the possibility that I may be wrong on many things. I try to engage you in dialogue when I would not waste my time doing the same with many other people because your honesty and intellect make me think such an endeavor to be worthwhile – part of my calling, or the next right thing, if you will.
I make this preamble because I greatly offended a friend recently, and he went off on me after I made what I thought to be a perfectly innocent comment. I found out later he has some anger issues, so maybe it wasn’t entirely my fault. Nevertheless, I made prompt and humble amends. I did not mention what I perceived to be his part in the misunderstanding, even though I still think he overreacted. Now we are the best of friends.
That being said, I will address the following points with an intensity based on a passion I will neither moderate or apologize for:
Many of the statements made in your response exemplify everything that appalls me about my perception of the Tea Party movement. I am astounded at how you can be unaware of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, pro-war, or racist propaganda in the tea party movement (because of time factors, I will only address Muslim and war issues) when shrill demagogues like Gingrich, Beck, Peitkoff, the rabidly insane Pamela Geller, and Palin are foaming at the mouth about a proposed cultural center, in the midst of strip clubs, gambling dens, and, yes, mosques, four blocks from the site of an act of predictable blowback from US policies. When these shameless degenerates dishonestly demonize a peaceful and heroic Islamic leader who is an outspoken opponent of terrorist violence (a Sufi, no less, the most beautiful, peace-loving, mystical form of Islam) for their own political ends. When they show utter contempt for property rights and the Constitution, which they claim to revere. When mobs across the country, drunk with hatred fomented by these despicable creatures, complete with dogs (which they bring in the mistaken and ignorant belief that Muslims somehow dislike them) try to intimidate Muslims to stop the construction of any and all mosques, in scenes disturbingly reminiscent of Kristallnicht.
Interpreting the construction of a mosque in the vicinity of “Ground Zero” as some sort of an affront is as illogical as objecting to the construction of a church in the vicinity of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City because Tim McVeigh belonged to some crackpot, nominally Christian sect. I’m not holding my breath waiting for such ideological consistency to manifest.
Your “Good German” analogy is interesting, considering it is much more applicable to Americans vis-à-vis Muslims rather than Muslims vis-à-vis Americans. Where are the righteous Americans rising up and denouncing those who persecute peaceful Muslims in this fashion? Very few share my reasoned and compassionate viewpoint. Instead, 70% support the glaringly hypocritical, fascist rhetoric of the demagogues! I guess this is not surprising, given the Orwellian bent of the MSM to demonize Muslims, in the service of the agenda of its Zionist/neocon masters.
Every major Islamic organization in the country has repeatedly denounced the actions of the tiny fringe of terrorists in the worldwide Muslim community, but no matter how loud or frequent their denunciations, they will not be published in the MSM nor will it ever be good enough for the demagogues and the many whom they so easily brainwash.
And why is it only Muslims who are collectively held responsible for the actions of the extremists in their midst? Why is not the entire nation of Israel held responsible for its government’s constant glorification of its own terrorists and extremists, instances of which I have repeatedly pointed out? Why aren’t the American people collectively held responsible for failing to prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Powell, and Rice for their many terrorist crimes, including knowingly lying a nation into attacking and invading countries that never attacked or threatened it? If this “logic” were applied honestly and unhypocritically, then the 9-11 attacks were a justified response to decades of US atrocities against the Muslim world, and Iran and/or Lebanon would be perfectly justified in bombing Israel.
Of course every decent person would “frown on” cutting a woman’s head off, etc. Yet this point is disingenuous, since US policies are directly or indirectly to blame for putting such extremists in a position of power in the first place. In the past fifty years, the US has overthrown or undermined secular democracies in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and a score of other countries, and either has directly put Islamic extremists in power, or tyrants like the Shah who were understandably overthrown which ultimately led to extremists coming to power. The promotion of Islamic extremism by the US, Britain and Israel was undertaken out of a shortsighted perception that such actions would serve their interests, once again demonstrating the inevitably counterproductive nature of interventionism.
The idea that wars of aggression “prevent terrorism” or “protect our freedoms” would be laughable, if it were not for the heartbreaking fact that most Americans unquestioningly swallow this insane logic and thus become accomplices to mass murder, torture, kidnapping, theft and oppression. By the government’s own statistics, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have served to foment terrorism rather than reduce it. The juvenile and ridiculous “logic” of “fight them over there so we don’t fight them over here” assumes that the number of terrorists is finite, and ignores the enormous recruiting potential of inevitable and massive “collateral damage” (a nice-sounding euphemism for the senseless murder of innocents). If your entire family were wiped out by a US bomb, drone or patrol, there is a good chance that you might promptly show up to volunteer at an Al-Qaeda training camp, unless you show remarkable forgiveness and restraint (and it amazes me how many Muslims do just that under these horrible circumstances).
I suggest you read my article “Did Wikileaks Endanger Lives?” which can easily be found by googling my name, as I’m proud to say it has been published in freedom-loving blogs across the country. In it I quote a House subcommittee report as well as Hillary Clinton herself, both who admit that money being funneled into the alleged “war effort” in Afghanistan goes directly into the pockets of the Taliban in “protection money” for the safe passage of “contractors” to the tune of $400 million a year! Anyone who thinks that this war is accomplishing anything but destroying our freedoms and making our nation less safe is seriously deluded. This is why Wikileaks and Bradley Manning (if he is indeed responsible for the heroic acts of which he is accused) are true heroes to ordinary Americans and enemies of the degenerate elites who don’t give a rat’s ass about the interests of the people. Though I fear that their heroism amounts to nothing more than casting pearls before swine.
I’m sure that the policymakers who foment these wars, which serve no purpose but the obscene enrichment of the elites who pull their puppet strings, laugh at the gullibility of the American people. If you think I’m exaggerating, read “War is a Racket”, a marvelous essay by Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, which is available online at no cost if you google him. The terrible truths which he so heroically exposes are just as prevalent today as they were when it was written in 1937.
I call the MSM “pro-war” because its bias is obvious. During the buildup to Bush’s monstrous war crimes, Americans who relied on our various Pravda surrogates only got one side of the story, except for occasional hit pieces on Scott Ritter, Hans Blix, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski and others who had the temerity to counter lies with truth. Those of us who got our news from reliable internet sources, the only real journalists in this country, knew the truth long before the rest of the American people found out when the war propaganda shills were unable to cover up for their masters any longer. Still the American people failed to rise up in outrage and demand the heads of those who committed such horrific crimes. In the face of such rampant and widespread moral degeneracy, I sometimes think we deserve to be attacked and invaded. In any event, our empire certainly deserves to fall, as all empires do.
If the Tea Party is really concerned with fiscal responsibility, I don’t see how it can rationally ignore rampant military spending (51% of the discretionary budget, more for the US than the rest of the world combined) and the staggering, crippling cost of empire (maintaining 800 military bases around the world, often in countries fully capable of defending themselves).
If the Tea Party is concerned with constitutional limited government and the rule of law, why is it not screaming from the rooftops for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act, the Orwellian-named “Patriot Act”, the restoration of posse comitatus, and the repeal of the multitude of other laws on the books which make a mockery of our Constitution as well as the most rudimentary notion of the rule of law? And please don’t answer that rights must be balanced against national security. In a free society, God-given, inalienable rights can never be “balanced” against anything. When this process was completed after 9-11, the terrorists had already won.
Explain to me why the government cannot be trusted to administer health care, yet is given carte blanche to determine who should be subject to extrajudicial assassination, locked up indefinitely without charges or habeas corpus, or kidnapped and taken to a foreign country to be tortured, or have one’s phone tapped without a warrant, in the name of some vague, selectively applied fig leaf called “national security”? Explain to me what safeguards are in place to prevent some president or other policymaker for invoking these laws to mask naked retribution against their political enemies? Name one instance in history in which a government was given such sweeping powers that did not abuse such powers in a horrible fashion. Give me a scenario in which any of our Founding Fathers would react to such laws, and a society that tolerates them, in any other fashion but to recoil in disgust and conclude that their noble experiment in liberty was an utter failure.
Finally, I don’t understand your use of the word “fascism.” Mussolini, who coined the term, stated that fascism could be more appropriately termed “corporatism” – meaning some kind of unholy alliance of government and big business. A typical dictionary definition of the term, as I’m sure you know, is something like this: a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
I’d say a country that tolerates the demonization of Muslims, blacks and Mexicans, laws that eliminate all basic constitutional rights, and repeatedly invades other countries on dishonest pretexts pretty much fits the bill.
In the years to come, I fully expect to be “renditioned” to a concentration camp and brutally tortured, and I welcome the experience, because my faith and my integrity will not allow me to idly stand by while my Muslim brothers and sisters are being incrementally placed in the same position as that of the Jews in Germany of the mid nineteen-thirties. If that makes me a “terrorist sympathizer”, then I accept the epithet with pride and graciousness. A serious commitment to God, truth and human decency permits no other response.
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