Thankfully, History Doesn't Repeat Itself

Seriously, how could somebody be persecuted for his or her religious beliefs in this land of freedom? (I need a sarcastic font).

http://ucatholic.com/saints/justa-and-rufina/

A Pattern of Control

Same-sex "marriage" is part of the plan by some of the leading members of our government and their advisors to increase control over the citizens of this country.  It ties in with the abortion mandate in Obamacare. The obvious agenda is to increase the dependency of the citizenry on the government (this is why Mr. Obama and Ms Clinton have switched their stance on gay marriage from a few years ago).  The largest organization serving the poor in this country is the Catholic Church.  For the state to gain control over the millions of persons the Church aids through its various charitable wings, the organization must be gutted.  When Illinois passed their same-sex marriage law, the government used it to close down the largest organization in the country acting to rescue women and children from human trafficking -- because it was run by the Catholic Church which opposes same-sex marriage, as if this had anything to do with the mission of saving humans in bondage.  The current Supreme Court's decision will be used to sue organizations and individuals into submission or non-existence.  The government has already abolished the Conscience Clause with Obamacare.  There is a pattern.  A person could choose to ignore the pattern or delude himself or herself into believing this is the ravings of a paranoid, bigoted imbecile.  Or, just in case it might be an accurate assessment, start to think about how much their personal freedom is worth.

Is this Another “Munich Conference” from the EU?

With Vladimir Putin sending troops into the Crimea, the obvious question is what will the EU do?  The US can do nothing because Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, which went through a period of apologizing to foreign potentates as part of his mania with decolonization, then moved to making bold threats that were not carried out in Libya, to being outmaneuvered by Syria, to settling on chunking cruise missiles at suspected terrorists, is now if full-blown free fall.  Political leaders throughout the world do not take him or the US seriously.  This leaves the EU as the only potential force that can halt Putin’s conquest of the Crimea and the realization of a 400+ year Russian dream – access to a warm-water port.  The big question is, of course, will the EU allow itself to be outmaneuvered once again by bogus claims of national self-determination.  One dictator successfully used this ploy to get the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.  The question is whether or not the leaders of the EU will allow this naked aggression against a sovereign state to continue or will they find a convenient excuse to extricate themselves so they don’t have to reveal that they cannot project their force beyond their borders?  If I were a betting man, I’d start exchanging my Ukrainian hryvnia for Russian rubles.

Academicians are weenies

Why are academicians such chichi liberals?  I’m at a history conference (I know, the mind, it boggles) and these pretentious gits keep extoling neo-Marxist ideas (despite never working a day in their lives or having the least bit of awareness that Marxist-inspired governments don’t work), the demise of capitalism (never once proffering an alternative or realizing that as long as humans are competitive we’ll have some kind of competitive economic system), lamenting the sexism in movies by searching high and low for a women who is not “empowered,”  or worrying about hyper-machoism (this from a guy who couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag).  I want to talk about such mundane issues as the search for truth in history, but I must not be a real historian because I’m not rending my garments over the various oppressors in our midst (as a white male, I qualify as two oppressors).  More and more, historians are filled with presentism, the notion that we judge the past by today’s standards and, in a curious reflection, that the old, nasty villains of the present-past live among us woefully unrepentant of their various sins. The worst aspect of hanging out with these weenies is that they don’t seem to drink.  Historians who don’t drink are not real historians.

The Staggering Idiocy of Self-Censorship

The Alan Roberts film, The Innocence of Muslims, is blamed for numerous violent outbreaks throughout the world.  Many in the media have said that he pushed the boundaries of freedom of speech and should have been censored (by whom is unclear).  While we can debate the merits of the film, the fact that people are seriously discussing censorship only shows that the terrorists have won.  Recently, Channel 4 in Britain aired a historical documentary on the origins of Islam, Islam: The Untold Story – the same sort of documentary that has been done of pretty much every other major religion.  The response of some in the Muslim community was to threaten the life of the producer, Tom Holland.  Channel 4 decided against re-airing the documentary as previously planned.  http://www.channel4.com/programmes/islam-the-untold-story/articles/tom-holland-responds-to-the-programmes-critics

The documentary is available on Youtube, but not in the US: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm8xKh8eQqU  However, it is available at LiveLeak: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=578_1347455615&comments=1.

As a historian, I quite enjoyed how the documentary shows the process of historical research, especially the emphasis on primary sources (written documents, but also including coins).  It is a typical British documentary with a hodgepodge of images and a slightly pretentious narrative.  The documentary raises issues about the origins of Islam in a secular, historical manner rather than religious.  There are a few places where I, a historian, but not an expert, have some questions about Holland’s conclusions but not about his methodologies.  Reasonable individuals discuss and even debate these questions of interpretation.  We do not threaten to kill each.

Western society, in some misguided attempt to be polite, is letting the unreasonable ruin our lives.  As I’ve noted before (http://aspatula.blogspot.com/2008/02/europe-is-dead.html), Europe is appeasing itself out of existence, and I have to believe that the US is only slightly behind.  I am appalled when I read that some persons, even those in the media (the persons most likely to value freedom of expression) and government, want to censor what we say (and, for that matter, believe) out of fear of offending a few psychopaths.  We’re giving up one of our most cherished freedoms in order not to offend a fringe group of nuts.  Who are the real idiots?

SEC Football in Big Trouble

Today, Mark Emmert, NCAA president, issued a series of wholly justifiable and appropriate sanctions against Penn State (my alma mater) football in the wake of the damning Freeh report on the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal involving little boys.

Emmert prefaced the sanctions by discussing the appropriate role of athletics in higher education.  He noted that the sanctions were meant to ensure that, true to NCAA standards, “football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing, and protecting young people.”  He went on to say that the NCAA was created to ensure that “…the athletic programs totally embrace the values of higher education … [and] to insist that athletic programs provide positive, moral models to our students, enhance the integrity of higher education, and promote the values of civility, honesty, and responsibility.”

This is bad news for all major football programs and most of the mid-majors.  The NCAA will now ensure that all student-athletes attend classes and make adequate progress towards graduating with real majors.  This means, for example, that the SEC will adopt the same academic standards as Vanderbilt, the Big 10 will all follow Northwestern’s example, and the ACC will mandate that all its football programs follow the example of Wake Forest.

If you think this is ridiculous, but that Penn State deserved the sanctions and penalties it received for letting its football program get out of hand, then you’re a hypocrite.

The NCAA, even when it takes appropriate action, reveals the blatant hypocrisy of athletics … really, football … in higher education in this country.

Gun Deaths vs Drunk Deaths

According to the Guardian in 2010 there were 8775 murders caused by guns in the U.S (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state).  For the same year, MADD reports that there were 10,228 deaths caused by drunk drivers in the US (http://www.madd.org/statistics/).