Diversity is Strength!

And War is Peace, Hunger is Plenty, and Evil is Good.

Seriously.

london-killerThe Orwellian nightmare that our elites have foisted upon us with their disastrous immigration laws is getting harder and harder to deny. The Multicultists who assured Western nations that we had nothing to fear from swarms of immigrants from non-Christian, Third World regions is being laid bare for everyone to see. Both Great Britain and America were told back in the 60s that Diversity is Strength! and the natives had nothing to fear from the fraying of our native Christian patrimony. Our betters kept telling us that Real Soon Now these new public charges would be net assets, putting more in to our economy than drawing out from it.

Yeah, right. And they never would act in a barbarous fashion such as what you are about to see either. Tell it to the English cop who just lost his head. Better yet, tell it to his family.

Last month, we Americans had a taste of this with the Boston Marathon bombing. Two Chechen brothers up and went all Jihad on us and blew up a bomb that killed and maimed 200 innocent bystanders. And how did they “contribute” to the commonweal? Oh, they didn’t. Their family survived on $100,000 in welfare payments while they went back and forth to Russia — the land from which they requested asylum — planning how best to terrorize their “fellow” Americans. Rest assured though, Devil Patrick, the federal Satrap of the formerly independent Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has done everything in his power to keep these facts quiet — wouldn’t want to inflame the peasants now, would we? And Attorney General Eric Holder further botched things up by Mirandizing the surviving brother.

Is it too much to ask that we have a sane immigration policy, one that caters to the wishes of the majority, in this country as well as the UK and the rest of Europe? That new citizens be asked to take loyalty oaths and renounce all former allegiances (and really mean it)? That these newcomers won’t become public charges and bring their benighted customs with them?

Obviously, it is. We continue to plod along as if nothing happened. “Diversity is Strength!” And female circumcision is a quaint custom, not unlike Sweet Sixteen parties. Soon our elites will be telling us that honor killings are on the down-trend and we really have nothing to fear from polygamists (who “support” their excess wives with Welfare payments) since after all, we have gay marriage. Can’t be partial don’t you know: after all multiculturalism means that all cultures are equal and we can’t be judgmental, you know, like those hateful Christianists. File this meme under being “Liberal Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry™.”

How blind are our elites? How hostile are they to our Christian, European culture? Consider how the Gang of Eight continues to push through a disastrous immigration “reform” bill that would radically transform our nation, remaking us into Latin America North. And for what purpose? Is our own Anglo-Celtic/Northern European national culture defective in some way? No, the reason that The Treason Lobby that controls the Republicrat duopoly wants more “diversity” is because they want to further depress the wages of the native working man, thereby making it impossible for him to support and raise a family. (You know, the building block of civilization.) It’s easy to see why the Wall Street wing of the GOP wants to see this happen, but what is the excuse of the Democrats, the Party of African-Americans and the poor whites? To increase welfare rolls? This will work in the short term. We saw how the increased share of the electorate that is dependent upon government (the “Takings Coalition”) made the reelection of Barack Obama inevitable, but will the native black and white contingent of this coalition continue to be loyal to a Party that continues to impoverish them, or worse yet, places them in harm’s way in an increasing fashion?

Time will tell. In the meantime, if you want to watch this video, be warned it’s very graphic.

‘You and your children will be next’: Islamic fanatics wielding meat cleavers butcher and try to behead a British soldier, taking their war on the West to a new level of horror

Source: Daily Mail | By ARTHUR MARTIN, SAM GREENHILL, CHRIS GREENWOOD and ROB COOPER

  • One of the men arrested is believed to be Michael Adebolajo
  • Two men repeatedly stab and tried to behead off-duty soldier in SE London
  • They shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ attack and told witnesses to film them
  • Charged at police officers with rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers
  • Killing took place 200 yards from barracks and close to primary school
  • Both men placed under arrest after being treated for gunshot wounds
  • PM: Killing is ‘sickening’ and Britain will ‘never buckle’ in face of terror

Clutching a bloodied meat cleaver, the man suspected of executing a soldier on a crowded street declared: ‘you and your kids will be next’.

In a chilling rant captured on camera, the knife-wielding man declared: ‘The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers.’

The man who launched the terrifying diatribe in Woolwich, south-east London, is believed to be Michael Adebolajo, who has been identified on Twitter and web forums as one of the two people arrested.

In the video obtained by ITV News he added: ‘Remove your governments – they don’t care about you. You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bursting our guns? You think politicians are going to die?

‘No, it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children. So get rid of them – tell them to bring our troops back so we can… so you can all live in peace.’

In broad daylight, an attacker and an accomplice repeatedly stabbed and tried to behead the man in front of dozens of passers-by.

Throughout the frenzied attack the two killers shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ – Arabic for ‘God is great’ – then demanded horrified witnesses film them as they ranted over the crumpled body.

Read the entire article on the Daily Mail website.

london-killing

[…]

Comments

  1. Deacon Chris says

    George –

    One of the things that stood out in following Twits from Brits yesterday is how quick they were to apologize for Islam, on the other hand I was pleasantly surprised to ready quite a few British Muslims speak out against this attack. This is a terrorist attack indeed. It was intended to invoke terror and it was planned. More specifically it was Islamic terrorism and Muslims need to be asked for accountability – not by losing freedoms, but by reviewing the ‘mulitculturism’ mindset you speak of that is rampant in Europe and seeping into the US. I’m not sure what ‘form(s)’ of Sharia exist in the UK, but this is grounds for this ‘policy’ to be reviewed.

    However, I would like to note that the reports are that Adebolajgo is native born son and a convert to Islam. So, it’s not so much an immigrant issue here albeit the point you made stands. Also, I’m never going to be one to overlook blow back from illegal/immoral operations abroad. When we (US/UK any power) goes on the attack not following our own rules from the onset and does things not out of justice or self-defense, rather political interest and political fiat, that will come back to bite us in the rear. As it is starting too. Albanians, Chechens, Muslims of Africa, Bosnians etc. We need to start talking about this, start owning this, start holding ourselves accountable as a true patriot (and Christian) would. Otherwise, I shudder at the American society our children are going to inherit. And by shudder, I mean I stay up at night in cold sweat.

    Noteworthy is that one report stated that it took London Cops 20 minutes to arrive at the scene while these scumbags wandered around apologizing that “women had to witness this.” If this is true – 20 minutes? Also, this was in front of a barracks, no? What were they doing while this was going down?

    • George Michalopulos says

      It was pathetic Deacon Chris. There was a time in which John Bull was so self-confident that nothing like this would have occurred in the first place. We can thank decades of multiculturalism and Western Guilt Syndrome for inculcating defeatism in the minds of Europeans and Americans.

  2. I suspect they refuse to be candid about the Islamic war against the west out of terror, out of the mistaken belief that if they don’t offend the Muslims, our society will magically be spared, but there’s no escaping the darkness to come.

  3. Gregg Gerasimon says

    I don’t know why you’re so concerned about this meat-cleaver-hatchet job done on a (probably racist) British soldier by these hard-working British immigrants, who happen to be Muslim.

    Clearly their anger was the direct result of yet another scurrilous YouTube video, and from what I hear coming from the State Department, their anger was justified. We should not only find the producer of said YouTube video and throw him in jail, but we should also spend millions of British and American taxpayer dollars airing commercials in Muslim countries detailing how sorry we are and asking them to please don’t machete us up again. And we should go out of our way to NOT profile Muslims at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, just so that they don’t get more angry at us. It’s all a problem of education — if only we could educate them more and make them understand, then of course they wouldn’t hate us.

    Seriously, though. This is disgusting. I have to admit that the lunatic butcher might have got something right when he said that “your governments don’t care about you.” I really don’t think that our governments in the West care about protecting their citizens or about doing the right thing. Prime Minister David Cameron can utter whatever platitudes he wants (like “there is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act”), but if they were serious about protecting Western citizens, immigration from all high-risk areas would immediately cease. Islamic “hate preachers” living in Western soceities would be immediately deported. Public assistance (welfare, health care, whatever) to non-working immigrants would immediately cease, and any other high-risk immigrants would deported. End of story. Who cares if the feelings of some are hurt? Every single public policy and law offends someone — why bend over backwards to try to make immigrants who hate you feel comfortable in your country and then not give a hoot about your own citizens?

    America thrived as a country of immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries not because of massive public assistance, but because of immigrants’ hard work. If it didn’t work out for them in America, they went home. And American leaders and society at the time didn’t spend hours stewing in guilt about this fact.

    Blessed Father Seraphim Rose was right — what’s normal has become abnormal, and what is abnormal has become normal. I can only pray that British citizens (and the rest of Europe and America) have had enough.

  4. Ivan Vasiliev says

    George,

    This is horrifying! But do you think that this is really what the liberals mean by diversity? I think that their hatred of Christianity is profoundly wrong and their simple mindedness about the ability of cultures with expressly hostile values to mix well is naive, but I don’t think it is fair to say that they would justify this. The very liberal people of Massachusetts certainly haven’t been making excuses for the Boston terrorists.
    Perhaps people in the West will begin to reconsider what true diversity and real tolerance means. But there is the danger that the Liberal-Progressives will turn their hatred of Christianity into a virulent hatred of all religion (a la the godless Bolshevik regime), which will benefit no one. And a backlash of fear and intolerance against EVERYONE who is a different color or from a different religious background (especially Islam at this time) will make us all uglier and meaner and improve things not one little bit.
    Why not deal with the crime and the criminals for what they are: brutal, evil men. And why not ask the question why the crowds that surrounded them didn’t pick up sticks and stones to drive them off instead of cameras to record them, or ask why it took the police so long to respond?
    It is striking that in London the people stood around and more or less watched the terrorists commit their barbarity whereas in Boston the people ran to the rescue of the victims and went all out to support the police in their search for the perpetrators.

  5. M. Stankovich says

    Mr. Michalopulos,

    Being a “first-generation” American son of a foreign war veteran, liberated from captivity by American soldiers and a fanatical American patriot, I still cringe at the stories he told of the bias and discrimination he and his friends experienced as immigrants at the beginning of the Cold War. Though they were educated men and officers, it was nearly impossible for them to find work that involved “real” responsibility & trust (e.g. handling business affairs, communications, finances) because of concern for their political motivations. Likewise, their “religion” was in an unknown language and suspect. He told me, for example, of how and several other young men were “duped” into making regular “donations” into receptacles marked “DPW” (Department of Public Works – i.e. trash cans) to help “DP’s” (displaced persons) and their money would be stolen, and so on. It’s the danger of identifying individuals with dangerous groups.

    Prejudice, bias, and discrimination is a “Sisyphusian” slope from two sides of the mountain. Blame and resolution is somewhere balanced at the top.

    • George Michalopulos says

      I remember stories such as this as well. When I was 9, a schoolmate asked me if I believed in Zeus. Friction always occurs between ethnicities when they are thrown together in a cauldron. That’s one reason why I despise multiculturalism. It’s only logical that in any given ethno-state, one culture should predominate.

      Several years ago, one of my Greek acquaintances (a leftist btw) told me that we Americans were “racists” and “xenophobes.” Finally I’d had enough. I responded, “how would you like it if in Greece every time you dialed a number you were told “Press ‘1’ for Greek, ‘2’ for Albanian…”

      The invective that followed was most enlightening.

      • nit picker says

        George Michalopulos wrote:

        “how would you like it if in Greece every time you dialed a number you were told “Press ’1′ for Greek, ’2′ for Albanian…”

        On a recent trip throughout Greece I notice that just about everything is written in Greek and English. The Metro even makes announcements in English.

        • George Michalopulos says

          The difference is that English in the international language. The Greeks put everything up in English as well as Greek to facilitate tourism which is their biggest commodity. Plus, Anglophones resident in Greece do not demand that the native Greeks twist their society into pretzels to accommodate them.

      • Ivan Vasiliev says

        George,

        I cannot believe that I am about to sound like a flaming card carrying liberal! But this would mean that in ethnic states where “ethnic” and “religion” are interchangeable (as they are in the minds of most Muslim Arabs and Muslim Persians, Turks, etc) that it would make perfect sense to drive out or forcibly convert the Coptic, Orthodox, Monophysite, Roman Catholic, etc. Christians in their territories based on your concept that one culture should predominate. The Saudis apply that rule rigorously based exactly on that principle. The more “charitable” tradition was to reduce the “outsiders” to a very real second class “dhimmi” status. You know all this. All of us Orthodox from the old countries know this. Which is exactly why we should be for a real and compassionate “diversity” that allows everyone room to breathe with with the Constitutional guarantees of “life, liberty, and property”, no questions asked!

        This also means that those who commit acts of terrorism–any act of terrorism–must be quickly identified, arrested, tried, and incarcerated. That requires vigilance on the part of the community (and I get very nervous here; God forbid, we don’t need a climate of spies and political informers).

        Perhaps we should remember that the Real Enemy is Satan–The Accuser, the Devil–The Divider, who is absolutely and utterly democratic in his contempt of us all and who despises us as the image and likeness of God. Anything that divides us more, anything that sets us against one another, anything that brings out our fears and prejudices and petty hatreds will do. How strange, when you think of it. He would divide us to unite us in one thing–a common distrust and fear of one another: the perfect image of his own hell. I think we should strive mightily to resist thisl

        • George Michalopulos says

          But they’re doing it anyway, aren’t they Ivan? I mean driving out native Christians. Since they’re going to do it on their end, why shouldn’t we do it on our end? What gives them the right to build mosques in London, Athens, Moscow, etc., –mosques that preach world domination and Jew-hatred–but we can’t build Christian temples in their lands? Is that fair?

          All I’m asking for is fair play. I see nothing wrong with a strict demarcation line between our civilizations if that’s what it takes to have peace between us and to prevent an incipient genocide against them by the natives of Europe.

          • George Michalopulos says

            PS, you’re right about Satan. His agents-in-place are the secularists. Muslims are merely the minions that they use at present to suppress the Church.

            • Ryan Hunter says

              I urge you to exercise a degree of restraint and precision when you talk about Muslims, George. Theologically, Islam is a false Gospel which preaches an antithesis of the Risen Christ, a mixture of many beautiful but many deeply disturbing Gnostic elements, but to call Muslims minions – as you did above- reeks of an ignorance I know you do not have.

              Islam is far more complex than a simplistic reduction to Jihad and terrorism, just as it is reactionary and absurd to say that Catholic Christianity is only Crusades and Inquisition and Ushtase, or Orthodoxy the realm of ethnophyletic-inspired pogroms of Jews or cleansing of Croats and Bosnians. There are about 1 billion Muslims in the world: a tiny fraction of them commit acts of terror. The reality is that most Muslims in the world are no more your or my enemy than local Zionist Jews, fundamentalist Mormons, or other heterodox or heretical groups.

              I wish you could come to DC and see for yourself. My Muslim friends and I are very open about our theological and existential differences, but from my conversations with them, the vast majority of young American Muslims are loyal to the U.S. and abhor murderous acts committed in the name of Islam. This is the reality of most young Muslim Americans. Sometimes I think some commentators on here get so caught up in debates that they fail to see reality around them. Try talking to American or British Muslims. I haven’t heard a single apologist for the atrocities in Boston or London, but a plea “we don’t agree with this barbarism”! All my Muslim friends were disgusted and ashamed over Boston and the recent London stabbing murder of the off-duty British soldier.

              Let us remember to look upon those outside the Church by their character, the way they live their lives. Certain Muslims in the world oppress women, justify terror, and/or hate the West mindlessly, but the reality is that most do not. The same applies to Orthodoz Christian men: some oppress women, justify pogroms of Jews or massacres of Bosnians, and some mindlessly hate all things Western or Muslim. Most of the world seeks to live in peace. Barbaric attacks are a crime wherever they are committed, no matter in what name. But again, talk to Muslim Americans, Canadians, and Britons. You may be surprised by what you hear.

              • George Michalopulos says

                Dear-to-Christ Ryan, I beg forgiveness if I came off as being an anti-Islamic bigot. I am not. I am however an immigration restrictionist. If Muslim nations can control their respective demographies, so should we.

                As for my own relations with Muslims, it is nothing but cordial and friendly. Recently I entered into a fast friendship with an Iranian-American due to a recent business merger. Next time I’m in Houston, I have a standing invitation to his house where I can play poker and enjoy excellent single-malt Scotch. I intend to take him up on it.

                As for Islam as a civilization, there is much to respect. They had their day in the sun and it was a glorious one. Much they borrowed from Byzantium, much they came up with on their own. I’d venture to say that they’re going through a reformation of sorts and like the West’s, it wasn’t necessarily a walk in the park. We should leave them alone but they should leave us alone as well. If it’s not possible to contain the convulsions of this quasi-reformation, then we owe it to ourselves to protect ourselves from it. The easiest, most non-violent way would be to withdraw from the Middle East, reform our welfare system, and severely curtail immigration from their lands. Otherwise we will see race riots and eventually pogroms.

                The above is not a moral judgment nor a cry for battle, just a historical prediction.

                • Christ is risen!

                  I have to agree with George here. It’s not difficult to see that when Muslims leave their native homes they predominately emigrate to native English-speaking, historically Christian nations. Apart from the irrony of that, it’s reasonable to ask to what extent it should be allowed when it isn’t allowed in the reverse direction.

  6. Francis Frost says

    Dear Mr. Michaelopulos:

    It was reported this morning on NPR, that the attacker, Michael Adebulajo was actually raised a Christian, and that his mother is still a Christian believer. It was reported that he changed his religion and was later radicalized by fellow students at his university. I am sure that there will be more on this later.

    Regarding the Tsarnaev brothers, there is much more of their story to come out, and some that may never be revealed. The history of the Russian oppression of the Muslims in the Caucasus and their response is now 300 years old. For a detailed historical analysis you might look for the book “Let Our Fame Be Great” by Oliver Bullough. You will see that the violence and hatred evidenced by the Boston Bombers has a long and tortuous pedigree and it owes much to the cruelty and oppression of the Russian Empire and its successors.

    BTW, Mr. Bullough has a new publication, ” The Last Man in Russia” which is essential reading for those who wish to understand the current reality in Russian and in particular the reality of the Moscow Patriarchate. For those who remember him, this history is told through the life of Father Dmitiri Dudko, a Russian priest and famous preacher from the 1970s.

    Attached below is a copy of an article by Garry Kasparov concerning the Boston Bombers that may shed more light on the “rest of the story” to use the late Paul Harvey’s phrase

    U.S./RUSSIA & BOSTON BOMBING: COMMON GROUND A MYTH

    May 13, 2013 · by Fortuna’s Corner · in Al Qaeda, military history, national security, Russia, terrorism, US Military
    A Shared Enemy Does Not Mean Shared Values

    The Kerry-Putin meeting aside, common ground between Russia and America is a myth.

    By GARRY KASPAROV

    When Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Moscow on Tuesday to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin, the announced list of topics included finding “common ground” on Syria. It also mentioned antiterror cooperation in light of the Russian origins of Boston Marathon bombing suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers. It is very unlikely Mr. Kerry found common ground on either subject.

    The humanitarian catastrophe in Syria is of no concern to Mr. Putin, as is clear from the Kremlin’s support for the murderous Assad regime. Mr. Putin also seeks to stoke the instability that helps keep the price of oil high. The similar pattern of Russian interference in Iran and Venezuela is no coincidence. Energy revenue is what keeps Mr. Putin and his gang in power and therefore oil prices are always his top priority.

    Terror would seem to be a more likely area for U.S.-Russian collaboration, especially regarding the virulent brand of Islamist extremism that has been bubbling over in Russia’s southwestern Caucasus region since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet the Kremlin’s cooperation on the Islamist threat has been remarkably selective.

    Soon after the suspects’ names in the Boston bombing became known, the Russian security services announced that they had warned the FBI about the elder Tsarnaev, Tamerlan, in 2011. But what about during and after Tamerlan’s visit to Russia’s North Caucasus in 2012? That’s when he reportedly was indoctrinated and trained by radicals in Dagestan.

    Why were there no communications in 2012 from the FSB (the successor of the KGB) about a suspected radical, an American no less, training in the hottest of Caucasus terrorist hotbeds and then returning to the U. S.? It is beyond belief that the extensive police state that monitors every utterance of the Russian opposition could lose track of an American associating with terrorists.

    Tamerlan reportedly met with Makhmud Mansur Nidal, a known terror recruiter, and William Plotkin, a Russian-Canadian jihadist. Both men were killed in Dagestan by the Russian military just days before Tamerlan left Russia for the U.S. If no intelligence was sent from Moscow to Washington, all this talk of FSB cooperation cannot be taken seriously.

    This would not be the first time Russian security forces seemed strangely impotent in the face of an impending terror attack. In the Nord-Ost theater siege by Islamist Chechens in 2002 and the Beslan school hostage attack by Chechen and other Islamist radicals in 2004, it later came to light that there were FSB informants in both terror groups—yet the attacks went ahead unimpeded. Beslan was quickly used by Mr. Putin to justify shredding the last vestiges of Russian democracy by eliminating the election of regional governors.

    With such a track record, it is impossible to overlook that the Boston bombing took place just days after the U.S. Magnitsky List was published, creating the first serious external threat to the Putin power structure by penalizing Russian officials complicit in human-rights crimes. Practically before the smoke in Boston cleared, Mr. Putin was saying “I told you so” and calling for cooperation.

    Secretary Kerry’s visit validated every Putin instinct. The Russian president kept the American waiting in a hall for three hours—no doubt impressing Mr. Putin’s cronies. On Wednesday, Mr. Kerry was allowed to meet with a small group of Russian human-rights activists whose activities have been under assault as the Putin government cracks down ever harder on free speech and all forms of opposition.

    But the meeting avoided mention of the two most significant developments in Russian human rights: the Magnitsky List and the dozens of protesters arrested at a political protest in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow a year ago. Mr. Putin is creating a new generation of political prisoners, with show trials unseen since Joseph Stalin, and Mr. Kerry goes to Russia to find common ground? As for Syria, the day after Mr. Kerry left, the Journal reported that advanced Russian S-300 antiaircraft missiles were headed to Syria.
    Islamist terror is a genuine threat that will continue to take Russian and American lives unless it is met with a strong response. But having a shared enemy does not mean having shared values. Respect for human life and individual rights are the most potent weapons the civilized world possesses and where any discussion of common ground must begin. The Putin regime’s dubious record on counterterrorism and its continued support of terror sponsors Iran and Syria mean only one thing: common ground zero.

    Mr. Kasparov, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal, is the leader of the Russian pro-democracy group United Civil Front and chairman of the U.S.-based Human Rights Foundation.

    A version of this article appeared May 13, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Shared Enemy Does Not Mean Shared Values.

    Share this:

    • George Michalopulos says

      Mr Frost, your Russophobia causes you to miss the point of my essay, which is that we need to restrict immigration to this country now and under no circumstances should we allow the foreign-born to collect Welfare.

      As to how the Russians treated the Chechens in the past, so what? What has that to do with America? Why take it out on the people of Boston? The Russians were no more or less imperialistic than every other empire that came down the pike. Do you forget how the Russians suffered under the Tatars? Under the Poles during the Time of Troubles? In this Darwinian mindset, if you’re not on top, you’ll be on the bottom. In that corner of the world I’d rather have the Russians on top than the Chechens, Dagestanis, Uzbeks, etc.

      Finally, your antipathy towards Putin blinds you to the extremely atrocious behavior that Chechens are known for. They are a barbarous and savage people of no accomplishment who delight in spontaneous murder. Why in God’s holy name we would allow savages like them into this country is beyond me.

      • Pere LaChaise says

        Calling Caucasian immigrants savages routinely engaging in atrocity and then blasting measured criticism of a cynical and brutal Russian government ‘Russophobia’ marks you as a bigot and stooge, Mr. Michalopoulos. You utterly miss Frost’s point which is that Putin manages outbreaks of violence to strengthen his grip. The killers DO NOT represent the Chechen people and to infer that they do is essentially blood libel. Any charge you make against a whole nation on the basis of a few criminals smacks of racism. But maybe you are OK with being known as a racist.

        • George Michalopulos says

          “Manages the outbreak of violence.” Hmmm, is that akin to saying that the girl “deserved to be raped” because the rapist can’t help himself? Or more along the lines of blaming Terry Jeffrey for the beheadings of Christians in Afghanistan because he deep-fried a Koran.

          You get my point? If certain Muslim groups are so easily provoked by the actions/thoughts/writings of others (think Salman Rushdie) then they have no autonomy or free will. They are by your analysis wild animals who react instinctively to external phenomenon (like Pavlov’s Dog). I don’t believe this by the way but that’s the gist of your argument.

          If true then the West has only two options: 1) a crusade to forcibly convert them to Christianity and eradicate practices like cousin-marriage and clitoridectomies, or 2) refuse them entry into our nations as emigrants.

          • Nate Trost says

            It is rather hard to reconcile these two statements of yours:

            They are a barbarous and savage people of no accomplishment who delight in spontaneous murder. Why in God’s holy name we would allow savages like them into this country is beyond me.

            and (emphasis mine):

            They are by your analysis wild animals who react instinctively to external phenomenon (like Pavlov’s Dog). I don’t believe this by the way but that’s the gist of your argument.

            It’s almost as if you want to justify your own profoundly racist position by projecting it onto others while denying holding it yourself, despite having explicitly laid it out in a previous post (not to mention your essay in general). Nice try.

            the natives had nothing to fear from the fraying of our native Christian patrimony

            So I guess the real problem is bringing in non-Christians…

            remaking us into Latin America North. And for what purpose? Is our own Anglo-Celtic/Northern European national culture defective in some way?

            …except dark-skinned Catholics are apparently as bad as Muslims? You give the game away.

            • George Michalopulos says

              On the contrary. I for one don’t believe tha Muslims, like all human beings, do NOT have freewill. I most certainly believe that that they do. I was merely presenting the problem of civilizational conflict and the illogic of multiculturalists who always take the side of those against the West.

              Let me repeat: if certain Muslim populations cannot restrain themselves from “spontantous” acts of violence and outrage supposedly instigated by “provocations” by those who live in free societies, then they are by definition no different than wild animals.

              As for myself, I have an olive complexion given to me by my mother who was very dark-compected and with her long, braided, black hair, was often confused for being an Indian during her youth in Oklahoma. This is not racial but civilizational and cultural. Any nation has the right to determine its demographic makeup. Our Founding Fathers were not open-borders enthusiasts like the present Gang of Eight but wrote in the Constitution that the purpose of creating the Union was for “our posterity.”

              Again, I ask why can’t we have the same, sane immigration policy that Mexico and Israel have?

              • Nate Trost says

                I sense a certain lack of consistency here. You seem to feel entitled to brand subsets of Muslims as wild animals for acting out “mob justice” style, whilst on the other hand you write a whole screed nostalgic for the exercise of angry mob justice (‘A Good Word about Tarring and Feathering’). And, of course, whatever your intentions might be about the limits of such exercises, the whole ultimate dilemma once you go down that road is it inherently becomes out of your control and subject to hijacking. I mean, sure, you didn’t mean for those mosques to be burned or that grandfather to be hacked to death (how much play did that get in the Daily Mail?), but you know, these things happen.

                So, in you, I see someone wishing to unleash their own beast within as if you were Jason Bateman hankering for a full moon, all whilst demonizing and dehumanizing a group of Others for engaging in what you don’t get to do. Bravo.

                Of course the elements of America you seem to deem most “authentic” can have the exact same condemnation redirected upon it. Behold, a slight change in your original wording:

                Let me repeat: if certain Southern American Christian populations cannot restrain themselves from “spontantous” acts of violence and outrage supposedly instigated by “provocations” by those who have a different skin color, then they are by definition no different than wild animals.

                Everyone can play!

                Again, I ask why can’t we have the same, sane immigration policy that Mexico and Israel have?

                Yes, when I think of countries I wish the United States could resemble more closely Mexico and Israel are right at the top of the list. /sarcasm

                • George Michalopulos says

                  Why not Israel? It’s a happy, culturally confident, economically vibrant, joie de vivre Mediterranean society in which the majority enjoy the fruits of their labor and have stopped their endless hand-wringing over the past. Why can’t we have that?

                  Why must our downtowns rot? Why must Detroit and Chicago resemble Tijuana and Baghdad? Why should we have to have armed vigilantes like George Zimmerman forced to patrol their gated communities?

                  • Nate Trost says

                    They have government-run healthcare, a robust welfare state with an entrenched ‘welfare class’, gay pride parades, an extremely volatile and dysfunctional democratic system of government, etc. etc. All things which seem to invoke bombastic essays from you on Why America Is Going Down the Toilet Where Europe Already Is. But Israel? Hey, have strict immigration laws, discriminate against citizens that are a racial minority and engage in a gradual process of ghettoization and descent into downright apartheid policies against an occupied population, and George Michaolopulos will overlook all that “socialism” and “secularism” and give your country a big thumbs up!

                    Detroit and Chicago most assuredly do not resemble Tijuana and Baghdad. Stop being preposterous.

                    Why should we have to have armed vigilantes like George Zimmerman forced to patrol their gated communities?

                    Who is this “we” you speak of? I certainly don’t believe the need for armed vigilantes, and definitely not for George Zimmerman, who most certainly wasn’t being forced to play Patrolling Man With A Gun. While I certainly retain the possibility of being convinced otherwise, based on current information my personal assessment remains that he is a murderer and should spend the rest of his life in prison.

                    • George Michalopulos says

                      And they also have a sane immigration system, a walled-off border ringed with a solid security fence, they detain then deport illegal aliens, and they care not a whit about being sensitive. I’d take any of those other things you describe along with a closed border.

                    • George Michalopulos says

                      Mr Trost, all the things you describe about the socialism of Israel are true. But they are true of most nations the world over at present (except the gay pride parades). They aren’t necessarily that significant to the long-term health of a society though because they can all be changed at some point. All it takes is a simple statue. By law this agency closes after “x” date while that agency takes over its functions. Employee slots can be sunsetted once the employee retires, etc. Don’t get me wrong, being an ardent Constitutionalist, I cringe at the size and scope of most government –federal, state, and local. But these are debatable and subject to change.

                      The allowance of an alien population within your borders, and one brought in with the express purpose of overwhelming demographically the native population is irreversible. And for those who are of a more Progressive bent than myself (roughly 98% of the population), I would caution you to heed the words of Milton Friedman: “you can have a welfare state or an open immigration policy, you can’t have both.”

                      In the end, the math will always get you.

                    • George Michalopulos says

                      Maybe if you lived in George Zimmerman’s neighborhood you’d feel differently about the need for armed vigilantes. Don’t be so quick to judge.

            • George Michalopulos says

              P.S. most people in Latin America are extremely light-complected. Their majority stock is Celt-Iberian (with Visigothic/Germanic elements) whereas ours is Germano-Celtic.

              I love Latin culture but don’t want its dysfunctions foisted on us, we have our own problems.

      • Francis Frost says

        Dear Mr. Michaelopulos:

        Your accusation of Russophobia is a chimera! I grew up in a Russian- American family. We spoke the Russian language at home and still do. I was a part of the OCA before it was the OCA. I learned the liturgy in Slavonic before I learned it in English. When Bishop Basil approved the occasional Slavonic Liturgies for the Russian immigrants at our St. George Cathedral in Wichita, I sang those services. You seem to have forgotten that when you and your partner, who cannot be named requested a Slavonic cantor in Tulsa it was me they called !!!

        I grew up among the Russian immigrant community. As a teenager in the 70’s I was occasionally promoted from the choir to be a temporary sub-deacon when Vladyka John came with the Tikhvin icon to visit Kansas City. The other sub-deacon was Vladyka’s grandson, Alex Garklavs who drove the car, since the icon was too big to carry on the airplane. What a joy it was to sing the Akathist while Vladyka directed secretly behind the book with his index finger! I was also serving when Vladyka received the first Episcopalian converts to Orthodoxy and founded St Theodore of Tarsus parish. Vladyka’s son, Father Sergei Graklavs was the last Orthodox priest to visit our Oma Vera before she died at age 98.

        Vladyk’a grandson Alex is that same Father Alexander Garklavs whom you accused of “grandstanding” in Moscow when the holy Tikhvin Icon was returned to Russia, and whom you frequently referred to as “the Syossett apparatchik”

        Do you, Mr, Michaelopulos have any conception of what the Garklavs family did to preserve that sacred Icon or the generations of service they have rendered to the church? What shameless and insulting buffoonery!! The only response I can think of is “zlochestiviy prokhatiy smerkach!” You can ask your Russophile friends what that means. You know, it is precisely because my Byelorussian babushki taught me to stand up to ignorant bullies, that I bother responding to your endless stream of nonsense.

        As to the Tsarnaev brothers: First you should be aware that welfare benefits to immigrants were outlawed by the Clinton welfare reform package in the mid 1990’s. Any immigrants, including those seeking asylum, must have a local sponsor who personally or corporately agrees to provide all financial support for that immigrant until he or she is able to support him / herself.

        Second, I simply pointed out that there are numerous unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions about the Tsarnaev family that raise significant concerns. It has been publically acknowledged that the Russian security apparatus had Tamelane Tsarnaev on its radar since 2010. Yet in 2011, Tamerlane Tsarnaev travelled via Moscow to Dagestan in, the heart of the Russian jihadist movement, spent 6 months in company with other jihadists, and then returned to the U.S and did so without a peep from the FSB. Either the Russian security forces are entirely ineffective, or they were hiding information from the U.S authorities. Neither scenario is very re-assuring. Makhachkala is as far from the Sochi Olympic venues as we in Oklahoma City are from Branson, Missouri. Never mind that the jihadists are openly operating in Kabardo-Balkaria, which is less than 50 miles from Sochi.

        Another anomaly is that the Tsarnaevs were granted asylum during the Chechen war despite the fact that they never resided in Chechnya; but rather lived in Kazakhstan, where the Chechen population had been deported during Stalin’s rule. The bomber’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev , was not a dissident but the Soviet equivalent of a federal prosecuting attorney! When Anzor Tsarnaev could not achieve in the U.S the kind of success he had in in the Soviet Union, he returned to Russia. His wife fled Massachusetts after being arrested for shoplifting. A warrant for her arrest is still in force, which is why she changed her mind about returning to Boston after the bombing.

        It has been reported that Tamerlaner Tsarnaev and his mother were converted to Muslim observance by “Misha”.,a Russo-Armenian convert to Islam. In Dagestan Tamerlane Tsarnaev corresponded with and probably met William Plotnikov a Russian émigré and Canadian citizen who also converted to Islam. Plotnikov’s father is now a Jehovah’s Witness. The bomb-maker behind the Moscow subway suicide bombers and the Moscow Petersburg express train bombing was also an ethnic Russian convert to Islam. Perhaps we might want to ask why so many young Russians who decide to embrace religion choose anything but the ROC? The Levada Center (Russia’s version of the Gallup poll) has done multiple surveys over the past 4 years showing at best a 2% participation in the Russian Orthodox Church, a quarter century after the end of communism. Why?

        The story of the Tsarnaev brothers is set in a background of muddied history, violence, jihadists, informants and spies. Their mother has repeatedly declared: “they were set up”. That is entirely plausible. The question is set up by whom and for what reasons.

        As for the Chechen people and their cruelty, they had good teachers. Stalin deported the entire Chechen population to Kazakhstan, where 40% of their population froze or starved to death. When Putin decided on the re-conquest of Chechnya in 1999, he bombed Grozny to the ground with 50,000 dead including most of the remaining ethnic Russians. The second Chechen war left 100,000 dead out of an entire population of just 1 million. It is true that the Chechen jihadists retaliated with the spate of suicide bombings in Moscow subway on trains and airlines – none of which was prevented by the FSB! We might also recall that the jihadist movement had it roots in the Muslim “Confederacy of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus” the council of paramilitary groups used as proxy armies during the three invasions of Georgia in which the Georgian Orthodox people were targeted because they were Christians!

        Again I recommend Oliver Bulloughs histories: “Let Our Fame Be
        Great” and “ The Last Man in Russia”.

        It is not “Russophobia” to ask probing questions any more than it is “Homophobia” to question the re-definition of marriage. The fact that you embrace the rhetorical demonology of the far left says more about you than all your commentaries together.

        Francis Frost

        • George Michalopulos says

          A lot to chew on. Regarding the Garklavs family and their preservation of the Tikhvin Icon –wonderful! They have their reward. Surely though you cannot suppose because the patriarch was righteous than all his posterity will remain above reproach until the end of time. What a doctrine! One that flies in the face of what is written in the Old Testament about the unrighteousness of Samuel’s sons.

          As for Fr Alex himself, it is in the public record that he worked behind the scenes to sandbag Metropolitan Jonah. For his efforts he was actually fired by the entire Synod of the OCA. (Curiously he was allowed to remain in Syosset without portfolio while drawing close to $140K but that’s another story. And a curious one indeed, I might add.)

          As for the wonderfulness of the charming Tsarnaev family or whatever nationalities are in their genetic woodpile I care not a whit. The “cruelty” which they supposedly “learned” from Marshall Stalin is astounding to me. Did Marshall Stalin live before Alexander Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tolstoy all of whom regularly commented on the savagery of the Chechens?

          Regardless, it is neither here nor there: why did the innocents of Boston have to bear the brunt of their supposed revenge? My mother’s people were forcibly removed from Asia Minor in far greater numbers but none of their descendants have blown up an American marathon. My stepmother is of Armenian descent and outside of a niece and nephew, she has no living relatives, none, nada, zilch. Her nephew has no desire nor inclination to exact revenge.

          As for “ethnic Russians” who have converted to Islam and may have perpetrated the Moscow subway bombings? so what? If anything you strengthen the case for either the abolition of Islam or the deportation of converts to Islam. At any rate, it seems that Islam is the crucial factor here.

          Again, I ask: why import more non-Christians to Christian lands?

        • George Michalopulos says

          I forgot to add: your assertion that welfare is “outlawed to immigrants” makes me wonder if we reside on the same planet. You may or may not know it, but I am in the health care field. I regularly (every hour of every day) see immigrants of all types –some with no facility in English–whip out a Medicaid card to pay for their prescriptions. I’ve also been in emergency rooms and had to wait in line behind non-Americans.

    • Ladder of Divine Ascent says

      “As for Syria, the day after Mr. Kerry left, the Journal reported that advanced Russian S-300 antiaircraft missiles were headed to Syria.Islamist terror is a genuine threat that will continue to take Russian and American lives unless it is met with a strong response. But having a shared enemy does not mean having shared values. Respect for human life and individual rights are the most potent weapons the civilized world possesses and where any discussion of common ground must begin. The Putin regime’s dubious record on counterterrorism and its continued support of terror sponsors Iran and Syria mean only one thing: common ground zero.”

      Well, we can’t expect Russia to just roll over and let Obama overthrow more moderate secular regimes (Western allied or relatively neutral, even Libya had become a good little puppet for us) with “moderates” like the Syrian commander who cut out the heart of a loyalist and ate it to chants of Allah Akbar while threatening more genocide can we? Obama has been bringing Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood to power throughtout the region, in the name of spreading “democracy,” right out of his Rules for Radicals handbook. I’d say he’s not acting in the interests of the America or the “West,” and investigating Benghazi would probably reveal that (as if giving Muslims free Obamacare healthcare because they’re Muslims isn’t obvious enough), which is why I think all these other scandals are being leaked to distract from.

      Meanwhile, “immigrant-dominated areas” in Sweden are burning for a 5th night after police shot another machete wielding moderate “resident”:

      http://www.france24.com/en/20130523-cars-ablaze-stockholm-braces-fifth-night-riots

      In America we also see the Left’s refusal to see “the religion of peace”:

      http://www.americanthinker.com/cartoons/2013/04/msm_epic_fail.html

      For American domestic affairs, we need to turn to Russian TV to learn about what’s happening to a farmer in Indiana in our own back yard:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8hoyO72NOg

      • Francis Frost says

        Dear Ladder:

        First you might actually read the news. The Obama administration has provided zero military support to the revolutionaries/ regime opponents / jihadists (pick your favorite term) in Syria. None Nada Nichevo. Secondly, Putin is stoking the conflagration for his own purposes.

        The world is awash in crude oil and the price of natural gas has collapsed. They are now building on average a new oil storage tank every month at the oil terminal in Cushing Oklahoma to handle the backlog of oil. The high price of gasoline in the US is entirely due to lack of refining capacity not any scarcity of crude oil. If it were not for the endless crises in the Middle East, the price of oil would collapse to $50 a barrel and Putin would have no way to balance his budget.

        The Obama administration is hardly supporting or leading the support for regime change in the Syria or the Middle East as a whole. They are at most reluctant followers to others.

        The tragedy for all the victims of violence in the Middle East is that the region has often served as a site for proxy wars – just as Syria is now a proxy war between the Sunnis of the Arabian peninsula and the Shias of Iran and Lebanon. And yes, it is usually the Christians who take it in the neck!

        Pray for His Holiness Patriarch John, his captive brother Metropolitan Paul and Syriac Archbishop John ! May Almighty God protect them until they are free!!!!

        • George Michalopulos says

          Mr Frost, “reading the news” is exactly the problem. The idea that the US is not providing any materiel to the Syrian rebels is laughable on its face. The brutal assassination of Amb Christopher Stephens is connected to his facilitating arms to the Syrian rebels.

          Putin is not “stoking” the conflagration in Syria, but merely protecting the last man who stands between the indigenous Christians and genocide. Yes, I realize he also has an agreement for the naval base in Tarsus as well. So?

          I see that we agree about how the Christians “take in the neck.” You are 100% correct. As much as I hate to say it, if Bashar Assad goes, then the Christians will be exterminated forthwith. That’s an unalterable fact

          And you are correct about the lack of refining capacity and the fact that we are awash in crude oil. We have not built a refinery in the US in almost 30 years. As to why, I can only imagine.

        • George Michalopulos says

          Mr Frost, obviously Sen McCain did not get the memo given his recent “secret” trip to Syria over the Memorial Day holiday. Perhaps you should reconsider whether we should listen to the anti-Putin Neocons who desperately want to get us into a shooting war with Russia. I’d say we sit this one out.

  7. Francis Frost says

    Dear Mr. Michaelopulos:

    You ought to remember that the “nativist” arguments were once used by the KKK and other “nativist” groups to attack our own Orthodox ancestors – the Russian-Americans, Greek-Americans and Arab-Aemricans who built our parishes in this country. You might just ask someone about the history of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary OCA parish in Desloge Missouri to see how an immigrant community was destroyed by the KKK and resurrected decades later.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Mr Frost, I do remember my grandfather’s stories. But my grandfather, and every Syrian, Italian, Pole, German, Irishman, etc, were Christians who came from Christian civilizations and assimilated into the American nation. Enthusiastically so. There was no “Press ‘1’ for English, ‘2’ for Spanish…” Indeed, they would have recoiled in horror to the entire concept of multiculturalism.

      • Pere LaChaise says

        One thing you should know about the North Caucasus, Mr. Michalopoulos – North Caucasians were not always Muslim, and not until very late in their unhappy history of victimhood at the hands of Tsarist power did they become Muslim. In fact, many had been nominally Christian up until the Tsar’s armies attacked and decimated them in the Tsar’s quest for regional dominance.
        The ugly, racist statements you make about Caucasians are precisely those made by Russian supremacists who engage a generational program of genocide against them.
        Since when does being Orthodox in America equate to embrace of the ugliest prejudices of the least enlightened of Eastern Europe’s thugs and war-mongers? I will not tolerate slurs against any people as a whole on such basis.

        • George Michalopulos says

          Pere, you will notice that I did not heap obloquy on “North Caucasians,” but upon “Chechens.” By this clever ruse you try to elide my point. Also, the Chechens were never Christians but always Muslim.

          As for the czarist policies driving the other northern Caucasians into the embrace of Islam, I ask what of it? Did not Byzantine policies drive the Copts to Monophysitism and the Levantines to the Maronite branch of Uniatism?

          That’s unremarkable.

          • Correction: Chechens were Orthodox Christian; however, the tribes converted to Islam during the 17th-19th centuries.

            • George Michalopulos says

              If that’s true, then I stand corrected. However I would like to see some confirmation from another source. When I visited Istanbul in 2000, we went on guided tours throughout our stay. One of the places we visited was Topkapi Palace. There we were told that the sentries which stood guard were invariably Chechens. If so, that would place them as Muslims from at least the 16th century on. The reason the Sultans craved them was because of their ferocity in battle. That reputation however was not enough if it was not coupled with a equally ferocious devotion to Islam. Common sense tells me that forced converts and/or nominal converts would not have been as loyal.

              • Pere LaChaise says

                No, it doesn’t make them necessarily Muslim as Christians were typically impressed into the Janissaries (from Tur. yeni sarı:”new army”). Your anecdote is neither here nor there, inadequate as argument to the savagery of Vainakh people. Anyone making such condemnations is rightly termed a bigot; you must be OK with that.
                But the historical fact remains that the Russian experience drove North Caucasians away from Orthodoxy to Islam. To call that insignificant exemplifies your own insensitivity to facts and historical process. By ecclesial terms, the apostasy of entire peoples deserves serious consideration. No faith can afford lack of self-criticism. But your bully pulpit is all about blaming ‘those other people’ so what should I expect.

                • George Michalopulos says

                  OK, so how come the Christian minorities of the former Russian Empire aren’t going around blowing up schoolhouses in Beslan?

                • George Michalopulos says

                  The Janissaries were as you say, largely Christian boys who had been forcibly impressed into the Turkish army and forcibly converted to Islam. They were a fine fighting force. However because of their nominal conversion, they were not the bodyguard of the Sultan. The Chechens were.

                  • Carl Kraeff says

                    I believe that would be after the dissolution of the Janissaries in 1826, when “Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye (Muhammed’s Victorious Army) was established by Mahmud II to guard the Sultan and replace the Janissaries.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auspicious_Incident

                    Also please note that the formally Christian boys were brought up as Muslims and their conversion was not seen as nominal by neither the Turks or the Rum.

                • I believe the north Caucuses were Muslim before Russia was any sort of power in the region. The Golden Horde (Mongols) were Muslim soon after destroying Kiev and the various petty kingdoms of Rus as was the Mongol Ilkhanate in Persia (after having been Nestorian or animist).

                  It would be perhaps more to the point to say that the experience of Russian and Russian Orthodoxy by these peoples did nothing to draw them to Orthodoxy. The Georgians fared little better than the non-Orthodox in the Caucuses.

                  It should also be noted that the while terrorism in the form of Beslan or the recent murder in the UK are terrible, the Western way of instilling terror (‘shock & awe’, and the use of drones) usually involves strikes that are in effect often just as indiscriminate in their killing of civilians. A large proportion of drone strikes kill civilians. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq also killed large numbers of civilians, both directly and indirectly. It makes little sense to argue that the enlightened civilian deaths attributed to us were unplanned when the total number of civilian deaths attributed to us is far, far higher than those committed explicitly on our civilians for the sake of jihadi terror.

                  • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD says

                    123, you have been woefully misinformed about the “large number of civilians, both directly and indirectly”, that you claim the U.S. armed forces have killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The latter, in which I served as an Army chaplain for almost a quarter of a century, do not target noncombatants (the correct term, by the way, not “civilians”–which could denote non-military terrorists and others bearing arms as hostile forces). So your use of “directly” is especially egregious and offensive, particularly on the day after Memorial Day. I also suspect that the source(s) of “the total number of civilian deaths attributed to us” is (are) dubious and either Islamist or ideologically skewed to the extreme political left. Would you care to name it (them)?

                    • Nate Trost says

                      Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD, you are distorting the statement he actually made.

                      He stated:

                      Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq also killed large numbers of civilians, both directly and indirectly

                      You replied:

                      “large number of civilians, both directly and indirectly”, that you claim the U.S. armed forces have killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

                      This is adding an inappropriate level of specificity to his charges. If you want to get a sense of the post-invasion bodycount in Iraq, perhaps we should use the figures released by the DoD following FoIA requests. Unless you are prepared to charge USCENTCOM with being an extremely politically leftist Islamist organization, I think those numbers will suffice for the purposes of this discussion.

                      That number is 63,185 civilians killed from the beginning of 2004 through August of 2008. This does not, of course include the actual invasion and subsequent fallout of 2003.

                      So no, the US military didn’t shoot 63,185 civilians (although it did shoot some percentage of them, there were more than a few brutal checkpoint accidents for example), but that wasn’t the statement he made, and your outrage from affronted honor is misplaced. Our invasion of Iraq certainly immerses our hands as a nation with culpability for those deaths.

                      As for the drone strikes, which are another issue entirely, yes, the US (albeit the CIA, not the military) has written off somewhere in the neighborhood of 168-197 dead children in Pakistan alone as collateral damage. We live in a globally networked world and it’s very difficult to blow people up with several hundred drone strikes and be able to sweep the all the casualty figures under the rug. It’s also awfully convenient be able to automatically designate any military-aged male who happens to be killed by a drone strike a combatant, by virtue of having been killed by a drone strike. If you want to argue those children are the price to be paid to help ensure US national security, fine. But don’t stick your head in the sand and try to pretend those numbers don’t exist.

                    • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD says

                      Nice try, Mr. Trost, but I’m not falling for such sophistry. Nor do I intend to enter a bidding war with you over casualties, especially if the sources you cite for your figures range from a Washington Post news “analysis” to a dubious British “journalistic” organization.

                      The sleight-of-hand that I see you trying to foist on this message board is betrayed by your comment re the 63,185 civilian deaths, “Our invasion of Iraq certainly immerses our hands as a nation [italics yours] with culpability for those deaths.” Not so fast! The vast majority of noncombatant (can we at least get the term right?) deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted from internecine violence among various indigenous Islamic factions and Al-Qaeda, as well as direct targeting of noncombatants by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. For you to lay those casualties at the feet of the U.S. armed forces and to assign “culpability” for them to our entire “nation”–as if we willed those casualties, much less inflicted them–is a sophistic and outrageous abuse of the meaning of the concept of “cause.”

                      My objections to the anonymous “123’s” initial post centered on, first, his or her use of “directly” (as in directly targeted, intended, or caused), and, second, 123’s presumptuous–and offensive–reference to “Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq” as the cause of the “civilian deaths” to which he or she alludes. Your reply fails to provide any objective evidence that the U.S. did, indeed, directly cause “civilian” deaths and merely echoes 123’s tendentious assignment of blame to the U.S. for the unjustifiable and immoral actions of others merely because those actions followed the initial U.S. intervention. Re the latter, the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc springs to mind.

                      Beyond the particulars of the case, however, I would like to know why you appear, at least, determined to find fault with the U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq post-9/11.

                    • Nate Trost says

                      Once again you infer slights against the US military that have not been made. You want to handwave away a figure that came from the DoD because I linked to a summary in a media outlet that does not meet with your political ideological approval. One can only presume if someone printed the Gospel of John in the NYT you would immediately leave the Christian faith. You want to accuse me of sophistry and vilifying the US military when you are yourself, in essence, calling the Pentagon a bunch of liars.

                      I am of the belief that the US military functioned as best it could in Iraq given the constraints and limitations put upon it by its civilian leadership. However, that leadership was the democratically elected government of the United States. The people We The People elected chose to invade Iraq. Are you seriously going to argue to me that the post-invasion went well and the country didn’t devolve into chaos? You want to put all the blood on the hands of sectarian factions, terrorists and jihadists without letting any of it fall on the people who made the conditions for that violence occur in the first place. That would be us.

                      If you lived in a major metropolitan city, and the mayor fired the entire police force and the city devolved into violence and looting, chaos that resulted in the deaths of some of your parishoners, you are, of course, going to blame the perpetrators. But are you seriously going to argue against anyone who desires to hold the major accountable for the results of his actions?

                      SecDef underscoped the manpower. With Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2, Paul Bremer disbanded the entire Iraqi army. Stacks of books have been written on the mistakes that were made that cost American and Iraqi lives in large numbers. Of course the consequences of this were all stated at the time, but it resulted in the likes of Frum reading those of us in the paleocon wing out of the conservative movement. That he was later branded an apostate gave me no small amount of amusement.

                    • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD says

                      [Reposting and expanding a previous post that seems to have vanished into the ether.]

                      Mr. Trost, your comment–“You want to put all the blood on the hands of sectarian factions, terrorists and jihadists without letting any of it fall on the people who made the conditions for that violence occur in the first place. That would be us.”–is ludicrous on its face. Perhaps you missed my caveat: “The vast majority of noncombatant (can we at least get the term right?) deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted from internecine violence among various indigenous Islamic factions and Al-Qaeda, as well as direct targeting of noncombatants by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.” My elementary school teachers of arithmetic assured me that “vast majority” does not equal “all.”

                      But the key issue remains 123’s use of “directly” and your obfuscation of that issue. What part of “directly”–as opposed to “indirectly”–do you not understand? The distinction is crucial to the task of assigning, with intellectual credibility, moral responsibility for casualties in war and, in our own era, counter-terrorism. Your peculiar version of a “domino theory” of cause and effect beginning with certain policy and strategic decisions in the White House tends to absolve the immediate perpetrators of violence against noncombatants as targets of opportunity (which perpetrators are human agents with free will and thus responsible for the atrocities that they choose to commit directly) and shift much of the blame for those actions to U.S. (and Coalition) leaders who intended nothing of the sort and, indeed, took great risks to the safety and security of our own armed forces to target terrorists and other hostile combatants alone, while minimizing collateral casualties among noncombatants.

                      On a more personal note, I served in-country as an Orthodox military chaplain both before and during the “surge” in Iraq and periodically in Afghanistan for five years (2005 – 2010). My experiences and observations on the ground (and in the air, I might add), though obviously anecdotal and not statistically significant, validated for me the thrust of the argument that I advanced in my co-authored book, The Virtue of War: Reclaiming the Classic Christian Traditions East and West (2004), that the U.S. has, on the whole in both Iraq and Afghanistan, met the two primary criteria for jus in bello (that is, the just conduct of war).

                    • Nate Trost says

                      What I find most disconcerting is your apparent redefinition of “directly” to mean “intentionally”. The two words can not be used interchangeably, yet you seem to want to accuse 123, and myself of attributing intention to direct civilian casualties when we have made no such accusation. And you have the audacity to accuse me of obfuscation!

                      I have no disagreement with you over the assertion that the US military made minimizing civilian casualties a priority, and certainly agree that it would be absurd to suggest that the military intentionally targeted civilians as a policy at any juncture. But even carefully conducted wars kill civilians, it’s preposterous to suggest otherwise. Good intentions do not make the impossible possible. Good intentions do not prevent errant artillery shells from exploding, bullets from over-penetrating or air strikes from being mistargeted.

                      Those direct casualties are primarily a result of actual invasion than post-invasion, even with messy post-invasion actions like Fallujah, the direct versus non-direct breakdown of those 63,185 dead has the latter far far in the majority. However, for example, it gets a lot harder to forgive the accidental “direct” death of say, your uncle in the process of being “liberated” when the invasion results in the country devolving into bloody chaos and you subsequently lose a couple cousins “indirectly” in the ensuing bloodbath. You can proclaim good intentions forever, but when the outcome is a pile of bodies good luck with the hearts and minds and democracy! whisky! sexy! All told, it actually was a very impressive performance by the coalition forces, all things considered. But considering the excrement-show that followed, even the deaths from that kind of performance gets harder to forgive.

                      The vast majority of noncombatant (can we at least get the term right?)

                      This is an abuse of a broader technical term to try and sanitize the visceral realities. Civilians not engaged in direct hostilities are a subgroup of people accorded noncombatant protections. The problem, in this instance, is insisting on using noncombatant obscures the fact that almost all of the noncombatant casualties are civilians. And it makes it all too easy to suggest that even if they weren’t bad guys with guns, they were still up to No Good and thus Had It Coming. As opposed to being a 3 year old who got her head blown off by shrapnel from a VBIED because we invaded with a post invasion plan written by the underpants gnomes. You took offense because you thought I was slighting the honor and intentions of the the armed forces? I’m offended that as a priest you engage in insisting on a dehumanizing use of language in an attempt to whitewash an ugly reality. For shame, sir.

                      If Mexico was conducting a drone warfare campaign against drug cartel figures and operations in Texas and New Mexico, and in the process killed over a thousand American civillians, one hundred of them children, you wouldn’t be referring to them in your prayers of remembrance as noncombatants.

                    • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD says

                      “Audacity”? “Shame”? Mr. Trost, I learned long ago that, when an interlocutor resorts to shrill accusations or ad hominem attacks, the discussion becomes pointless. Your argument, it appears, is with concepts and definitions common in moral philosophy and contemporary U.S. military practice: moral agency, targeting, direct vs. indirect, the principle of double effect, noncombatant vs. civilian, inter alia. Passion is no substitute for informed dialogue.

            • lexcaritas says

              Antonia, do you know why the Chechens converted? A matter of free choice . . . or . . . just wondering as I do not know and you may.

              lxc

              • George Michalopulos says

                I’m beginning to doubt Antonia’s basic premise. Maybe certain Chechen clans or sub-tribes may have been Orthodox Christian but I’m having a hard time documenting this.

                Even if for the sake of argument we accept that the formerly Orthodox Chechens converted to Islam because they didn’t like the Tsar, we can say that as a nation they put off Christ, like the Albanians of Kosovo, the Slavs of Bosnia, or the Chams of northern Greece. Their convenient embrace of Islam has put them in a civilizational disadvantage given their lack of cultural attainment. This is as opposed to Turks, Arabs, and Persians who embraced Islam largely as a matter of conviction: their cultural attainments are sincere and plain to see.

                The Copts, the Syrian Nestorians, the Lebanese Maronites, still remained within the Christian fold and have suffered for it over the centuries. So, no, I’m still not impressed with the Chechens.

            • Antonia, what makes you think that way? It is well known that Chechen tribes begin to covert to Islam around VII Century from Paganism. Even though some Georgian Kings ( like Teimuraz of Cachetia ) clamed that they ” converted” some Chechens to Christianity in the middle of 17th Century, in fact, they never been Christians.

            • The Ingushs are closely related to the Chechens but they never converted to Islam en masse. In fact, I think a majority of those killed at Beslan were ethnically Ingush.

  8. I think I should point out that the man in the picture is British born and was raised in what is described by those who know the family as a strict Christian home. He finished high school and graduated from university, but at some point evidently got into drugs and street robberies and was converted to Islam out of that milieu. I say this not to plead for understanding for his act, which is inexcusable and horrifying, but to supply some context. His family was about as assimilated into UK society as any Nigerian immigrant family could be – model citizens, in fact. They were not poor, uneducated, unassimilated council housing dwellers like those presently rioting in Sweden . So, this is not just about mass immigration, George (in regard to which – we need to be aware that capitalist societies have historically needed repeated swells of immigrants to do menial jobs and artificially stimulate the bottom end of the consumer market which supplies mass profits to publicly listed companies (i.e. shareholders). If we are not going to have mass immigration, then we need to be prepared to do our own dirty work and possibly experience a permanent decline in our standard of living. Are we prepared to wear those costs?) .

    It is, however, all about Islamo-Fascism, which is a relatively recent phenomenon as an intellectual expression of Islam (look up Maududi & Qutb) but, I fear, represents the long standing de facto mindset of the traditional Muslim, including the despicable ingrates who sit in Boston or Bolton or Malmo or Paris drawing unemployment benefit and occupying public housing, who reject everything about the West and in their invincible ignorance believe their own culture to be superior to ours even while they leech off us.

    That Islamo-Fascism appeals to disturbed and rebellious young men who otherwise have reaped all the benefits of Western society is an aspect of the problem that we are yet to come to grips with. I suspect we wont wake up to the full dimensions of this until they are rioting down our high streets and main streets with heads on the ends of pikes. Make no mistake, they intend to dominate the world and impose Sharia law on us all and so far we show no signs of taking them seriously (cf David Cameron’s pathetic performance yesterday: “This is not about Islam”! ) and responding appropriately. God give us strength (and a modern day Winston Churchill)!

    • George Michalopulos says

      Excellent point, but one that indirectly buttresses my thesis. OK, he was born a Christian and became “radicalized” by Islam. OK, under what circumstances did he become radicalized? Did he read a book? No, he came into contact with alienated Muslim “youths” who live on the public dole and listen to hatred being spewed in their mosques. Being somewhat of a loser himself, he took to their preaching.

      Recently, Putin put a ban on more mosques being built in Moscow. It seems that whenever Muslims take over a neighborhood they start running things their way. Bullying ordinary people and accosting women who are “scantily clad” has become more apparent. Russians who fortunately have no cultural guilt imposed on them by hostile academic and entertainment elites aren’t pushovers however.

      If things don’t start cooling down real soon, and if Muslims keep on not assimilating, the time will come for mass deportations. Failing that, look for pogroms. It’s inevitable.

      • Pere LaChaise says

        Mr. Michalopoulos, you should watch the film “Children of Men” based on the PD James novel, and especially listen to Slavoy Zhizhek’s commentary on its symbolism – describing a society that has run out of creativity and deals with the resultant social chaos by creating more of the same. A world without hope, in which apparently you already live.
        Mass deportations are the last resort of failed regimes and societies in wholesale collapse, or the final solution (just short of genocide) of intolerant tyranny. As a Greek, I can’t imagine you could conscience using the term. But in a parallel process, Zionists have taken to mimicking some of the racist genocidal policies of the killers of their grandparents.
        More and more, your commentary shows a man who has no faith in God, no trust in humanity and instead has fallen into despair and recrimination. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

        • Fr. George Washburn says

          Hello friends:

          I find myself in partial agreement with this comment. George and certain others here take all too many of their unspoken assumptions, viewpoints, paradigms of thought …and fear, or at least pessimisn … from disaffected American evangelical Protestant political conservatism. Tough not to do in a media-culture awash in social tides with which our traditional morality does not agree, and where that sort of reaction prevails in so many quarters. Very tough to come up with a truly Orthodox engagement with these hidden thought forms and the open tides of change; I don’t think George & Co. have succeeded, although they deserve our respect and love for trying and getting some stuff right (but not for getting so very much Right, if you know what I mean). And also deserve patient critique and dialogue!

          love,

          Fr. George

        • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD says

          I am saddened that an anonymous poster here (who has chosen as his pseudonym the confessor of King Louis XIV of France!) would declare, on the one hand, “I will not tolerate slurs against any people as a whole on such basis,” while resorting to two of the most derogatory epithets (“racist” and “bigot”) in the arsenal of the political left to dismiss our website’s host. But even that pales before the shocking and utterly unacceptable statement of “Pere Lachaise” above: “Zionists have taken to mimicking some of the racist genocidal policies of the killers of their grandparents.”

          “Pere” or “Father” or whoever you are: Leo Strauss long ago coined the phrase reductio ad Hitlerum to describe hasty or facile comparisons to the Third Reich intended to discredit one’s opponent in an argument. Your attempt to create a moral equivalence between the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust and whoever the “Zionists” are in your mind goes beyond even that Straussian dictum. It is little more than an updated Palestinian-centric version of the ancient “blood libel” against Jews. As such it has no place here or in polite conversation anywhere.

          • George Michalopulos says

            Thank you for coming to my defense Fr. I’ve long learned that a Conservative knows he’s won the argument when the Liberal screams “racist!” at him.

          • An interesting variation of the Godwin’s Law.

            • Archpriest Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD says

              Lola, you’ve put the cart before the horse. Strauss’s dictum preceded Godwin’s by some forty years.

      • nit picker says

        For those who don’t know, Astoria N.Y. was a predominantly Greek ethnic community in Queens, NY. As years have passed, that community has shrunk and other ethnicities have moved in. While visiting with friends there I couldn’t help but notice (this happened about 20 years ago, btw) that directly across the street from St. Catherine’s Greek Orthodox Church and parochial school, the growing Arab/Muslim community in the area had established a mosque in a house it had purchased. Now are you going to tell me that in all of Astoria, in all of Queens, that they could not find ANY OTHER location to establish their mosque? They JUST HAD to establish it directly across the street from a primary school which is also Orthodox Christian. Are you going to tell me that it was not intentional? Are you going to try to convince me that there is no desire or intent to try to convert our young people? Whoever wants to believe that, I also have some prime swamp land for sale…cheap.

        • Michael Bauman says

          Let us not forget the proposed “cultural center” near Ground Zero.

        • Rebecca Matović says

          Real Estate in NYC is always a complicated matter. Far more likely that community came by that house through friends or connections rather than by design.

          There are several mosques in Astoria. Most aren’t near churches.

          My kids went to school at St. Catherine’s . For many years, I didn’t even notice the mosque — it’s that inconspicuous I never heard anyone talking about any issues between that community and the church.

          Like all the other mosques in the area, it’s a very self- contained, ethnically-oriiented place that shows no interest in doing anything other than minding their own business.

          It’s a cheap shot to notice random things and make up stories about them when you have no real knowledge

    • nit picker says

      Basil wrote:

      Islamo-Fascism appeals to disturbed and rebellious young men who otherwise have reaped all the benefits of Western society is an aspect of the problem that we are yet to come to grips with. I suspect we wont wake up to the full dimensions of this until they are rioting down our high streets and main streets with heads on the ends of pikes.

      Sounds vaguely familiar…where have I seen such horrors before….oh yeah!!! The Turks!! The 400 years of Turkish oppression and slavery that Greeks endured that historians are demanding being removed from the history curriculum of Greece in the name of multiculturalism and political correctness (vomit) because in “reality” the Turks and the Greeks where great friends. On that note, just “what if” – if someone where to suggest that the Nazi’s were showing their great benefaction for Jewish people by locking them up into concentration camps and killing them, I wonder what the reaction would be. Just curious.

      The other possible back lash is that atheists will use this as a venue to push their cause to ban the practice of ALL religion in the name of “national security”. Anyone that professes any faith or belief in a deity will be denied employment, incarcerated. There will be massive ghetto prisons where all individuals who profess faiths will be incarcerated. Think it couldn’t happen? Remember the ghettos of WWII created by the Nazi’s?

      • nit picker says

        Saunca,

        My issue concerning atheists is not about whether they are “good” or “bad” or whether there is salvation for them or not. My concern is how some individuals who call themselves atheists blame religion and political tension between people who practice religion as the source of all evil rather than putting the blame where it belongs: on our actions not on our belief systems. The over simplified response in the mind of some individuals is to do away with all religion. You can encounter this oversimplified logic in many young people today who say “I am atheist because religion causes conflict,” or “because there is suffering in the world and God doesn’t make everything perfect…” (can’t even begin to tell you how often I have heard the last one recently…it’s very disturbing trend). Both of these are faulty and circular arguments, most importantly, they are arguments of convenience and contrivance. I am concerned that this thinking will increasingly enter the political sphere (if it hasn’t already) under the guise of “tolerance” and political correctness, resulting in the government sponsored abolishment of the freedom to practice religion all in the name of “public safety” when it really has nothing to do with public safety but the desire of atheists to push their own agenda and rid the world of everything that shows that their thinking is foolishness.

        • nit picker says

          Hello Saunca,

          Christ is Risen!

          Mr. Bauman addressed the Orthodox theological issues concerning the Pope’s statement on atheists in his comment very concisely. No reason to re-invent the wheel. Cheers.

        • Michael Bauman says

          Saunca I don’t understand any Orthodox lay attention to what the Pope says. He’s not our leader, we are not in Communion. We need to listen to our own bishops. We barely do that.

          • lexcaritas says

            Dear to Christ, Michael,
            I believe you misconstrue what Papa Francesco, as a successor to the Apostles and a servant of those servants of God who pastor over 1.2 billoon Christians—all good reasons, by the way, to heed what he says and pray that it becomes more and more Orthodox.
            He did not say anything about “universal salvation”—not, at least, in the account that Saunca has brought to our attention. He spoke of universal “redemption,” not universal “salvation.” He said. “The Lord has REDEEEMD all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!”—yes, he added, even atheists.
            Redemption by the blood of Christ—by reason of His Incarnation, His death, resurrection and ascension is entirely Orthodox and does NOT imply universal salvation. Obviously, the human heart and will has its part to play in the acceptance of that redemption to make it effective personally: in synergy—through faith, and gratitude and joyful obedience—in making the redemption effective—each one working out his own salvation in fear and trembling.
            We know that n one comes to the Father but by Christ but not all who come come consciously. Cf. Matthew 25:31-39 “When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of Hs glory: 32 And before Him shall be gathered ALL NATIONS: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And He shall set the SHEEP ON HIS RIGHT HAND, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them ON HIS RIGHT HAND, ‘Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed Me: I was sick, and ye visited Me: I was in prison, and ye came unto Me. ‘ 37 Then shall the RIGHTEOUS answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we Thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee?”
            Nowhere in the report Saunca provided does ++Francis suggest that “salvation” is about good works. This is your gloss on his homily. What he said was that the inclination and power to do good, which exists in every man, comes from the fact each of us is made by Christ in His image and after His likeness. ++Francis put it this way: “The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us.”
            I cannot imagine that ++Francis would disagree with you in the least, Michael, when you say: regarding doing good that “such things are effects of the transformation necessary to become human enough to have union with Christ.” He simply appears to be contending that because of the Incarnation every human being has a real (however attenuated) union with Christ waiting to be actualized through the hearing and acceptance of the Gospel—of which many remain ignorant—and, naturally, their entrance into the fullness of the Church and participation in the Mysteries and the whole life in Christ that should ensue therefrom.
            As you know, some are atheists or unbelievers because they have not known Christ or even heard the Gospel. Some there be who have rejected its counterfeit, and not yet come to know the living God in the One Who is His expressed Imaged—and they have not been wrong to reject the counterfeit. It is for us Who have met the Lord and been with Him to show them the True.
            Besides the Scripture you have cited from St. John’s Gospel (and those ++Francis used from St. Mark’s and from Genesis, to be fair to what he was trying to say let’s not forget these as well:
            Acts 10:34-35 St. Peter: “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: 35 But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”
            Acts 17:24-27 St. Paul: “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. 23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. 24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that Hhe is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed any thing, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; 26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 27 That they should seek the LORD, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: 28 For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring.”
            Romans 2:14-15 St. Paul again: “ For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: 15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.”
            Lord Jesus Christ make us one, even as Thou and the Father are One, that the world may believe that He hath sent Thee and thus know Him Who is, that our joy may be full. Vouchsafe, O Lord to unite us in Love and in Truth and confirm and strengthen Thy Church in all Peace that we may give clear witness when we are persecuted from righteousness sake. Purify, O Lord, our hearts and give us tear of repentance so that we may see clearly and reflect Thy glory in the way we love each other and bear one another’s burdens.
            lxc

            • Michael Bauman says

              lexicaritas, I did misconstrue, as I found out myself when I read more of what he actually said. Forgive me but my scars begin to itch when I see stuff that brings up old bad memories. My apologies to one and all.

              His words will be and already have been roundly misconstured by atheists, taken out of context in the manner that Saunca reported and I read without researching further.

              Like everyone suddenly trust into the world’s spot light, he will have to learn to weigh his words very, very carefully for they will be parsed, taken out of context and run with–which I obviously did.

            • George Michalopulos says

              Very well put.

              • Tim R. Mortiss says

                I for one am very grateful for the Roman Catholic Church, even though I have never been a Catholic and won’t be one, and though I believe that it is corrupt in many ways.

                I think of the Orthodox Church as a mighty fir tree. The same tree is at the heart of the Catholic Church, but they have hung it with tinsel and bright gegaws that greatly obscure it. But it is still there, underneath. The Protestants are saplings in the shade, in varying degrees of immaturity and stunted growth.

                The Catholic Church in the end doesn’t apostasize; in that way they are invaluable to the West especially. I believe that Christians are going to need every single institutional resource and support they can find in the trials that are coming. And the Catholic Church in this country still has tens of millions of genuine faithful. The Orthodox remain a drop in the bucket in numbers.

                • Michael Bauman says

                  Tim, we shall all be sifted and in the end the only thing that will matter is our love for our Creator, our Incarnate Lord and our trust of the Holy Spirit.

                  There is at least one Arian on our calendar of saints because he fought against a pagan invasion of his land and when captured in battle refused to deny Christ thus died a martyr. Both the armed opposition to the enemies of Christ and his refusal to deny Christ to save his life are honored.

      • Michael Bauman says

        Sounds as if the new Pope is preaching the heresy of universal salvation. We have no need of the Pope or the Church or anything but a benevolent government to take care of us while we wait out our lives here before we enter into blessedness.

        As any thinking Orthodox knows, salvation is not about morality or good works. At best such things are effects of the transformation necessary to become human enough to have union with Christ.

        Whatever happened to “No man comes to the Father except through me.”. Or “Unless you eat of my Body and drink of my Blood, you have no life in you.”

        This dude is creepy. I pray that Orthodox hyperventilation over him will soon cease.

    • George Michalopulos says

      I forgot to mention, the man in the picture is not “British.” He is the son of African immigrants. He’s no more British than the Queen is Canadian even though she’s the sovereign of that nation.

      In like manner I do not consider American-born criminals like Maj Nidal, the Army psychiatrist who went “all Jihad” on Ft Hood and shot up the place. Immigrants and the offspring of immigrants such as this who come from areas that are not part of Christendom and have no affinity for the Historic American Nation are not “Americans” any more than the Albanians, Pakistanis, Somalis, etc., that reside in Greece are “Greeks.”

      Why can’t America have the same immigration policy that Mexico or Israel has?

      • By that logic, George, you are a Greek and not American!
        The man’s passport, if he had one, would be British.
        “British” is a nationality, not a race.
        Of course, whether he would acknowledge himself to be British is another matter, but still, my point stands. We don’t need to get into “race” to solve this problem, do we? I can’t think of a better way to bring discredit on the anti-Islam argument.

        • George Michalopulos says

          Good point. My point however is that a nation should pick and choose who it lets in based on its needs, not the needs of the potential immigrant. This murderer had “loser” written all over him from the get-go and I dare say his parents didn’t have much brighter prospects.

          We can argue whether British is a nationality or a race/ethnicity, but most nation-states are nothing but extremely large, related, mega-families that are mono-cultural and mono-confessional. Societies that are constructed along these lines are extremely stable and free from violence.

          Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. How would Kenyans like it if 100,000 whites came in and gentrified Nairobi, making it uninhabitable cost-wise for the natives? A crime-in-reverse so to speak, one that terrifies the natives not by its violence but by pricing them out of the market?

          • One of the West says

            “Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. How would Kenyans like it if 100,000 whites came in and gentrified Nairobi, making it uninhabitable cost-wise for the natives? A crime-in-reverse so to speak, one that terrifies the natives not by its violence but by pricing them out of the market?”

            Didn’t something like this happen in Rhodesia some time ago?

            • George Michalopulos says

              Not really. Many of the lands which the Europeans established colonies on were largely empty. Once they became going concerns then Africans migrated there. This is not to excuse colonialism and atrocities perpetrated by some Europeans. I was simply asking this very basic question: what would happen if 50,000+ Europeans or Israelis or Lebanese went to Kinshasha to settle and because of their industry elevated real estate to where natives were priced out of the market.

              What I am describing is gentrification. It’s happening in major metropolitan areas like Washington, DC. (Why I mentioned Lebanese is because they’re dominating many West African nations with their business wizardry.)

        • George Michalopulos says

          Basil, I forgot to mention, this murderer is no more “British” than the man on the moon. Why do I say this? Because he himself said that he butchered Drummer Rigby because men in “our lands” die daily at the hands of the British. An arguable assumption but his own words convict him in that he does not identify with the “British” but with people in “our lands” (wherever they might be).

        • lexcaritas says

          Not exactly, Basil.

          George was not only born here in America and speaks without an accent, more importantly he loves his native land and its history and the people who invested their lives in it even before his parents arrived.

          The man in the picture has an ENTIRELY different view of the Great Britain into which his parents immigrated–it would appear he hates it and its people.

          The two are universes apart.. George is a patriot and a Christian who loves his fellow man. The man who did this deed is filled with hatred, spite and malice and bent on justifying his disordered passions by baptizing them in the name of “God”– who is either profaned by his action if it misportrays”Him” or is Himself revealed as the inverse of goodness and love if “He” is faithfully represented by the actions of his putative adherent.

          lxc

          • George and Lex,

            You both miss my point, admittedly a relatively minor one in this story, which is that nationality is determined by country of birth, not ethnicity nor even loyalty.

  9. The same people on this blog who defend the rights of the Founding Fathers to wage war against British “occupation” of America are the same people who condemn the actions by Muslims to evict the Jews from “Israel.”. Wake up people. Muslims don’t hate us. Give them back their piece of dirt, and this whole mess will be over.

    • Michael Bauman says

      Brigel, I think you need to read some more history and learn more of Islam. You are assuming that jihadists actions are based on a logical premise. Violence such as theirs is never rational. They are not rational. Their actions are based on a fanatical devotion to a false god and a false prophet. All women should be unalterably opposed to Islam as, even in its more benign forms, it is abusive to women and children thus they have no problem killing them in the name of Allah.

      What was it the man said: “We will never stop fighting you.” That is the truth.

      Islam has been spread by the sword throughout its entire history. Although there are differing interpretations of jihad, the most prevelent one throughout the history of Islam has been subjugating the infidels to bring them under the Islamic Ummah (worldwide Islamic ‘state’).

      As Christians are called to preach the Gospel to all the world–so Muslims are called to take over the world for Allah.

      Unfortunately, they have a point that the west is a licentious, greedy, imperialistic force against virtue, it is just what they offer is worse as it subjugates women, enshrines the sexual passions of men as good and is a return to the law which Jesus Christ transcended.

      A man I have met, Dr. George Bebawi, who is quite learned (grew up in Eqypt, speaks Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Coptic and Arabic as well as several other languages, spent extensive time in Coptic monastaries as a young man, pretty much knows the whole Bible by heart as well as the Koran in Arabic, etc, etc.) makes no bones about the fact that he believes Islam to be demonic in origin. Father Zachria Botros, a Coptic priest who preaches the Gospel to Muslims believes much the same thing. He has, I believe, a $6,000,000 bounty on his head. Check out what he says here: http://fatherzakaria.net/

      If the jihadists were smart, which their fanaticism prevents them from being, IMO, they would just put aside the violence and breed us into extinction. The smart ones will continue to use our tradtion of ‘equality under the law’ to work against us. Those who are devoted to Sharia law (as all good Muslims must be) place it as the ultimate law no matter where they live or what legal system the country has. Thus you see the continuing rejection by many Muslims of the civil law based on English common law in England, Canada, Astralia and the U.S. and the call for seprate Sharia courts over which the law of the land has no jurisdiction. To protect what is left of our civil liberties under the tradition of English common law, all of Muslims should be halted.

      Islam is antithethical to both the message of the Gospel and the person of Jesus Christ, our Incarnate Lord and savior. Faithful Christians and faithful Muslims cannot exist with equal freedom in the same country.

      There are two ways to combat Islam: overwhelming military force or preaching the Gospel with the possibility of martyrdom. Peaceful co-existence is not a viable option.

      The people who founded my home parish came to this country because they were forced out of the towns and villages of Syria by violent Islamic pogroms against the indigenous Christians (Christians since Apostolic times). People whose families had been neighbors for hundreds of years in the same villages and towns were suddenly enemies to be killed. I have been told over and over again by the ancestors of our founders that Muslims cannot be trusted. I have seen nothing to deny their testimony.

      I have an Egyptian friend who comes to my parish from time to time who left Egypt because she could no longer endure the constant persection in little things and big. She still has family there and weeps for what they are forced to endure now–it has gotten much worse.

      That being said, there are many who call themselves Muslims who seek the truth and sincerely long for communion with the living God. As the work of Fr. Zacharia and others attests, they can be reached by the Grace of God.

      No, Brigel, it will not go away. It is not a Kumbaya world. Still Christ is Risen and death has been despoiled. Rejoice all ye His people..

      • Pere LaChaise says

        Indeed, He is risen!
        O death, where is thy sting?
        Michael, your comment helps clear the moderator’s miasma of immoderate over-reaction with clear description of the actual historical threat of Islam, from the point of view of those who know it intimately – Christian refugees from Muslim-dominated places. And those survivors of the scourge of Islam take refuge in Christ who actually does heal all their wounds. Such gracious testimony of faithful Orthodox is truly valuable, and I hope emigres will continue to teach numbskull Americans of all persuasions about their experience under the curse of Islam.
        In the meantime, we would all be much better served to take the attitude of students to these newcomers rather than hectoring poseurs. Invective devoid of real experience will not make the picture clearer, but will only instigate fights between would be allies.
        First, we need to cling more tightly to Christ in His Church. Copts know this and show us the way – Eastern European and Balkan peoples present a pretty lax picture of cynicism and indifference that offers nothing to potential converts.
        There is joy in Communion with the Lord. We need to keep that joy and share it – and avoid pointing fingers and bitching about the OCA Synod, yadda yadda. The words written here reach far into the consciences of Americans and others, regardless of apparent insignificance. It’s a small pond we swim in and one bladder-voiding pollutes it for all of us.
        Thanks for your reasoned and perscipacious reading of the historical trend of Islam.

        • Michael Bauman says

          Thank you, Pere. And you are correct concerning the Copts. Whatever the Christological differences between us, we can learn from their steadfast refusal to bow to Islamic persecution while (mostly) refusing to respond in kind.

          • Tim R. Mortiss says

            I have never really been able to grasp the essential differences between the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox. Not for lack of trying. It eludes me, though I certainly have limits to my understanding. The Christological differences are such a shifting target.

            The split over Chalcedon was so tragic, and played no little part in the Muslim takeover of Egypt, in particular.

            The other amazing thing is that this division has gone on for a thousand and a half years!

            The insults and unreasonable characterizations involved in the mutual anathema “process” also amaze one, at least this one.

            • Michael Bauman says

              Tim, you are not alone. I’m not sure anyone does anymore. However murky the difference, it is unfortunately real and has resisted all attempts at healing, past and present. Some say we are a hair’s breadth away from reunification, but that is, IMO, a false hope at this juncture.

              The biggest easily identifiable difference for non-scholars right now is that we venerate different saints some of whom were anathematized at Chalcedon; our iconography is significantly, though subtly different. There are other differences that take a much deeper understanding and study than I am equipped to undertake but to reduce those differences to mere semantics is a bit much I think.

              The transcripts of one of the last major reunion conferences that I have read make it abundantly clear that the non-Chalcedonian/Oriental folks have neither the desire nor the inclination to renounce the sanctity of those men anathematized at Chalcedon, nor will they accept the necessity or the validity of Councils 5-7 as a result.

              They don’t like being called Monophysite because they deny that they are. From a traditional Orthodox perspective, however, the formula they use for the dual humanity/divinity of Jesus Christ rather over emphasizes the unity of the divine and human tending to squash that unity into an amalgam that is, according to Chalcedon and since, not a correct understanding and even heretical leading to a position that theoretically denies salvation to mere humans.

              That is my rather simplistic understanding of the difficulties that divide us.

              Should they? The answer to that question is above my pay grade.

              When I asked my bishop he simply told me: “We are not in communion but we are cordial with each other.”

              Given that, I feel quite justified in praying for them privately, respecting their courage and dedication to Jesus Christ and the Church even if it differs. After all, as I remarked previously, there is at least one Arian who is recognized as a saint in the Orthodox calendar because he defended his Arian kingdom against pagan invaders intent on crushing the Christian faith and was killed by his captors when he refused to renounce Jesus Christ. St. Nicetas/Nektarias, the demon slayer. Or so my research led me to believe. The invading pagans transmogrified iconographically as demons.

              • Tim R. Mortiss says

                I do appreciate these thoughtful pieces, Mr. Bowman.

                Everybody in Christendom extols “unity”. I do sometimes wonder. Disunity has been the case for 1,500 years, as far as even major Churches are concerned.

                The Lord may have good reasons for it. I don’t know.

                The “jurisdictional” disunity in North America that is always being deplored may have certain advantages for the Church, inasmuch as Eucharistic unity is present. It surely presents one with alternatives.

                Maybe that’s the way you evangelize Americans: look at the options we have for you! 😉

                • Michael Bauman says

                  The best case for continued jurisdictional disunity is not so much about options: there is only one Church (Eph 4). The best case is that the coming persecutions and apostasy has to get more than one bishop, more than one synod.

                  Eventually we will have to return to the catacombs anyway, but maybe not quite as quickly. In the modern catacombs it won’t matter so much what one calls oneself but on the actual depth and content of one’s union with Christ.

    • Patrick Henry Reardon says

      Brigel writes: “Muslims don’t hate us. Give them back their piece of dirt, and this whole mess will be over.”

      Well, there must be some other explanation why—within a hundred years of Muhammed’s death—they were already halfway up the map of Gaul. One could mention southern Italy, too, I suppose, and Vienna.

      Bear in mind that “their piece of dirt”—as they see it—includes Greece and much of the Balkans, the Iberian peninsula, Cyprus, and heaven knows what else.

      • Their “piece of dirt” is the whole earth, Brigel.
        Read about Maududi and Qutb, the intellectual drivers of contemporary Islam.
        Of course, they were only reiterating for the present time what is in the Koran.

    • Michael Bauman says

      Brigel, I’d like to know what evidence you have that Muslim’s don’t hate us espeically the overtly jihadist Muslims when every action they take both here and in their homelands as well as their words emphatically shout out otherwise.

      BTW, in my opinion the only real response to the cry of Allah Akbar is Al’Masiah qam!

    • Michael Bauman says

      Brigel, comparing the Islamic-Jewish conflict with the American Revolution is historically inaccurate. Both Christians and Jews have more ‘right’ to the land than the Muslims. The Jews were pretty well dispersed by the Romans (as Jesus foretold) and the Apostle’s evangelized the land. For over 600 years the land was a mix of Christian and pagan with Christianity being predominant. Then the Islamic armies invaded– aided by the local Christian resentment of far away Constantinople and the Empire it ruled.

      The original Muslims were nomadic pagans who Mohammed took over with his special brand of militarism, eroticism, lust of power and heretical Christianity promising not only the usual rights of rape and pillage for those successful in the local brand of war, but even greater in the ‘world to come’ : 70 virgins an all that. Eternal rape and pillage.

      For all practical purposes the indigenous people of the eastern Mediterranean are the Christians. The diocese of Houran in southern Syria, for example, where the founders of the temple in which I worship come from, was established by the Apostle Philip.

      The Jews were forcibly re-introduced in the middle of the 20th century following a logic that would give the land back to decendants of the Sumerians if we could find any and with modern DNA testing, I’m sure we could.

      There is simply no valid comparison to be made between the American Revolution (essentially a civil war amongst homogeneous people sharing a common heritage of law, faith and culture) and anything to do with Islam and the Middle East.

      I don’t know where you’ve learned your history, but where ever it was, you were not taught well. I am afraid you are super-imposing modern egalitarian ideology on a history and a people for whom it has absolutely no meaning or relevance.

    • George Michalopulos says

      I’ve criticized some Israeli policies on my blog so I don’t have to prove my bona fides, but this is undoubtedly one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Leaving aside the Koranic injunctions to subdue the whole world, what makes you think that we in the West can “give them back their piece of dirt” even if we wanted to.

      Here’s a thought: There are 6 million Jews living in Israel. There are 100 million Arabs living next door. Let the Arabs take back “their land” if they’re so hopped up about it.

      • Other than the bit about world domination…can we blame the Muslims for their behavior or for despising modern Western culture? They’re battling against: interest rates- while we award billions to banksters, pornography-while we hand out top prize to lesbian porn flicks at Cannes, alcohol-while we promote binge drinking, abortion-while we devise ever more clever excuses & pills, multiculturalism- while we “celebrate” it, and homosexuality- while we preach it to 2.7 million impressionable Boy Scouts.

        I agree with George who said, “Let the Arabs take back “their land” if they’re so hopped up about it.” Militant Zionism, which refuses to compromise or treat the Palestinians humanely, is the real enemy.

        • Fr. Hans Jacobse says

          Brigel, Muslim commitment to the destruction of Christendom existed long before Christendom’s moral collapse.

          I think you need to read more history.

        • Michael Bauman says

          Brigel, Al’Masiah Qam

          The hypocrisy and depravity of Western anti-culture does not excuse the depravity and hypocrisy of jihadist Muslims. Nor does it wipe out 1400 years of wanting to subjugate the infidels.

          Assuming you are a woman you would have no freedom at all subject to beatings rape and beheading with little recourse

          It is not about modern politics

        • George Michalopulos says

          While I agree with the depravity of Western culture nowadays, I must take issue with what you say about the recent Best Film at Cannes, Blue. It does contain an explicit, 12 minute long lesbian sex scene. The director is an Arab Muslim from Tunisia and was recently lauded by the Tunisian government for his landmark “achievement.”

          As for militant Zionism being the “real enemy” I am aghast. Were those Jews who flew the planes in the WTC center on Sept 11, 2001? Outside of the blowing up of the King David Hotel and other atrocities by Jewish terrorist organization 65 years ago, can you name what atrocities Jews have perpetrated against the West in the interim?

        • Michael Bauman says

          Brigel, would you please describe what militant zionism is, where it comes from and what negative effects you see it having in today’s world.

        • Michael Bauman says

          Brigel, in case you have not seen: the ‘rebels’ in Syria are busy wiping out as many Christians as they can in the areas which they occupy. They are reclaiming “their piece of dirt” at the expense of killing our brothers and sisters (including children) as well as routinely raping the women and desecrating our Holy Temples (using the altars as toilets for instance), some older than Islam itself. These are people with whom many of the killers and rapists have been neighbors and friends for generations, just like what happened to drive out, at the end of the 19th century, the founders of the Holy Temple in which I am graced to worship. The Antiochian Patriarch has had to move from the Patriarchal residence in Damascus on the street called Straight to Lebanon for his safety while being able to do little or nothing directly to help his people and to watch in grief as his brother (one of the bishops kidnapped) is no where to be found.

          Yes, Brigel, they really do hate we Christians with a demonic and unreasoning fury.

          These are the ‘democratic’ rebels that our government is supporting even though they are increasingly under the domination of Al Qaeda linked organizations. This is the story of the Orwellian named Arab Spring. I fully believe that the ideology that guides Obama and his administration is in sympathy with the rape and murder of indigenous Christian peoples along with the desecration and destruction of our Holy Temples.

          Meanwhile the government of Turkey continues its 600 year old policy of slowly strangling the Patriarchate of Constantinople (after abandoning the outright genocide of the ‘secular’ Ataturk rule). With only about 2000 Greek Orthodox remaining in Istanbul–they are succeeding.

          Rest assured, we are helping them ‘reclaim their piece of dirt”: I hope you can rest easy with the consequences as you get what you say you want.

          “Lord God of Hosts, be with us for we have no other help, no other help in times of sorrow but Thee. Lord of Hosts, have mercy on us.”

          • Tim R. Mortiss says

            As always, whether one is his friend or his foe, Uncle Sam is responsible for everything that happens in this world. But it can’t be only Obama, because Bush had his part in it; indeed, Obama hasn’t actually started any wars over there. (And I am no Obama supporter.)

            We didn’t cause the “Arab spring”, although certainly we seem to have coined the ridiculous phrase.

            The Christian churches in Syria have never had good choices in modern times. They have supported the Assad regimes, and probably needed to, but eventually this regime is going to fall. It is guilty of many crimes. Whether it falls now remains to be seen. But have we intervened? Is it our fault? No, except as everything is our fault.

            • Michael Bauman says

              Tim, never said it was “our fault” — just that our government supported the whole mess of the so-called “Arab Spring” Can you show me any evidence that our foreign policy has been anything but supportive?

              The Arab Christians have not had good choices since Islam took over Egypt and the Holy Land in the early 7th century, followed by the corrupt institution of the Christian Millet under the Turks once Constantinople fell in A.D. 1453: apostasy, silent endurance, immigration or martyrdom. The middle two are increasingly unavailable.

              Western “Christian” powers during all that time have either done nothing during times of oppression and genocide, or sided with Islam’s attacks against the indigenous Christians and the subsequent denials that they ever happened.

              Millions of Christian lives lost as a consequence. As I have said repeatedly, the last President who did anything against Islam in support of Christians was Thomas Jefferson. More recently Presidents from Lyndon Johnson forward have either attempted to placate the Islamic states or run scared from Islamic terrorists. Bush would have continued in the vein except the 9/11 attacks forced his hand. That’s 9 Presidents, most of whom have been Republican. Obama’s policies are not new.

              The number of martyrs under Islam is known only to God, but IMO it is greater than the number in ancient Rome or under the Soviets

              Guess what, we are still there. God willing, we will always be there in the monasteries, parishes, and in the life of the peoples Christian and Muslim alike (those who seek out the Christian holy places for pilgrimage and to ask the blessings of God). St. Catherine’s in the Sinai and Mar Saba outside Jerusalem are particular jewels as well as monasteries in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Kosovo plus faithful Bishops like Met. Sava of Houran and many others who not only lead their flocks but reach out in charity to Muslims and also suffer with their people as the two kidnapped bishops of Aleppo (likely dead) have.

              No, the U.S. is not “at fault”. The continuing conspiracy against us sponsored and maintained by the father of lies is “at fault”. It is just that the U.S. all too willingly participates in it as did numerous “Christian” monarchs of the west.

              • Archpriest John Morris says

                There is no doubt that our American foreign policy establishment has had an anti-Orthodox attitude for years.When the Turks invaded Cyprus, we did not help the Orthodox. We supported the Muslims in Kosovo. Under Obama, the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt. Now they are about to take over Syria with his support.
                In the Middle East, it does not matter who is president, our foreign policy is controlled by the pro-Zionist lobby. Every election, the candidate of both parties fall all over themselves pledging their loyalty to Israel. Our media is pro-Zionist and completely ignores the atrocities being committed by the Zionists against the indigenous Palestinian people. Meanwhile, the so called tolerant Jews spit on Orthodox priests walking down the street in Jerusalem and harass Orthodox during processions on Orthodox Feast days. Our media calls Israel a democracy, but its basis is racist, because it is identified a a Jewish state, meaning that non-Jews are second class citizens.

                • Tim R. Mortiss says

                  Egypt is not “under Obama”. So if you occupy the White House, it’s all laid at your door!

                  “Under Obama, the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt.” This is a very odd statement. He was behind it all, then?

                  Under Obama, there was a terrible tsunami in Indonesia. Or was that under Bush? I know the bad one in Japan was under Obama.

                • Michael Bauman says

                  Fr. John several years ago, my brother (a priest in the Patriarchal diocese) experienced the spitting of which you speak.

                  Those who hate the Lord, hate us whether they are secular, Moslem, or Jew. Our Lord told us it would always be so.

                • Tim R. Mortiss says

                  Well, as far as Cyprus is concerned, variations of the “Megali idea”, including enosis, have served Greek peoples very poorly over the last few generations.

                  Irredentism has to be one of the curses of the European world; and no doubt other places, too.

    • One of the West says

      But, Brigel, it’s ‘our oil’ that is under their sand! And we are entitled to it!

      • Michael Bauman says

        They would not have access to the oil were it not for we greedy capitalist pigs. It would still be sitting under all that sand. That being said we wouldn’t need it any more if we would use our own. If we put the same amount of resources developing the reserves in the US and Canada, they could bloody well have all the dirt over there.

        Then you’d hear the cat hit the fan as the impoverished oil shieks either sought asylum in the US to live off their Swiss bank accounts guzzling wine and buying up prostitutes or be killed in their beds by the folks they now pay to go after us.

        Hey, I got an idea just get rid of all the evil white folk and no one would have to worry ’bout a thing.

  10. “…but will the native black and white contingent of this coalition continue to be loyal to a Party that continues to impoverish them, or worse yet, places them in harm’s way in an increasing fashion?”

    Clearly, the answer to this question, sadly, is a resounding YES; and the same can be said of legacy Republicans. I am reminded of Dickens’ insight when he placed these words in the mouth of the Ghost of Christmas Present:

    This boy is ignorance, and this girl is want. Beware of them both, but most of all beware of this boy.

    We would do well to heed this advice regardless of our political leanings.

  11. Ivan Vasiliev says

    George,

    I must have deleted before I posted. But I’ll try again.

    At the risk of sounding like a flaming card carrying namby pamby ivory tower liberal (which I am not), I think a note of extreme caution has to be taken here. In the Arab world (and in most of the world, to be honest) ethnic and religious identity goes hand in hand. So, if we are to follow your logic, we ought to praise the Saudis for their clarity of policy. No one gets to “be on top” except for Wahabi Puritan Sunni Muslims. Period. And if we follow that logic clearly, we ought to support the ethnic cleansing going on in Iraq and increasingly in Egypt and elsewhere that ancient Christian communities are being chased away so that “one culture may predominate”.

    What’s good for the goose is good for the gander as they say. Shall we divide the world up into Imperiums? An ethnically cleansed, pure Muslim Imperium (let the Sunni and Shiites bicker over the internal division), a Buddhist, a Secular (we’re outta here, sir), and a Christian (where? and for us Orthodox, especially, where? We’d better hope the Russians opt in for us. But you’d better be up for some truly grinding poverty and some truly arbitrary forms of government, George. I am a Russophile, but I’m not a tiny bit blinded to the realities of my ethnic heritage).

    The problem with the philosophy of division is that it is ultimately, truly, and completely the philosophy of hell, so perfectly and succinctly portrayed in CS Lewis’s little gem, The Great Divorce. We need a diversity based on the Constitutional norms of the protection of every citizen’s to rights life, liberty, and property (and let’s be generous and include the resident alien among us, just for Scripture’s sake, since we are Christians). The terrorists need to be stopped by the rule of law and the utter intolerance of the citizenry–all of us, liberals, conservatives, left and right alike since we all have a stake in the survival of the republic (here) and we all have a moral responsibility to protect each other from arbitrary terror from any source.

    Satan, the Accuser, the Devil, the Divider is utterly democratic in one thing: he wants to erase in us the image and likeness of God and the first step is for us to refuse to see it in one another. The terrorist is the anti-icon of Christ in that he/she attempts to erase the image and likeness of God in the other and thereby in him/herself. In the end it is not possible. But we have successfully proven in the past century that we can kill hundreds of millions in the process of trying.

    • Michael Bauman says

      Ivan, well said, except as I noted above if we are to include Muslims, they would have to genuinely renounce adherence to Sharia Law and the Ummah and agree to be ruled by the Constitutional norms of our Republic (which the secularists wish to get rid of as much as faithful Muslims for different reasons).

      • Michael,
        I’m sure there would be some Muslims who would do so, although they would be despised by their more fervent brethren. But the problem is how to determine if such renunciation is genuine? Dissimulation (i.e. lying, even to the point of swearing allegiance to countries they despise), is an approved religious tactic of the Islamists.

  12. Hyperdox Hank says

    NB: This is not condone the heinous crime in question, but rather GM’s rant about it “diversity”
    Britain had an Empire. A vast empire. The children of the commonwealth come to Britain for complex social and economic reason stemming from the two hundred years when Britain controlled half of the world’s land mass. It’s not as though Britain was a small, peaceful island minding its own business and all of a sudden a boatloads of foreigners showed up. British and French xenophobia is possibly even more nausiating than the second-generaton Greek-American zenophobia.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Actually Hank, the polyglot masses of the British Empire did not “come” to Britain of their own accord. The elites which run Britain made the same decision that our elites did with Ted Kennedy’s disastrous immigration bill in 1965 to degrade our respective nations’ immigration standards. It was conscious and it has done much to de-Christianize our nations.

      Having said that, I notice that you don’t address any of the issues at hand: how in God’s holy name can anybody justify the savagery of these two bastards? What is going on here is “Chechens coming here to roost.” They don’t like our culture –fine: don’t come here.

      • Monk James says

        Here, our genial host seems to have fallen off the edge of a world he might still perceive as flat.

        England, which once arrogantly claimed rule over most of the extraeuropeanly ‘known world’ eventually (after significant military and revolutionary defeats) ‘granted’ the right of immigration to the United Kingdom to all its former subjects in subsequently ‘independent’ lands of its (variously construed) ‘commonwealth’.

        What a crock THAT was!\

        Anyway, curses — like chickens — always come home to roost.

        Now, England is overrun with Indians and Pakistanis and all sorts of other people who have never been Christians, adding social weight to the already rampant abandonment of christian faith by the locals.

        By its own laws, Britain MUST accept the nonchristians from its former empire. The US hasn’t ever been so imperialistic as England, so America might not be as obligated as the UK to accept such immigrants, and might yet decline to receive Muslims (e.g.) because of demographic realities.

        Let’s see what America decides to do about this.

        • George Michalopulos says

          No essential disagreement here until we get to your penultimate paragraph. There is no necessity that says by law, “Britain MUST accept…” anybody. If that’s true then 400,000,000 people had the right to emigrate to Britain. Wouldn’t that be beyond its carrying capacity?

          Anyway, even if true, since it’s “by law,” then it can be changed by simple statute.

  13. Protest in France says

    Big protest today against homosexual adoption

    http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2013/05/26/des-manifestants-anti-mariage-homosexuel-interpelles-sur-les-champs-elysees_3417612_3224.html

    The article and the video are in French language. Precis: 150,000 according to French police, 300,000 according to demonstrator marched on behalf of marriage and against a recently passed law that allows gays to marry and adopt

    Video in article is interesting, not the least because of the colors chosen for the family oriented flags.

    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1089yl_manif-pour-tous-les-images-des-corteges_news#.UaKqeJz4Kco

    article by NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/26/186710761/tens-of-thousands-of-gay-marriage-opponents-protest-in-paris?ft=1&f=1001

    March last January:

    http://youtu.be/EFurqA5Z7Iw

    And an interesting gay perspective on the issue:

    http://youtu.be/wTBR1fcnfOw

    • George Michalopulos says

      It doesn’t matter, does it? The elites are going to ram this down the French peoples’ collective throats whether they like it or not. Democracy, it’s a wonderful thing.

  14. Esther Smith Holmes says

    “This dude is creepy”…?
    What an astonishingly unChristian remark regarding the head of the Roman Catholic Church – the leader of our brothers and sisters in Christ who represents the “other” lung of the Christian Church.
    Mr. B should take a look at the picture of Pope Francis greeting Pope Benedict XVI upon his recent return to the Vatican.
    It speaks kindness – respect – Christian love between two brothers. Contrast that picture with the treatment our
    Metropolitan Jonah has received (is receiving) from the hands of the Synod and administration of the OCA.
    I’ll take “kindness” any day. In Galatians St Paul states it is the “fruit” of the Holy Spirit…. a novel concept.

    • Michael Bauman says

      I find the preaching of salvation without Jesus Christ profoundly creepy and profoundly un- Christian and profoundly un-Catholic even in the Roman sense.

      I also reject the “two lungs” novelty as being un-Christian, a sophistry that requires no repentance and no change, both of which are necessary to achieve even harmoy, let alone unity.

      The treatment of the hierarchs of the OCA demonstrates a remarkable lack of Christian faith. Sin in one does not excuse sin somewhere else. While the brotherhood shown between the two Popes while preferable it is not necessarily Christian.

      But you might try answering my questions concerning some basic teachings of salvation.

      Sure atheists CAN be redeemed if they repent and call on God, but then they aren’t atheists any more. Our good works are like dung according to St Paul.

      If Pope Francis eschews the fundamental doctrines of the Church, what is the RCC then?

      • lexcaritas says

        Dear to Christ, Michael,
        You know I agree with so much of what you write, but must take issue with here. You say in replying to our sister, Esther, that “the preaching of salvation without Jesus Christ profoundly creepy.” Indeed it is, but neither Papa Francesco nor his predecessors have claimed any such thing. It would be profoundly un-Christian not “even” but “especially” in the Roman Catholic sense. Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Dominus Iesus.
        You also reject what you call “the ‘two lungs’ novelty [the metaphor proposed by Blessed John Paul II] as being “un-Christian”, and “a sophistry that requires no repentance and no change, both of which are necessary to achieve even harmony, let alone unity.”
        Frankly, I can’t see what is so un-Christian about the two lungs metaphor; it seems quite consistent to me with the Pauline metaphor of the one Body of which we are all members. More recently, if I recall correctly, Benedict XVI had written on the one hand of the Orthodox Church suffering from the defect of not being in communion with the See of Rome and those bishops in that communion—this brought all kinds of catcalls from some of my colleagues at Ligonnier—who refused to recognize that, in the same epistle, Benedict had acknowledge that the Roman Catholic Church was also wounded by its separation from the Orthodox. Now, what is a wound if not a defect detracting from the wholeness and integrity of a healthy body?
        Finally, as for repentance and change, we should pray and weep for that, while being willing to do as much, for we are not faultless. There is plenty of disordered passion on our side as well, and we must remove the beam from our own eye first so that we can help our brother remove the mote from his. We must help the weak and struggling brother and affirm him when we can and so persuade him of our trust and be the means of instilling in him the desire to repent by following our example because he sees Christ in us.
        As St. Paul said, when one part suffers all suffer. None of us is saved alone and in part our salvation implies a grieving over anything that separates from others who also bear the image of Christ—which must include those who have been duly baptized into His Body in the One Spirit and who bear His name, however, imperfectly.
        As I noted in a previous message, I believe you are confuting “salvation” and “redemption” and accusing ++Francis of teaching some kind of universal salvation without Christ. He is not. He is saying that the Incarnation: the conception, birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ has redeemed all mankind: “Christ is risen from the dead trampling down Death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life”—and was such to have harrowed and emptied Hades. We teach this very things as well and are at the 25th day of celebrating it.
        It seems to me your mixing of terms continues when you say to Esther that “atheists CAN be redeemed IF they repent and call on God,” I think this is more a question of their appropriation of the redemption that is already theirs in Christ Jesus and not refusing to be saved but rather to cooperate in that salvation and actualize it by growing into His likeness.
        Obviously, you are right that, when they do this, they aren’t atheists any more.
        Regarding our good works, I don’t think St. Paul say they are dung. What he says is that he counts all of his good works as dung for the excellency of knowing Christ Jesus. This is hyperbolic metaphor and it gains in strength by recognizing the prior works as good but as paling in comparison with knowing Him Who loves us. What St. Paul says, in context is this:
        Philippians 3:7-11 “What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. 8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for Whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, 9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: 10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; 11 If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”
        Finally, Michael you worry “If Pope Francis eschews the fundamental doctrines of the Church, what is the RCC then?” I don’t think he has. I doubt that he will. Let us pray with all our hearts that he doesn’t. The onslaught is coming and we need all the help we can get.
        Pray for me, a sinner.
        lxc

    • Michael Bauman says

      Ms. Holmes: “kindness” in and of itself, while certainly preferable to unkindness, is not salvific. ” For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.” Luke 6:32.

      It is basic Christian doctrine that salvation (redemption) comes only through Jesus Christ. I have never thought that the Catholic Church preached salvation through works as the Protestants have always said. Was I wrong?

      What of John 6:53 and the entire sacramental life and presence in the Church? If anyone can be redeemed by their works, why not open communion? Why even have bishops whose primary job is ‘rightly dividing the word of truth’.?

      Where is the sacred and why is it important if our mundane acts of kindness are sufficient for redemption?

      What matters the Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ if all it takes is some ‘good works’?

      Certainly, works without out faith are dead,, just as “faith” without works is lacking wouldn’t you agree?

      For we Orthodox, “The aim of the Chrisitan life is the aquistion of the Holy Spirit” (St. Seraphim of Saraov). He spent years alone in the forests of northern Russia, praying and fasting so that he could demonstrate what that meant. Were his efforts and the fruit of his efforts simply to be gained by some ‘kindness’ and some merely human and perhaps quite selfish caring works?

      Indeed the lives of all the saints of whom I have knowledge (Catholic and Orthodox) proclaim the opposite of what the Pope said. Indeed Jesus own words when He said: “Love God with all your heart mind, soul and strength” proceed His call to love our neighbors as ourselves.

      If the Pope meant to say that one does not have to be a Catholic to be redeemed why not just say that? That is kinda a no brainer though.

      I will apologize for calling the Pope a creepy dude. What he said is creepy, but that doesn’t mean he is creepy.

      You may not realize what a horrible acid to the soul heresy is. You are blessed. I do realize it because the Church resucued me from a steaming vat of such acid. When I see even intimations of it being preached, my scars start to itch.

  15. nit picker says

    Mr. Michalopulos,

    You wrote:

    Maybe if you lived in George Zimmerman’s neighborhood you’d feel differently about the need for armed vigilantes. Don’t be so quick to judge.

    I don’t live in George Zimmerman’s neighborhood. I have spent much time where armed vigilantes have been active for some time now, courtesy of a political party – Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn)- active in Greece. This particular party has been gaining power because it’s members have been reacting to the growing crime rate and the spiraling population of illegal citizens that have flooded the border’s of Greece in a very practical way when no one else has.

    The way most residents of major U.S. cities like N.Y. always know to keep ‘mugger money’ on them, those people that live in particularly dangerous places of Athens and Thessalonica keep something handy and easy to find in the likely event that their flat is going to be broken into when they go to the supermarket or to work. The logic being, if they can find valuables easily, maybe the thieves won’t trash the whole place. It does help by the way to leave cash out on the counter for the robbers. Where the police have been unable or unwilling to help, members of Chrysi Avgi have managed to protect some of Greek society’s more vulnerable targets. Many elderly home owners who try to stick it out in the big cities call on members of Chrysi Avgi when they get tenants who trash their rental properties and cause pest infestations. Chrysi Avgi members go and make it “very clear” that they have a certain time frame to fix up the apartment they messed up and move out. Nobody messes with them. They know that if Chrysi Avgi has to search them out a second time, they will probably not walk away from the meeting. People feel safer thanks to them.

    It is sad that it had to reach that point, but it is the result of lawlessness and lack of immigration control run amok. It is your argument, case and point.

  16. Hi there, You’ve done a fantastic job. I will certainly digg it and personally recommend to my friends. I am sure they will be benefited from this site.