Nightmare continued: Disunited States of America

By David Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net)

Editor's Note: Petteys is on a dystopian prophetic tear. Here is the sequel to his recent progressive nightmare post.

The golden age for ancient Israel was the united kingdom under King David and his son Solomon. It lasted less than a 100 years. It fractured when Solomon’s son tried to impose an unreasonable agenda on the Northern Kingdoms. In analogy, has not the American golden age been the last 100 years of a united and prosperous United States? But are not the pieces in place for its dissolution over the next couple of generations?

The progressives have taught our children that the United States has been built on racism, genocide and oppression, and maybe the world would be better off without it. The progressives have spent the last generation balkanizing the nation: rich against poor, men against women, ethnic strife, victimology, and entitlement.

Secularism along with a “higher loyalty" to all humanity and mother earth, undermining and ridiculing Americanism and patriotism, has become the established quasi-religion. And if the secular vision for the future is only to enjoy life as comfortably as possible, who is willing to die for anything?

Suppose the current drive for amnesty and open borders succeeds. It’s not hard to envision a California legislature, dominated by Hispanics, declaring themselves an autonomous region with a special relationship to Mexico. And if they passed laws to do the following:

** To fly only the Mexican flag

** Public schools to teach only in Spanish

** Only Mexican history to be taught

** To prohibit Federal withholding by California companies, and instead mandate its diversion to the state

** Seizure of all Federal Facilities by the California militia (basically a California Hispanic Army)

... does anyone think a Hillary Clinton, who had spent the first four years of her administration dismantling the American military, would send the 82nd Airborne to seize Sacramento?

More than likely she’d “negotiate”. And as the negotiations dragged on for years, the California secession would become a fait accompli. It would result in an arrested tax flow to Washington, but not welfare checks from Washington.

With this precedent, there would be nothing to keep little islands of Islamic Republics forming in Michigan and Minnesota, an independent Mormon region in Utah, and so on. In another generation or two, the United States would be no more: only a balkanized and warring North American continent. The weath, power and prosperity of a United States only a distant memory of old people whose broken hearts remember it well.

It would also render a squabbling North America incapable of dealing with any external threat, such as a modern 30 million man, nuclear-equipped Chinese Army.

The Progressives had better start learning Chinese, unless the Chinese decide to exterminate and repopulate the entire continent, which they could easily do.

Can Muhammad and Jefferson coexist?

(Andrews in the Denver Post and on Townhall.com) Can a good Muslim be a good American? Brian, a constitutional scholar, put the question to Michael, a national security expert, as we passed the Washington office of Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim to serve there. Ellison’s decision to be sworn in on the Quran still echoes controversially. Holy war proclaimed against the United States in the name of Islam by Osama bin Laden in 1996 was not taken seriously until his terrorists struck here in 2001, shouting Allah’s name as they died. Even since then, President Bush has insisted Islam is a religion of peace and the global jihad is a perversion. But is it? Coloradans need to ask ourselves.

Almost one percent of our US population are now Muslims, about 2.35 million in all. Most people know some, and we find them decent folks, pleasant to be with, no less than any other religious group. Unfortunately, that’s beside the point for Brian’s question to Michael.

Muslims can obviously be Americans. More and more are, by birth, immigration, or conversion. The qualifier “good” is where it gets uncertain. If a good American is one who lives in fidelity to our nation’s founding principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and a good Muslim is one who lives in fidelity to his God-given scripture, the Quran, the concern is whether you can do both.

If you can’t, American liberty might wither in a world where Islamic dynamism is high, Western self-confidence is low, borders are porous, and multicultural tolerance reigns supreme. We’d face a nervous future where individuals must choose between being loyal citizens or Quranic literalists. Nobody wants that, but wishing it away won’t do. We must look at the evidence and have the conversation.

Researchers William J. Federer and Robert Spencer are troubled by the evidence they’ve found. Federer’s well-documented book, “What Every American Needs to Know about the Quran: A History of Islam and the United States” (Amerisearch, 2007), questions the compatibility of the two belief systems. How can Muhammad’s teaching that women and unbelievers, especially Jews, are inferior square with Jefferson’s “all created equal”? Spencer raises similar concerns in “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam” (Regnery, 2005).

By some interpretations, the Quran forbids a good Muslim from giving any allegiance whatsoever to the nation-state, and hence from obeying civil laws made by any secular government. Sharia, the religious laws proceeding from Allah’s books and clergy, alone warrant obedience according to this strain of Islam.

No problem, says the optimist, we’ll simply encourage the less absolute and more democratically-minded strain of Islam here in the good old USA. We’ll do as Australian premier John Howard did and tell the extremists to embrace our values or leave. Only we won’t; all our secularized instincts forbid dictating to any group that way.

We’re stuck with the hard reality that “good Muslim” isn’t something externally defined, it is fought out among the faithful themselves. And recent history, from the persecution of Salmaan Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the cartoon riots to bin Laden’s attacks on his own Saudi homeland, shows how ruthlessly the Quranic literalists are determined to crush the moderates.

Last week I was with Muhammad Ali Hasan, the Coloradan who founded Muslims for America. His organization, according its website, “has zero tolerance for any kind of terrorism, in following the example left by Prophet Muhammad.” Hear, hear.

Clearly this young businessman and patriot is a good American. But is he also a good Muslim? Of that we unbelievers cannot judge. Some of his fellow believers would say that unless he embraces jihad and seeks the restored caliphate, he is not. They might even threaten his life to make their point – and therein lies the great challenge of this century.

Mindless legalism hurts war effort

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) In speaking with men who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the common theme is “We are having to fight with our hands tied." Why would this be? I experienced the same phenomenon in Vietnam. Without a doubt it is owing to organizations like the ACLU , the National Lawyer’s Guild and a hostile mainstream media who use adverse publicity and our legal system to harass the military while it’s trying to do its job.

It’s time we recognized these groups as enemies of our democracy and our way of life. We will NEVER be able to defend our interests and yet please the lawyers and the media moguls who are working with our opponents. It’s time we stopped trying. In fact, what we need is sweeping legal protection for our troops.

We have allowed our concept of the “rule of law” to grow to a tangled thicket of legalisms that would prohibit even the very survival of our society. It’s time to prune them all away and restore prudent basic common sense.

There is this concept of “aiding and abetting the enemy” as very close to treason. This is what these groups are committing. Aren't there laws that can be invoked to shut down these groups and to convict and imprison its members. Ask yourself these questions:

* Are these terrorist organizations signatories to the Geneva Convention? If not, why do we need to grant terrorists the rights?

* What rules of engagement are imposed on Al Qaeda? If none, why do we impose them on ourselves to try to please our detractors?

* How have these terrorist groups treated their prisoners? (Do orange jumpsuits and snuff videos on Al Jazeera ring a bell?)

* When was the last time the ACLU or the mainstream media expressed outrage at the dozens of murdered bodies that turn up daily in Iraq?

* When was the last time the ACLU and the media expressed outrage at the murder and mutilation of our kidnapped soldiers? How does their reaction compare with their outrage over Abu Graib, when prisoners merely had their pants removed instead of their eyes, tongues and heads?

It’s time the American people recognized that if this continues, the American democracy with its precious gift of liberty and prosperity will be completely lost forever.

'Courage gone,' saith the prophet

(By John Andrews) Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the prophetic voice who helped bring down Soviet communism, gave one of the most important warnings of our time in his address at Harvard, June 1978. It is required reading for anyone who cares about America's backbone. I was reminded of it last weekend on the radio when Dr. Jack Wheeler mentioned a lack of "civilizational confidence" among US elites, and when Nathan Chambers quoted Solzhenitsyn's "decline in courage" passage (part of the Harvard address) before a Tom Tancredo campaign speech in Aurora. With my urging that you read the address in full, here is that passage:

The decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.

Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.

And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

So ends the excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address, June 1978. Click here to read the address in full.

Dems devoid of vision & leadership

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) Throughout American history, strong leadership has saved the country: Washington at Valley Forge, Lincoln in the dark days of the Civil War. These leaders had a conviction of the right thing to do and stuck to it! But what about present leadership in the Democratic Party?

Representative Pelosi and Senator Reid continually say “The American people have spoken” as their signal to declare defeat in Iraq. They appear to dwell on the short term domestic political aspects, and seem completely unaware of the effect such a step would have on American standing in the world. What would Hugo Chavez, or the leaders of Iran, China, Russia and North Korea think and do if we shamefully abandon Iraq? Would American guarantees to any ally be worth the paper it’s printed on after this?

Evidently, the Democratic Party cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, good or evil: only what’s popular. This is why the Democrats are in such a moral quandary: the vote determines truth! But if you’d voted in the middle ages as to whether the earth was flat or not, what would the vote have been? And if Washington had taken a poll of his miserable troops in Valley Forge, would the American Revolution have succeeded? And do you not get mutually exclusive results relying on a focus group to determine your action? Does not everyone want more government services yet lower taxes? A stronger military but no draft?

The Democratic Party apparently has no vision for America: only polls and focus groups. “And with no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18).