I’ve had several readers send me links to items referencing moderate Muslims. One offered that posting them would serve as response to “the defamers who vilify SDA as anti-Muslim racist”.
While it’s charitable to think that SDA critics might be influenced by actual SDA content, I’ve come to accept that when it comes to those who are motivated by hatred of all things conservative, it doesn’t much matter what I write, or don’t write – someone will find a way to misrepresent it.
But while I was mulling it over, I chanced upon this post at CJunk that that pretty much strips the argument bare;
�Very few people were true Nazis� he said, �but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.�
We are told again and again by �experts� and �talking heads� that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is, that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the �peaceful majority� is the �silent majority� and it is cowed and extraneous.
During these debates, I’m often reminded* of a chapter in James Gray’s The Winter Years – a series of recollections of the depression on the Canadian prairies. Gray spent many of those years at the Winnipeg Free Press. He tells the story of Paul Ausborn;
Paul Ausborn was a man who heard voices, a sea captain who had sailed the Baltic for the Kaiser in the First World War. After the war, he sold his ship and bought an apartment block in Kiel and served the Weimar Republic in a small way by teaching navigation to German youth. It was while teaching navigation in 1926 that the voices told him that Adolf Hitler was coming to power in Germany and would lead the world to war.
Ausborn sold his property and moved his family to Manitoba. However, he hadn’t escaped the Nazis.
Through his old connections with the Social Democrats in exile, Ausborn obtained a large collection of pictures of the atrocites being committed by the Nazis in Germany. He rented a store on Logan Avenue to show his gallery of infamy to Winnipeg. Nazi sympathizers wrecked his exhibit. He started over and put another exhibition together. at the same time, he scoured the German-Canadian community for supporters and could find only a handful. […] Ausborn was overwhelmed again and again by the force that the Nazis were exerting on the German population of western Canada, and by the lack of interest in his work on the part of other Canadians. He was beaten up by Bundists, and harried by city policeman who saw nothing wrong in Hitler, because the only people Hitler was bothering were Jews and Communists.
As an indication of Ausborn’s physical courage, he and two young friends once invaded a huge pro-Nazi picnic and distributed 6,000 anti-Nazi pamphlets and miraculously escaped unharmed. But in his efforts to rouse the city to the menace of Naziism, he lost every battle, every skirmish even. Nazi agents, on the other hand, infiltrated the university, the schools, the churches, and every other part of the German community. Ausborn was ostracized by the other Germans, most of his family deserted him and with his money gone, he was reduced to living on relief.
[…]
One day early in 1937 he came in to see me in a state of near-collapse. He had received word of the death of an old friend at the hands of the Nazis, and announced he was going to enlist in the International Brigade and fight in Spain. At fifty he was too old to fight, so he drove an ambulance on the Madrid front that summer. He came home to Winnipeg in the fall to give the organization of another anti-Nazi front a whirl. His Spanish interlude made him complete non grata with the city police, but most of us on the Free Press had read Mein Kampf by then and were taking both Ausborn and Hitler seriously. But until the very outbreak of the war, anti-Naziism was a lost cause in Winnipeg and the boisterous rejection of appeasement by the Free Press won it few plaudits.
While the “vast majority” of moderate German Canadians (my mother’s family among them) were peaceful, hard working citizens who held no Nazi sympathies, and would have recoiled at the notion of gassing hundreds of thousands of children in the name of racial purity – in the end, it mattered not a whit. What mattered were the extremists bent on attaining the power to transform a perverse ideology into reality, and the weaponry to export it – and the majority who just sat back and let it all happen.
What an insightful commentary. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
The writer has summarized it with crystal clarity. Indeed,
“All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.”
Unfortunately, this happens all too frequently.
I have nothing witty, pithy, or any other intelligent and profound comment to make except: Excellent and Bravo!
Very insightful (and probably “inciteful” to the Left).
History is like a long running West End theatre production. The play is the same but the actors change from year to year. When are we going to wake up. The MSM are taking the same stance now as they did seventy years ago. We ignore the rise and intolerance of Islam at our own peril.
Thank you, Kate. I was looking for just such a parallel to illustrate the current situation, and this is perfect.
Amazing article Kate. It’s a real eye-opener for those who do not learn from history. There are over a billion muslims in the world who are peaceful human beings. But their silence is letting a small minority of extremists run their religion into the ground. If they remain silent, this minority will slowly become a majority.
What he said:
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9512/articles/pipes.html
“Fat’hi ash-Shiqaqi, a well-educated young Palestinian living in Damascus, recently boasted of his familiarity with European literature. He told an interviewer how he had read and enjoyed Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Sartre, and Eliot. He spoke of his particular passion for Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, a work he read ten times in English translation “and each time wept bitterly.” Such acquaintance with world literature and such exquisite sensibility would not be of note except for two points-that Shiqaqi was, until his assassination in Malta a few weeks ago, an Islamist (or what is frequently called a “fundamentalist” Muslim) and that he headed Islamic Jihad, the arch- terrorist organization that has murdered dozens of Israelis over the last two years.”
Excellent post.
Gets even better when reread- it’s that sublime.
excellent post kate!
if only the eye’s wide shut lefties in the country could read articles like this and be able to recognize the parallels to the current happenings in this world. unfortunately I think their brains would explode if their brains actually manufactured logical thoughts…
eo
Thanks for the post.
This is a must read!!! and a brilliant juxtaposition of the old and the new.
…and the majority who just sat back and let it all happen.
Just like in Canada where children are murdered every day and the majority says nothing.
Just like in Canada where practices that lead to the spreading of deadly diseases can’t be debated, and the majority says nothing.
Just as violent and just as deadly.
I guess that makes the majority in Canada “irrelevant”.
Reminds me of looking at the splinter in another’s eye while ignoring the beam in one’s own eye.
“anti-Muslim racist”?
Think again what the word Muslim has now become synonymous with? If it is becoming, as the atrocites and body count mount, an adjective for murder and mayham who’s to blame?
The Germans are still 60 years later grappling with their shameful history. But, Nazism had to be wiped off the face of the earth first. The luxury of sorting out who was a good or a bad German wasn’t the Allies responsibility once the war started.
We are all waiting for these “moderate” Muslims living in safe places like the US, Canada and Europe – away from fear of reprisals, living where free speech is accorded them – to take to the streets and airways and condemn the Islamofascists.
No one looks back to the generation of Hitler’s Germany giving the “good” German a pass. They were preceived as weak and collaborators in varying degrees. All were suspect.
I’m damn tired of hearing the word racist applied in an attempt to muzzle a dialogue one doesn’t like. This manipulative reflexive pc garbage is an attempt to smother free speech.
History is forged not by fanatics…but the millions of righteous nameless men who oppose them and their tyranny…they do so in thousands of simple individual acts of defiance in the face of tyranny.
Ausborn was such a man and so is this fellow:
http://www.muslimcanadiancongress.org/20050812.pdf
Thanks Kate,
This post is stunning in that it demonstrates in the simplest terms the struggle that we and all free societies face today.
The Liberal left in our societies would have us dumbed down to the point where we, as the Germans 70 years ago, can’t recognize the very threats that are bent on destroying all we hold dear.
I am sure that there were times when the Jews sang in the trucks and trains to calm the fears of the children, as they were carried away to be gassed like rats. So it is today, the MSM and Liberal apologists sing the public to sleep with lullabies of “multiculturalism and tolerance”, as extreme elements wage holy war with impunity and while enjoying the protections afforded them by our constitutions which do not allow us to question motives or conduct (that would be discrimination), disagree strongly (be careful of hate laws) or otherwise engage the growing threat (we cannot take the law into our own hands).
Hopefully we will not be lulled to sleep (complacencey) as happenned to the German public as they sat next to their radios to catch the latest message from the Fuhrer.
Thanks again Kate for sounding the alarm.
Daniel
The natural end result of appeasement: Death. +
tuesday, february 21, 2006
Nigerian Christians: Appeasement is Killing Us
Nigerian Christians apparently tried appeasement in the face of Islamic cartoon rage. Now they�re being hacked to death with machetes in their churches. Judith Apter Klinghoffer has the story: Nigerian Christians: Our Appeasement and MSM Silence is Killing Us. +
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/22010.html
It’s a well crafted argument but it rests on a fundemental fallacy. Radical Islam isn’t Nazi Germany and we don’t have people like Kate being persecuted by their agents and supporters. They don’t control a national government and are more likely to be killed by other muslims. Take a look at the 10 people who died in a cartoon protest in Libya. It wasn’t Libyan police killing secularists it was Libyan police killing extremists. Its brutal and tragic to be sure but it at least tells you what direction the society at large is cutting in.
Over the next thirty years muslim countries will be turning into increasingly secular democracies. We are already seeing them make slow but gradual progress in that direction now. If I see that trend reversing and Osama Bin Laden becoming a Hitler figure then I’ll change my about the use of force above and beyond what current law enforcement and diplomacy already provide.
Excellent post, Kate.
This story echoes something my Dad told me recently.
Father came to Canada in the early ’50s as a teenager. His home town was Hamelin, Germany. When the US Army arrived at the outskirts of his town in 1945, the US commander contacted the local town leaders and suggested that if they surrendered peaceably, their town would be spared further damage. (Hamelin was an ancient walled town, steeped in history and very attractive-remember the “Pied Piper” fables?). Dad says the townspeople were relieved to hear this-they were starving, knew the war was lost, and wished to surrender.
Then the local Nazi boss intervened, exhorting the citizens to fight to the last drop of blood to save their race from the decadent Allied murderers. Somehow, this single Fascist nutball convinced them to reject the offer.
Dad was 10 years old. The next thing he told me was how an American artillery shell came through the front door of his home and out the back, churning up his mothers’ potato garden.
The down did eventually surrender before being completely destroyed, but I think not before the Nazi boss was killed.
One would hope that he was killed by a 7mm Mauser before Allied artillery would have got him…
National Socialism of the time was more of a cult than a political movement, and the parralels with Islamofascism are striking. The acceptability of suicide being an obvious commonality.
Again, if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
Hitler was not the only one to commit mass murder–and that is something we all seem to forget. Stalin murdered millions of Ukranians but was not sanctioned because he was an ‘ally of the West’! Not only Jews were killed by Hitler–gypsies and intellectuals were also murdered. That is one of the gigantic problems we have today–selective naming of monsters in history. And as long as this continues we will be sitting ducks for other evil people to do the same. Mass murder is mass murder no matter who commits it. The radical Muslims are just the latest in a long line.
History shows us that we are totally ineffectual in stopping these actions, and we are repeating history–until we learn it will always be thus. It, as usual, is the spin that matters, not the deed. Thinking people have to speak, and we are being muzzled–what is different today from other years? Nothing–except we now have more equal groups that can shut down our speech more quickly.
“All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.”
Powerful statement, but fast-forward to the year 2006 and I can’t help but wonder if the likes of Kofi Anan, Jacques Chirac, and the leaders of “moderate” western nations are “good” men or just stooges to feel-good social policy of so-called “tolerence” and “root causes”.
The “Islam is a peaceful Religion’ argument has been debated over and over, but the key, as Kate’s blog entry so clearly spells out, is that the entire discussion is a red herring, a waste of time.
As long as the fanatics get to run the shopp, set the tone and content of the message and threaten and murder their way to holding on to power, the end result is 100% predictable.
I agree 100% . . been saying it for the last four years . its the 1930’s all over again, just a new threat to world peace. The comfy fur Liberals in Europe/West refuse to deal with reality because it doesn’t fit with their moral constructs of the world in which we live. They can’t face reality because they are not mentally strong enough. It is easier to appease than prepare, to die a death by a thousand little cuts than stand up and fight the enemies.
eventually, the west will come around. Much more murder and mayhem will need to occur before the moonbats do the wakey-wak
Claims that the vast majority of Muslims are merely the silent majority allowing the insanity to proceed may be an underestimation.
They all support the mosques that support the terrorist faction.
If in the BILLION so-called silent majority of muslims almost none of them are spreaking out from all parts of the planet (they are global as rather than only in Germany as the Nazis were) then that DEFIES THE ODDS … THE ARE, FOR THE MOST PART … COMPLICIT.
If not, then why are not more of them at least moving to places other than their own enclaves? Most immigrants seek a place of familiarity and comfort, but all other immigrants to Canada spread out for individual opportunities and building of a NEW LIFE in their new country.
Not so with these dangerous regressive barbarians.
jose: “Over the next thirty years muslim countries will be turning into increasingly secular democracies” … Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan… where else? I’m afraid that the exact opposite of what you say is in fact the truth. Look at Africa, look at the pressures facing South East Asia, Asia, and even the former Soviet Union. Your statement is not based in reality, but wishful thinking.
Isalmism is taking control of more and more states. It is also more dangerous than Nazism in that it takes over entire groups within states that are not even Muslim. Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism were isolated to state entities; Islamofascism can thrive anywhere; like Canada, as it does in Lebanon, Paris, or Iraq. It is well funded. It is many times more dangerous than Nazism was because of this; it can live among us. That is why the local “peaceful” Muslim populations hold the key… it is they who must isolate the fanatics. They must drive them out of their mosques; they must isolate the extremist Imams, they must do to them, what democracies have done to neo-nazis or communists. Marginalization of the Islamo-fascists is the job of the “peaceful” majority… if they dont’ do it, the job will fall unto “rough men willing to do violence on our behalf”.
BRAVA! BRAVA! APPLAUSE! BRAVA!
(Brava is the correct word for a female virtuosic performance, as I painfully learned from a more learned fan when I screamed Bravo! after a Cecilia Bartoli recital a few years back).
Kate: Very moved by this, and humbled by Ausborn’s courage! One of your very best!
More on the religion of peace, and their rabid majority.
scroll to the bottom and look at the incidents.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
jose…”Radical Islam isn’t Nazi Germany …. They don’t control a national government….”
What about Iran?!?!?!?! haven’t they been striving to whipe isreal off the map?
what about Hamas in Palistine? how many suicide bombers blew themselves up screaming “Allah akbar!!” before they recently took control of parliment through election?
Don’t for a second tell me that the islamic extremists don’t control a national government.
not that it really matters if they control a government or not right now… they dont have to control the government… all a government has to do is turn a blind eye to them and allow them to build their arsenals and brainwashing facilities… by not denouncing them completely and ridding their countries of every last drop of extremist islamic sentiment, the muslim countries of the middle east may as well hand the clerics full governing authority….
They don’t control a national government and are more likely to be killed by other muslims..
Saudi Arabia counts. They have cultivated and financed fundamentalist Whabbism as an export to every mosque throughout the ME, Europe and here.
10 dead Lybian fanatics killed by Lybian police does not make a case for a trend. Today’s trend in Nigeria is the burning of Christian churches and further attempts to disrupt the country’s oil industry by Muslims.
If I see that trend reversing and Osama Bin Laden becoming a Hitler figure….
Becoming?
Get a grip, Jose! He and his AQ followers are more psychopathic than the early Nazis. The trend is rapidly moving toward mad mullahs with nuclear bombs.
Wow….wow…wow…
What else is there to say? Thanks for this post.
Great analogy Kate.
I lived on the Arabian Peninsula for 5 years. I found that most Arabs were not aggressive at all (except when driving!). Mostly hospitable and agreeable. I only met one that would say out right that they disagreed with Palestinian terrorism or give an unqualified condemnation of those that were responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11.
He was a Palestinian whose family had seen the writing on the wall for their “old country” and had moved on to a brighter future elsewhere.
With the rest it was always “It was wrong but you know, the US supports Israeli oppression.”
I think that most Moslems would just like a quiet life but if they have truly submitted to the will of Allah this is not possible.
They know that the Jihadists are committing terrible atrocities but , deep down, they also know that the Jihadists are merely following the Prophet Mohamed’s example, to make the entire world Dar al Islam.
Jose,
I would have thought Iran would count as a national government controlled by pan-Islamic ambition, particularly to annihilate Israel with nuclear weapons–Holocaust, the sequel. German TV cameras showed a “cartoon-protesting” woman in Pakistan this last week with a sign reading “God Bless Hitler.” One eed not search far for examples in Egypt and other states near Israel.
Nonetheless, you do have a good point of debate, namely, do Islamic radicals have power comparable to Nazi power in the 1930s, when they could intimidtae other Germans and wield a substantial war machine against other nations. This is a different world. Any Islamic army would get trounced. However, we live in an Internet and cellphone world now, with radical Islam functioning as an NGO. I doubt that the various radical Islamic elements around the world are very organized with each other, but they seem to exhibit a high degree of syncrhonicity–they seem to be all singing from the same choirbook, so to speak. The Islamic radicals seem to be able to intimidate moderate Muslims now, and non-Muslim newspaper editors. If Iran gets nuclear weopons, I cannot see any practical distinction between the Nazis in Germany and Islamic radicals in terms of power to wreak havoc. Kate’s post, therefore, seems wholly apt.
Jose Jose,
I gave you an A- for your last post; your attempted hagiography of Yasser Arafat and then you follow up with this.
“1. Radical Islam isn’t Nazi Germany and we don’t have people like Kate being persecuted by their agents and supporters.
2. They don’t control a national government and are more likely to be killed by other muslims.
3.Over the next thirty years muslim countries will be turning into increasingly secular democracies. We are already seeing them make slow but gradual progress in that direction now.”
Two blatant lies and a weak try to sway the jury with dubious speculation on the success of the Bush Doctrine for the ME.
Very disappointing
I can’t even grade this. Please try again and don’t rush your work.
Kate,
Thank you for posting that article. Sometimes we profit more from straightforward, heartfelt personal history than the “money-shot” witty turn of phrase.
Professor: Re: Jose’s paper.
I can: F- on content, A+ on creative writing.
But as Jose has pointed out, his stong suit is science, real science, not poli-sci.
George, your point that Stalin murdered millions of Ukrainians but was not sanctioned because he was an ‘ally of the West’ still holds true today. Stalinism is enjoying a revival in Russia right now and in the west it is considered quite fashionable to wear a hammer and sickle in a way that wearing a Nazi swastika is certainly not.
For the past several decades, many Ukrainian Canadians have been trying to expose the evils that communism was imposing on their ancestral homeland and around the world. Few cared to listen. They were just written off as crackpots, and for the most part still are. Many academics still refuse to admit that the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine (in which 25,000 people died every day for a year) was a deliberate genocide. They are moved by neither heart-wrenching eyewitness accounts nor official documents that show communist officials actually confiscated food, even turnips and beets hidden in root cellars, from Ukrainian people during the Famine. And contrary to what communist sympathizers would have you believe, only Ukrainians had their food confiscated. Two authoritative sites are http://www.faminegenocide.com/ and http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/ (the latter has a list of famine deniers)/
In 1988 the CBC aired a radio documentary featuring academics who suggested the Ukraine Famine was a hoax, and refused to give equal air time to those who thought(knew)otherwise. In his book published in 1993, Michael Ignatieff referred to a group of Ukrainian Canadians protesting Soviet atrocites outside a Bolshoi ballet performance back in the 1960s as “strange and pathetic people” and has yet to retract that statement. Other communist apologists dismiss such people as “Ukrainian nationalists.” (Imagine being vilified for being a Canadian nationalist.)
As one of those Ukrainian Canadians, I can certainly empathize with those who recognize the Muslim threat and this parallel with the Nazis that Kate has drawn.
Similar parallels have been occurring regularly all along, though, most recently in Rwanda and Darfur. But they’ve been ignored in the same way as communist and nazi atrocities and the threat they carry have been ignored. Today, we’re more pre-occuppied with whether or not certain cartoons should be published than with finding effective ways to stop Islamofascism. Somehow, the cartoons don’t seem to be doing the trick, but we still devote most of our time and mental resources to arguments over the right(and rightness) to publish them.
It makes you wonder what it takes for people to recognize, and stop, true evil.
Isn’t your assertion that “the vast majority of German Canadians…held no Nazi sympathies” contradicted by the passage you quoted in which we learn that Mr. Ausburn could find very few German-Canadian supporters? I honestly don’t know what proportion of German-Canadians supported Hitler, but as for Germans living in Germany, I would have thought that Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners should have put to rest claims such as those of that CJunk fellow you quoted that, “very few people were real Nazis”, and “the majority just sat back and let it happen.”
So, if you want to believe that a charismatic personality cult led Germans astray, go ahead, but the same cannot be said of Islam. After all, as we all know, jihad is right there in the book — that perfect book of which a copy exists in heaven itself. That book will always be there, calling to the self-described moderate, calling him to greater piety than this decadent, Western, secular life he leads.
Winston Churchill said, “the Hun (German) is either at your throat or at your feet”. That worry is at an end, but I think it will remain true of Islam, for as long as it survives unreformed.
“It wasn’t Libyan police killing secularists it was Libyan police killing extremists.”
An eight year old boy was shot in the face at close range and died in Pakistan, Jose.
“if there is one thing that history has taught us ,it’s that we don’t learn from history”
Mark Steyn
Gray was writing about German Canadians in Winnipeg at the time. My comments were in general – benefit of the doubt, if nothing more.
I’ll add – there is a vast difference between being part of the silent majority who disapprove but won’t raise a finger to oppose – and taking an active stance against extremism. The same was surely true of Ausborn’s inability to muster active support.
Kate,
I fear you took a bridge too far with that last post.
Germany was one country. The “Muslim world” is several, including one that is occupied by virulent, vicious, violent non-Muslims.
And I don’t mean Palestine – I mean Communist Chinese-occupied East Turkestan.
Additionally, you (and nearly everyone else) make the same mistake about Islam by treating it as one sectless religion. Sure, the arguments between the Sunni and Shia are well known, but how many are aware of the Sunni’s Sufi branch, a mystical, non-violent version that took hold in Central Asia (and thus explains why it took the rabidly Wahabbist, Saudi-funded Pakistani military to foist a terrorist regime on Afghanistan).
Would the Muslim world choose terrorism if it could choose freely? I don’t know. It hasn’t in Iraq (for those not paying attention, the Iran-tainted parties are becoming more isolated, and may get frozen out of the new govt. there altogether) or Afghanistan (again, don’t forget the Pakis’ role). Palestine’s “election” was a farce – all of the major parties contending for power were terrorists – and in the rest of the Muslim world, dictators silence secular democrats while allowing radical Islamists to flourish in order to scare the West (save, of course, for Iran, where the radicals have held power for years).
Granted my friendship with the East Turkestan government in exile (and my knowledge of Communist China’s ties to the terrorists) gives me a different perspective than most. Still, I’m not prepared to give up on the Muslim world. We must win the war on terror (and the Cold War with Communist China, of which the war on terror is a part) as much for its sake as for our own.
D.J. McGuire
Info on East Turkestan: http://china-e-lobby.blogspot.com/2005/09/on-war-on-terror-part-ii-east_10.html
Info on Communist China’s support for terrorism: http://china-e-lobby.blogspot.com/2005/09/on-war-on-terror-part-iii-communist_11.html
In Baghdad…this morning,,22 murdered and 30 injured..car bomb by remote control.
There coming its just a matter of time.
This is why the US and allies are in Iraq. A proactive approach to solving future problems and short term preventing massacres of the sort by Saddam.
If the west does anything it is wrong. Years later, when nothing was done we are castigated for not doing anything.
The only solution is to do what is right and damn the whiners, lefties and appeasers.
When years later the left still believes the lies, still believes the liars despite a preponderance of evidence, this just shows we have to do what is right. We will never answer the lefties to their satisfaction so move on without them. Remember all the communists and socialists from the west who apologised for defending the Soviet Union for all those years?
enough
Kate:
Your post is right on. I was in Holland in 1939 when Hitler was in power, about to invade us. I remember the propaganda, the apathy, the excuses: “Hitler will respect our neutrality” shortly before we were overrun. I remember the Nazis in Holland, the quislings, those who told us that we were like the Germans, “brothers”. I remember the pacifists who ridiculed Holland’s (feeble) defense efforts. I’ve heard it all before and it scares me how naive people are today.
I maintain to this day that it was the pacifists who were responsible for the harm that WWII caused. Churchill was right: “If you want peace, be prepared for war.” If the European countries had been well enough armed and prepared for Hitler he would not have gotten away with what he did.
I think Islam is a much greater threat than Nazism was, because we can no longer watch the war from the comfort of our homes, they are already here among us and, like Hitler, they have a plan of world domination.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Found on LGF- click the “32” to view original source.
#32
astroturf 2/20/2006 08:42PM PST
I continue to be astonished at the large number of friends, relatives, and acquaintances who just don’t really believe we’re in a desperate conflict with powerful opponents. They insist it’s just a political ruse by President Bush to sway public opinion. I think I’ve come up with a way to convince them to take the situation more seriously.
Generally speaking, the Loony Liberal Left (LLL) acknowledges that the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a bad bunch of people with a long history of supremacist ideology, intolerance of people they believe to be inferior, and a predisposition to violence. Tell your liberal friend to imagine a world in which there are a billion Klansmen, they control some 60 countries, have huge coffers of petrodollars, and they are seeking nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Now, having set up the situation, ask your friend to imagine that he is a black person. See if that analogy helps any.
Evan “What about Iran?!?!?!?! haven’t they been striving to whipe isreal off the map?”
Disturbing rhetoric to be sure. If Iran makes a move on Israel or is about to get a nuclear weapon I’d support taking action. We may be at that latter point now.
The west enjoys a terrific firepower advantage over Iran. Heck even Israel does. Canada defending Israel from Iran is a bit like Belgium defending the United States from Canada. Sure if it really comes to that but it’s not going to is it.
For examples where radical islamic terrorists have lost ground in the last 20 years I list Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Afghanistan Syria and possibly even Pakistan. The only state where I see them getting stronger is in ….Iraq. Hmmm… I wonder why that is?
Surly “After all, as we all know, jihad is right there in the book — that perfect book of which a copy exists in heaven itself.”
Osama Bin Laden isn’t a religous traditionalist he’s a 20th century intellectual. Blaming Islam for his actions is a bit like blaming the excesses off Stalin on the secular state (oh wait some of you already do that – oh what hope do I have!)
Professor “Two blatant lies”
Huh. Since I’m stating my opinion I assume you mean to say that I a) Hold a different opinion and am misintrepreting it. Or b) The future is preterdemined and its not even worth debating it.
Both are ridiculous positions. If its something else please show your work.
Wether the Bush doctrine will be sucessful or not is still within the land of opinion. You can’t say that its been sucessful until such a time that Iraq becomes a stable state that isn’t a hotbed of terrorism. A perfectly reasonable person including many high level military commanders that have been involved have admitted that its a fiasco. The debate is definitely still on as much as the war’s supporters would like to pretend otherwise.
Debris Trail “Marginalization of the Islamo-fascists is the job of the “peaceful” majority… if they dont’ do it, the job will fall unto “rough men willing to do violence on our behalf”.”
Ok now we get to the nut of it. Based on our situation right now what force would you endorse. Invade and occupy Iran? Expell tens of millions of law abiding productive citizens in Western countries because we think as many of 10 of them might be violent criminals. What exactly would you do? This is something you all just dance around. Your sound like a bunch of people trying to pysch yourselves up for something even though you haven’t really decided what and how you’ll be fighting.
Kate- “The same was surely true of Ausborn’s inability to muster active support.”
Canada declared war on Germany the day after the UK did. And it mobilized quickly and impressively for a country of its size I might add. Nazi sympathizers or no this nation did the right thing in WW2.
Hmmm, after thinking it over some more I’m gonna change my mind. Last week had another “islam-cartoon” post up and a commentor named “Norma” posted a few times declaring how OBL and his followers weren’t really good Muslims, but fanatic nutjobs. However she also went on a rant about the evil Jews and how horrible the USA is. Sorry, but it doesn’t matter how “moderate” a muslim says they are, how moderate they appear to us or how moderate they appear to themselves – they all seem to have this fanatic anti-Israel-anti-USA-kill-all-the-Jews-and-Americans obsession that continues to amaze me. If they could get that one small item off their agenda most of the rest of the world probably wouldn’t see them as the nutjobs they portray themselves as! Muslims are their own worst enemies!
backhoe “Now, having set up the situation, ask your friend to imagine that he is a black person. See if that analogy helps any.”
I know plenty of Muslims. None of them are klansmen. This analogy is full of enough hot air youd could hitch a gondola to it and fly it to all sorts of crazy places.
Herman: Thanks for your real life story. I was just reading some Ludwig von Mises and he made the point that anti-capitalist British government interventionsim during the 30s was a big factor in the unpreparedness for WWII — that the attention was put on curbing “war profiteers” rather than on war preparedness.
This comment should be a wake up call for all of us, Kate. Thank-you for posting it.
Jose, who said that the German people were all mostly Nazi’s has not read the history of the twentieth century with any comprehension. Germany was bankrupt following WWI, productive land was seded to victors; people were unemployed, homeless, and hopeless(eg. they could see no way out) then along came Hitler who offered pride, a job, eventual prosperty AND vengence (on the ruthlss victors of WWI, people hate to be humiliated) through military might (full blame for WWI was unjustly placed on the Axis powers and they were given the bill for all the damages – called ‘reparations’ by the victors).
Russia, another brutal Totalitarian State set up in the twentieth century, was run by a religious fanatic (Rasputian) who ruled via a rather uninspired Tsar (Nicolas II) when the Russia people , bled dry by a unending blood bath fighting WWI, when Lenin took over offering people ‘peace’ and ownership of the land that they had worked for centuries.
Both Germany and Russia were bankrupt when the people allowed tyrants to enslave them. In both countries the people were thinking they would at last realize some Justice for themselves through a strong man and a strong state.
When 1939 rolled along, Stalin and Hitler signed a non agression pact because they were on the same side – they both wanted absolute control over the people of the world. Tyrants of any stripe are the same and the ‘culture’ needed for sucess of intolerance, war, torture, racism etc. etc. (all attributes of Totalitarian states) is – economic control – the rest follows-like lambs to the slaughter people will give up their human rights and with their own the rights of all others for economic prosperity and the small ‘power’ (over themselves and others they would like to boss around) they think they will milk from being onside with the ‘winners’.
Kate, your post illistrates the profound effect ‘folding to support the “they who say”‘ has on civilizations. I once read a book called “Time no Longer” by Taylor Cauldwell that tells a fictionalized story of what happened in Germany prior to WWII. It restated your post.
BTW smoking tobacco was banned by Hiter as one of his first moves into the lives of the defeated German populace. He said it was the ‘habit of Jews, whores and indians’ and therefore would not be tolerated in Puritanical Germany. He sent out Jack -booted silly servants (as Canada and the US do) to make sure that it did not happen. People in Germany, like the people here; Agreed.
Great post, having met a few Poles who were there, I wholly believe the man, as for the so called historian, free speech is for sure the foundation of democracy but as it happens he is a bitter liar, I dont think photoshop was quite there in 1945, ive seen the photos, read the stories, heard intrviews, it happened, if he was a historian he knew 100% (as any honest soul would) so he is a liar, perhaps the particular law used is a bit simplistic but how practicle is sueing the creep for libel or defamation on behalf of all injured parties or stick the creep away.Should the islamic crowd manage to proove that the content of the cartoons was false (not like that is possible) then there is, in a free society the law to deal with it, we sure do have a problem!!
Goebbels himself could not have portrayed the situation to greater advantage for anything his boss might have had in mind.
First, you create an enemy whom you portray as evil, ruthless, devious and a threat to your very way of life and/or civilization. He doesn’t even have to be real, you only have to describe him. Don’t worry about truth, facts or causes (root or other,) half-truths or lies will do. Then, in the name of fighting that enemy, you do whatever you want to, unhampered by counter-productive humane or legal considerations. Criticism you call unpatriotic, and mobilize the power of the state against internal opposition. If what you have in mind needs war, get on with it, either proffering a casus belli, or justifying it as defensive, preventive or proactive.
Sounds terribly familiar, doesn’t it. But it is not merely the recent history of Germany, nor the likely future of Muslim fanaticism. It is the current history of the USA under George W. Bush. Kate, you are looking for fascism in the wrong direction. And it has nothing to do with the putative Left.
Screw that, blow up the fanatics… do unto them, as they would do to us… and fervantly hope that not to many innocents are in the way when we pull the trigger.
Still gotta get them. They will never stop, they will never give up, and they will continue to kill their own childern in their efforts to kill us.
So the only way to deal with it is to kill them first, and let them take the “Speed Pass” door to meet their God.