COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, July 04, 2017

“one united people … descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs. …”

Is America still a nation?

Pat Buchanan: 'Are we passing on the house we inherited – or observing its demolition?'



INDEPENDENCE DAY


In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks of “one people.” The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins, “We the people …”
And who were these “people”?

In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as “one united people … descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs. …”

If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one nation and one people?


We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country. We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago ceased to profess the same religion. We are evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.

Federalist No. 2 celebrated our unity. Today’s elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength. But is this true, or a tenet of trendy ideology?

After the attempted massacre of Republican congressmen at that ball field in Alexandria, Fareed Zakaria wrote: “The political polarization that is ripping this country apart” is about “identity … gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation (and) social class.” He might have added – religion, morality, culture and history.
Zakaria seems to be tracing the disintegration of our society to that very diversity that its elites proclaim to be its greatest attribute: “If the core issues are about identity, culture and religion … then compromise seems immoral. American politics is becoming more like Middle Eastern politics, where there is no middle ground between being Sunni or Shiite.”


Among the issues on which we Americans are at war with one another – abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, white cops, black crime, Confederate monuments, LGBT rights, affirmative action.


Was the discovery of America and conquest of this continent from 1492 to the 20th century among the most glorious chapters in the history of man? Or was it a half-millennium marked by mankind’s most scarlet of sins: the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the annihilation of indigenous cultures, the spoliation of a virgin land?

Is America really “God’s Country”? Or was Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, justified when, after 9/11, he denounced calls of “God Bless America!” with the curse “God Damn America!”?

With its silence, the congregation seemed to assent.

In 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance many of us recited daily at the end of noon recess in the schoolyard was amended to read, “one nation, under God, indivisible.”
Are we still one nation under God? At the Democratic Convention in Charlotte to renominate Barack Obama, a motion to put “God” back into the platform was hooted and booed by half the assembly.

With this July 4 long weekend, many writers have bewailed the animus Americans exhibit toward one another and urged new efforts to reunite us. Yet, recall again those first words of Jefferson in 1776:
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them …”
Are we approaching such a point? Could the Constitution, as currently interpreted, win the approval of two-thirds of our citizens and three-fourth of our states, if it were not already the supreme law of the land? How would a national referendum on the Constitution turn out, when many Americans are already seeking a new constitutional convention?

All of which invites the question: Are we still a nation? And what is a nation? French writer Ernest Renan gave us the answer in the 19th century:
“A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things … constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is the past, the other is the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received.

“Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate: our ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past with great men and glory … is the social capital upon which the national idea rests. These are the essential conditions of being a people: having common glories in the past and a will to continue them in the present; having made great things together and wishing to make them again.”

Does this sound at all like us today?

Watching our Lilliputians tearing down statues and monuments, renaming buildings and streets, rewriting history books to replace heroes and historical truths with the doings of ciphers, are we disassembling the nation we once were?
“One loves in proportion to the sacrifices that one has committed and the troubles that one has suffered,” writes Renan, “One loves the house that one has built and that one passes on.”

Are we passing on the house we inherited – or observing its demolition?
Happy Fourth. And God bless the USA.

52 comments:

  1. "Moslem polygamists in Ontario are claiming separate well fare checks for each of their separate wives"
    Mark Steyn

    Great work if you can get it.

    He goes on to ask the multi-culturalists why might this be wrong ?

    I step back to allow Ash to inform us.

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    Replies
    1. Mark Steyn on the Madness of Multi-culturalism

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9SIOwEm1cg

      Delete
  2. I used to be so cute

    https://www.facebook.com/Awesomenature3/videos/vb.718477294863235/1125135084197452/?type=2&theater

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    Replies
    1. Heh, the colored bird goes into a play dead routine.

      Delete
  3. A baby born in British Columbia, Canada is thought to be one of the first in the world not to be recognized as either a boy or a girl on their national health card.

    Searyl Atli’s parent Kori Doty, who is transgender and nonbinary, is now fighting for British Columbia to issue a birth certificate without any specific gender, according to CBC. Doty, who uses the pronoun their, said they don’t want to assign the baby a gender until the child can decide for themselves who they are.

    According to their website, Doty is a community educator and refers to themself as genderqueer.

    Doty is party to a complaint against Canadian Vital Health Services in the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal alleging that assigning a child male or female on a birth certificate violates their human rights. In association with the Trans Alliance Society, the eight parties to the case want gender to be removed from Canadian birth certificates.

    http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article159550519.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. We Must Impeach!

    Once again, Trump tweets a meme linked to a brazen racist

    The person who created the video that shows Trump attacking a stand-in for CNN has a history of posting racist, homophobic, anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic comments.

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-reddit-20170703-story.html#nt=oft12aH-1la1

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  5. Back when our rides were All American:

    https://scontent.fhnl1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13533094_1413229318693073_4640031287678262952_n.jpg?oh=f30eeb5c9753860073d1a132b97f93ce&oe=59D17AB2

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  6. Before the election, Trump said he wrote many of his tweets himself, or at least dictated them to his staff.

    “During the day, when I’m in the office, I just shout it out to one of the young ladies, who are tremendous,” Trump said at a CNN town hall in April 2016. “During the evenings, after 7 or so, I will always do it by myself.”

    “Melania, do you ever want to say to him, ‘Put the mobile device down’?” CNN host Anderson Cooper asked Trump’s wife. “That, like, ‘It's 2 a.m., and you're still tweeting.’ ”

    “Anderson, if he would only listen,” she said. “I did many times. And I just say, OK, do whatever you want. He's an adult. He knows the consequences.”

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-reddit-20170703-story.html

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  7. The Canadian government is going to apologise and give millions to a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who pleaded guilty to killing a US soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15, with Canada’s supreme court later ruling that officials had interrogated him under “oppressive circumstances”.

    An official familiar with the deal said on Tuesday that Omar Khadr will receive 10.5 million Canadian dollars (US$8 million). The official was not authorised to discuss the deal publicly before the announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity. The government and Khadr’s lawyers negotiated the deal last month.

    The Canadian-born Khadr was 15 when he was captured by US troops following a firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of an American special forces medic, US army Sgt Christopher Speer.

    Khadr, who was suspected of throwing the grenade that killed Speer, was taken to Guantanamo and ultimately charged with war crimes by a military commission.

    He pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges that included murder and was sentenced to eight years plus the time he had already spent in custody. He returned to Canada two years later to serve the remainder of his sentence and was released in May 2015 pending an appeal of his guilty plea, which he said was made under duress.

    Khadr spent 10 years in Guantanamo Bay. His case received international attention after some dubbed him a child soldier.

    The supreme court of Canada ruled in 2010 that Canadian intelligence officials obtained evidence from Khadr under “oppressive circumstances,” such as sleep deprivation, during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, and then shared that evidence with US officials.


    Canada frees Omar Khadr, once Guantánamo Bay's youngest inmate

    Khadr was the youngest and last Western detainee held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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    1. Khadr has been nominated for Multicultural Man of the Year

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  8. THERE IS MORE:

    The widow of Speer and another American soldier blinded by the grenade in Afghanistan filed a wrongful death and injury lawsuit against Khadr in 2014 fearing Khadr might get his hands on money from his $20 million wrongful imprisonment lawsuit. A US judge granted $134.2 million in damages in 2015, but the plaintiffs acknowledged then that there was little chance they would collect any of the money from Khadr because he lives in Canada.

    Khadr’s lawyers have long said he was pushed into war by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, whose family stayed with Osama bin Laden briefly when Omar Khadr was a boy. Khadr’s Egyptian-born father was killed in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter shelled the house where he was staying with senior al-Qaida operatives.

    After his 2015 release from prison in Alberta, Omar Khadr apologised to the families of the victims. He said he rejects violent jihad and wants a fresh start to finish his education and work in health care. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

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  9. and fully support the new face of Canadahr.

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  10. DOUGLAS MURRAY:

    In what I promise won’t become a regular feature, I thought it worth issuing an update under the heading ‘I told you so’. It relates to two recent, connected pieces of news.

    The first comes from Italy where the government is now threatening to close its ports. The ongoing influx of migrants from Africa is once again threatening to overwhelm the country, with almost 13,000 people arriving last weekend alone. Once again the Italians are being made to bear the burden of decisions made at EU-level and exacerbated by activist NGOs. The result is a country once again approaching breaking-point.

    At the other end of this process comes news from Denmark, where the nation’s intelligence agency (PET) have revealed their concerns about the security threat to their country now emanating from Sweden. The security threat to Denmark comes from thousands of, ahem, ‘religious extremists’ in their neighbouring Scandinavian paradise.

    I sometimes wonder whether anyone in the political class across Europe recognises any connection between what is happening at the Italian ports and the eruption of ‘religious extremism’ in Scandinavia. If they do, then they are keeping it to themselves. In the meantime I simply put these two events out there by way of an update from another week in the death of a continent.

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  11. OH CANADA, LOOK TO SWEDEN:

    Amidst a wave of bloody, gang-related murders in Stockholm, and police warnings that the situation is likely to get worse, a report has found 94.5 per cent of people identified as being involved in the Swedish capital’s violent, organised crime scene have a migration background.

    Stockholm has been the site of 552 shootings linked to criminal gangs since January 2011, 46 of which were deadly. Swedish newspaper Expressen reports that the city has seen a “record number of unsolved murders amidst seemingly endless gang shooting incidents” in recent years.

    Expressen’s analysis of the situation, which included mapping 192 individuals who police confirmed to be part of gangs in Stockholm and the city’s organised crime scene, uncovered striking statistics about mass migration’s effect on crime in the Swedish capital.

    According to the study, 94.5 per cent of people involved with organised crime had at least one parent born abroad. 40.6 per cent of the criminals looked at by the newspaper were themselves born overseas, whilst both parents of 82.2 per cent of gang members were foreign-born.

    The report notes the main country of origin for gang criminals was Iraq, but other overrepresented nations which stood out to researchers include Somalia, Syria, and Turkey.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Austria, Poland, Czech and Hungary get it:

    4 JULY 2017 • 11:34AM
    Austria has deployed armoured vehicles close to its border with Italy and will send up to 750 soldiers to guard the frontier against migrants, the government said on Tuesday.

    The move reflects deep concern in Vienna and elsewhere in Europe over the huge number of asylum seekers who continue to cross the Mediterranean from the coast of Libya – so far this year more than 85,000 have been rescued and brought to Italy.

    Austria plans to increase border controls at the Brenner Pass, a key trade and transport route through the Alps that connects the two countries.

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  13. The European Union has initiated legal action against the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland for failing to comply with a controversial order to take in thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

    The so-called infringement procedure, which authorizes the European Commission, the powerful executive arm of the European Union, to sue member states that are considered to be in breach of their obligations under EU law, could lead to massive financial penalties.

    The dispute dates back to September 2015, when, at the height of Europe's migration crisis, EU member states narrowly voted to relocate 120,000 "refugees" from Italy and Greece to other parts of the bloc. This number was in addition to a July 2015 plan to redistribute 40,000 migrants from Italy and Greece.

    Of the 160,000 migrants to be "shared," nine countries in Central and Eastern Europe were ordered to take in around 15,000 migrants. Although the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted against the agreement, they were still required to comply.

    Since then, several Central European EU member states have vehemently refused to accept their assigned quotas of migrants. Poland, for example, has a quota of 6,182 migrants, not one of whom has been admitted. The Czech Republic has a quota of 2,691 migrants, of whom only 12 have been taken. Hungary has a quota of 1,294, none of whom have been admitted.

    In the EU as a whole, so far only around 20,000 migrants have been relocated (6,896 from Italy and 13,973 from Greece), according to the EU's latest relocation and resettlement report, published on June 13, 2017. Of the 28 EU member states, only Malta has taken in its full quota — 131 migrants.

    Many so-called asylum seekers have refused to relocate to Central and Eastern Europe because the financial benefits there are not as generous as in France, Germany or Scandinavia. In addition, hundreds of migrants who have been relocated to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which rank among the poorest countries in the EU, have since fled to Germany and other wealthier countries in the bloc.

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  14. Leaders in Central and Eastern Europe have held their ground. In Poland, Prime Minister Beata Szydło said her country would not be blackmailed by European Union officials. In a speech to Parliament on May 24, two days after the jihadist attack in Manchester, England, in which a Polish couple was killed, she said:

    "We are not going to take part in the madness of the Brussels elite.... Rise from your knees and from your lethargy or you will be crying over your children every day.

    "If you cannot see this — if you cannot see that terrorism currently has the potential to hurt every country in Europe, and you think that Poland should not defend itself — you are going hand in hand with those who point this weapon against Europe, against all of us.

    "It needs to be said clearly and directly: This is an attack on Europe, on our culture, on our traditions. Do we want strong politicians who can see the danger and can fight against it efficiently?"

    ReplyDelete
  15. The current leadership of the EU is cut from the same Communist stock that ruled over Poland for twenty years. It is no coincidence that Angela Merkel is from East Germany. The majority of the Polish people can see right through the international socialist agenda.

    Hungarians and Czechs share the same history with Poland in the damage done to them by the German war and later Soviet occupation and pillage of their countries. None of these countries owe anything to Germany.

    If German guilt ridden socialists feel need to repent for their sins, let them pay in money to the countries they pillaged. Europe hardly needs a morality lesson from the Germans.

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  16. Trump will be making a public speech in Warsaw. This should be good.

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  17. All of this is easily reversible if the public wills it. Stopping them coming in and sending the miscreants back to where they belong is not difficult. It takes political courage and overthrowing the current political establishment that is hostile to western culture.

    Recognize that Islam is a political and cultural entity using the Western concept of religion as camouflage. Think communism, fascism, nazism or and other repressive systems of public control.

    The Muslim infrastructure in Europe should be removed as statues and symbols of Soviet and Nazi occupation were torn down in Eastern Europe.

    In 2016, Frankfurt Airport (FRA) served a total of 60,792,308 passengers. There is no structural impediment in reclaiming Western culture.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Putin, Xi agree on need to freeze N. Korean nuclear program & US, S. Korean military drills!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Moscow and Beijing have agreed that North Korea should freeze its nuclear and missile programs, while the US and South Korea should abstain from holding war games in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
    “We’ve agreed to promote our joint initiative, based on Russian step-by-step Korean settlement plan and Chinese ideas to simultaneously freeze North Korean nuclear and missile activities, and US and South Korean joint military drills,” Putin said at a press conference after meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Moscow.

    Moscow and Beijing stressed the importance of taking North Korea’s concerns over its safety into consideration, calling them “justified.”

    “The two sides stress that justified North Korean concerns should be respected,” a joint statement by Russia’s and China’s foreign ministers reads. “Other countries should make certain moves to resume the negotiations, creating a peaceful disposition and mutual trust.”

    ReplyDelete
  20. The Italian Foreign Ministry has summoned the Austrian ambassador over Vienna's decision to re-introduce border controls. The move comes as Austria announced it was ready to deploy troops and armored vehicles to the Italian border over the growing migrant inflow.

    “We need to prepare for the migration development in Italy, and I expect very promptly that border controls will have to be activated and assistance requested,” Hans Peter Doskozil told the online edition of the Krone daily.

    By assistance the official means deploying 750 soldiers and four armored vehicles to the border, and the minister described the measure as “indispensable if the influx doesn’t diminish.” The forces can be fully operational within 72 hours, according to Doskozil.

    “These are not battle tanks. These are armored vehicles without weapons which could block roads. These were already used during the refugee crisis 201/16 at the Spielfeld border crossing [with Slovenia],” a spokesman for Doskozil said, as cited by Reuters.

    The controls will include the Alpine Brenner pass, which forms the border between Austria and Italy, one of the main mountain passes in the eastern Alps.

    There isn’t a strict time plan for the step-up in border security, but, according to Doskozil’s spokesman, “we see how the situation in Italy is becoming more acute and we have to be prepared to avoid a situation comparable to summer 2015.”

    Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz has said that Vienna is prepared to "protect" the frontier with Italy "if necessary," as he spoke with the Austria Press Agency, as cited by AP.

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  21. My mom was born on July 4, 1911

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    1. cradle robber

      A person who taps people significantly younger than he/she is. If X is the older person's age then they are a cradle robber if they date a person who is less than half of their age plus 7 years. But for this function to work, X must be greater than or equal to 18. (Y = .5X + 7 X:18,infinity))

      Delete
    2. Currently beyond my desire to calculate, due to excessive consumption in person at the virtual Bar.

      Delete
  22. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213895296725186&set=a.10200557271362888.2203286.1491787763&type=3&theater

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    1. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213832016143211&set=a.10200557271362888.2203286.1491787763&type=3&theater

      Delete
    2. Bake the Fucking Cake, Bigot!

      https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213818173957165&set=a.10200557271362888.2203286.1491787763&type=3&theater

      Delete
    3. Hate versus Art:

      https://scontent.fhnl1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/19510509_10213798666989503_6057084790882603539_n.jpg?oh=41421481a9d6e085f17ecf2e44907943&oe=5A0D26DB

      Delete
    4. You will comply!

      http://www.engaygedweddings.com/ca/reception-halls/surf-sand-resort.html

      Heil Muhammad !

      Delete
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  25. Posted with wrong url above, but don't miss it:

    "When your wife tells you to come to bed, but you have at least 3 more shit-posts planned for the evening."

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213895296725186&set=a.10200557271362888.2203286.1491787763&type=3&theater

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  26. Rock on Dudettes!

    http://www.engaygedweddings.com/images-lgbt-weddings/california-lgbt-weddings/surf-and-sand-resort/330-surf-and-sand-resort-rock-massage.jpg

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  27. THERE IS HOPE

    Most French people say there are too many foreigners in France, immigrants do not make an effort to assimilate and Islam is incompatible with the French values.
    France's new president clearly has some healing to do when it comes to two longstanding divisive issues in France.

    Immigration and the place of Islam in society, are still very much contentious questions for the French, a new annual survey has revealed.

    A poll by the Ipsos institute for Le Monde newspaper has revealed that a majority of 65 percent of French people say there are too many foreigners in France, a figure that has remained elevated in recent years, with the figure as high as 70 percent in 2017.

    Another stat demonstrating a majority of French people are uncomfortable with immigration was the 60 percent of people who agreed with the statement: "Today I no longer feel at home like I did before".

    On top of that some 61 percent of French people share the belief that "immigrants in France do not make an effort to integrate".

    Some 46 percent of French people believe it's not difficult for an immigrant to integrate.

    Unsurprisingly the percentages are far higher among those on the far right - 95 percent of National Front voters believe there are too many foreigners in France compared to those on the left (46 percent of Socialists).

    When it came to the other ever divisive issue of the role of Islam, 60 percent of the people questioned for the survey titled "French Fractures 2017", believe the religion of Islam is incompatible with the values of the French Republic".

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  28. The religion of Islam is only compatible with itself. Proven time and time again.

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  29. Not even with itself, many times.


    The two main sects kill each other with great glee, and the minor ones too.

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