Master CraftsMon

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1

Let's look. The Cartoon Jihad has legs. It's continuing. It's claiming more victims as it goes along.

Let me recap a minute about the train of events that got us here. An author of children's book, Kare Bluitgen, decided to write a children's book about Mohammed. His goal was interfaith understanding. He could not easily find artists to illustrate the children's book. The artists he approached were convinced that they would be killed if they did the book. He finally got an artist to do the art work anonymously.

Enter the Jutland Post. The cultural editor, Flemming Rose, heard about the story and was appalled. He asked 40 artists to come up with cartoons about Mohammed. He got 12 to respond. The paper then published an article about self-censorship. That is, they made the point that freedom of the press must be fought for in order to remain a right.

The Founding Fathers of this country always made this point as well. Rights must be exercised or they are not rights. The individual is given rights by the Creator, BUT it is the individual NOT the government who makes sure rights are protected. No, that's true. If you look at the Bill of Rights, they are rights that the government cannot take. They are not rights that the government is required to defend. Individuals can request that the government defend their rights, but the government is not required to defend them. The government is not supposed to infringe the rights spelled out in OUR Bill of Rights.

So the Jutland Post published the cartoons with the commentary on September 30, 2005. Nothing really happened for a few months.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. The leading imam in Denmark, Ahmed Abu-Laban, was upset by the cartoons. He tried everything he could to rouse his followers to protest the cartoons. He even filed a suit claiming these were blasphemy. In Denmark they still have a law on the books that allows the government to prosecute someone for blasphemy. The police investigated and decided there was no case. So Ahmed Abu-Laban was REALLY upset. He perceived that Muslims in Denmark were being disrespected. He and some of his fellow imams toured the Middle East in late December of 2005 and early January of 2006. In their baggage they had a 43 page booklet showing the cartoons and various other messages that had come to them denigrating their religion. In addition the booklet had three other cartoons that had been FAXed to Ahmed Abu-Laban. These three were NEVER published in the Jutland Post. However, everyone who read the booklet assumed they were.[1]

So in late January, 2006, some imams with an axe to grind with the West issued fatwas, religious rulings, that Denmark had disrespected Mohammed.

Syria had a problem with the West. The Syrian government had allegedly assassinated a Lebanese politician. It looks like they used the cartoon jihad as a means of diverting attention from the investigation into their misdeeds. The Danish and Norwegian embassies have been burned. Condoleezza Rice has issued her own fatwa saying that the United States does not believe that the Syrian mobs were spontaneous. She contends that NOTHING happens in Syria without government backing.

Same thing in Iran. The Iranian government makes the case that THEIR mobs are spontaneous. No one is buying it. Iran is a totalitarian state. No mob forms unless the government allows it to form.

In other parts of the world, there are supposed to be spontaneous riots. I'm having problems with those riots as well, because of the signs they are showing to the cameras. The signs are in... English. Doesn't that bother you? It should. Here are a set of people who have a very low literacy rate in Arabic and they have signs in English that are exactly right for the cameras. That... should bother you. Look, I am not saying that all Muslims are illiterate. I am saying that the signs came from somewhere. They had to be made. Someone had to make them and hand them out. The organization that did that was not doing it on the fly.

As far as I am concerned, the whole problem with these riots is not that the participants are offended, but do they, the mobs, believe they have the right to veto any criticism of Islam... anywhere in the world? By their existence, mobs have been intimidating. Mob rule has always been a tactic to achieve the goals of a movement. Right now that tactic is being deployed to silence debate about the underlying questions on the War on Terror.

Newt Gingrich in his new book, "Winning the future: a 21st century Contract with America", makes the point that the members of radical Islam are more accurately called the Irreconcilables. Here is why. Radical Islam has as its primary goal a new Caliphate which will rule over all the world. Radical Islam cannot and will not accept anything short of total victory over the West. Every human on this planet must accept that Islam is in fact the One True Faith. Only if all humans are killed, converted to Islam, made second class citizens or enslaved, can the world be put to rights. It is impossible to reconcile with someone who holds such a belief.

Let me give you an example. Sayyid Qutb came to Greeley, Colorado, from Egypt in 1948 to attend Colorado State College of Education. Instead of seeing what was there, a small, straight laced, cattle town with a college, he saw a pit of depravity where the sexes mixed unsupervised, no real commitment to religion and a place with no appreciation of the arts. He hated everything we stood for, because we did not agree with how he thought the world should work.

If you are sitting there going, so what, some guy from Egypt hated the United States, big deal. It turns out it is. Sayyid Qutb wrote a book called Milestones which laid out the underlying rationale for radical Islam. His book has influenced Osama bin Lauden and almost all the present leaders of radical Islam. The book also lays out the method whereby Muslims can take over the world. The Irreconcilables have taken it up as their blueprint for world domination.

I recognize that by saying that I sound crazy. I mean, how many times has James Bond been called in to thwart a plan by some evil genius to take over the world. Plans to take over the world are by definition relegated to the realm of fiction. The problem here is that the Irreconcilables believe that they can do it. They believe that God is on their side and thus they cannot fail. If you are out there and you believe that we can be reconciled with radical Islam, I doubt your sanity. Over and over again, I have heard critiques of America like the one from Sayyid Qutb given by members of radical Islam. If the Irreconcilables can look at America and see only a pit of depravity that has to be cauterized, then we cannot get them to leave us alone unless we defeat them.

Very few newspapers in the United States have published the cartoons from the Jutland Post. The United States newspapers make all kinds of excuses as to why they do not publish the cartoons, but it boils down to fear and self-interest.

Shakespeare wrote a play called Hamlet. The play was a dreary thing about a Danish prince who had to make a decision. A hard decision. In Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet says in one of the most memorable soliloquies in the English language:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

I didn't do a very good job reciting Shakespeare, because I am not that good at anything.

I was struck with how much this soliloquy fits the present situation. When you strip away all the posturing by our media, the members of the media are frightened. They fear death. Just as with Hamlet, they are saying that they WILL "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" instead of taking "up arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing... end them". Why? Because the media cannot take up arms and end the oppression of the Irreconcilables.

When we as a civilization gave newspapers a special place in our society, we expected them to inform us about the issues of the day. In short, we as a society have an implied contract with newspapers. Right now, the issue before us is the cartoons. By my standards, newspapers in general and the Eagle in particular have failed to live up to their implied contract with the American people.

Yet we ask too much of our newspapers. Print media is a dying industry. Towns used to have more than one newspaper. Cities, like New York have twenty or thirty newspapers, each with a specific audience. Nowadays newspapers are just a means of making a living. The editors have obligations to the stockholders of the newspaper to guard the lives of their employees and of the buildings where the newspaper is printed. Newspapers, like the Eagle, pay little to their employees. The Eagle has a high turnover rate. Employees of the Eagle move to other towns to get on with their careers in a dying industry. If an employee at the Eagle were offered a position in the PR department at McDonalds, why should they not take it? Surely the job would pay more and, after all, journalism is just a job nowadays. It is not a vocation. It is not a calling. It is just a method of making money. Journalism is just a method of passing the time between graduation from college... and retirement.

Just as we would never dream of asking McDonalds employees to die for the company, so we should not expect members of the Eagle staff to put their lives on the line for something as silly as freedom of the press. I mean, it's just a set of cartoons published in a little newspaper in a town in Denmark about the size of Bryan-College Station. I doubt very seriously that the Jutland Post has a circulation any bigger than the Eagle.

Would Donnis Baggett be stupid enough to have done as Flemming Rose and tried to address the issue of self-censorship where Islam is concerned? Of course not. The Eagle has covered the Iraq War too closely. All who work at the Eagle have seen or heard what happens to members of the press who dare confront the adherents of radical Islam. We have too many of our local citizens who have been to Iraq and come back with stories of what it is like over there, fighting the jihadis. Too many of the Aggies have come back missing legs and arms. No REAL journalist would want to do that. My God, journalism is just a job. If they wanted to fight in the War on Terror, members of the Eagle staff would have signed up to go overseas and fight in the military. The very idea that the staff of the Eagle should have to confront straight on the evil that is radical Islam is just... silly.

Plus all at the Eagle know what happens to journalists who confront the bullies who dress themselves up in the clothes of Muslim victimhood. Why the Eagle could be sued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for showing disrespect for Islam, if they dared confront the issue of self-censorship. If Clear Channels Communications cannot stand up to CAIR, why should the Eagle even try? I mean, the corporation who owns the Eagle would just cave at the first whiff of a lawsuit. The corporation is in it for the money, just as the employees at the Eagle are in the newspaper business for the money. Why should they put themselves in financial jeopardy just to... do much of anything? The shareholders of the corporation demand that the publisher of the Eagle optimize profits, not generate bad PR. It's just a silly idea to expect the eagle to step up and enter this debate.

You know, of course, that Flemming Rose of the Jutland Post was fired by the corporation who owns the paper. Nope... Nope... I was mistaken. He was put on indefinite unpaid leave. No one would dare fire someone in the midst of a firestorm like the Jutland Post is involved in... What? You didn't hear about that. The Iranians deny that the Holocaust that claimed 6 million Jews did not occur. The Iranian government is sponsoring a contest for the best cartoons making fun of the Holocaust. Well, Flemming Rose was going to publish some of cartoons about the Holocaust and show why they were evil. He was immediately purged. It is just SOOooOo politically incorrect to deny the Holocaust. My God, he could have accidentally hurt the feelings of the Jews on top of hurting the feelings of the Muslims.

With examples like this of course only a fool would take a strong stance for freedom of the press when dealing with cartoons.

I would point out to you that in 1836, it was kind of stupid to defend the Alamo to the last man. William Travis drew a line in the sand at the Alamo and invited the members of his command to commit themselves to die to the last man rather than surrender to the Mexicans. The Mexicans under Santa Anna were much put upon. The gringos had shown no respect to the Mexicans and Santa Anna was there to remind them that they had sworn some oaths to Mexico. The Texans were fighting to restore the Constitution of 1824. As I said, dying to the last man at the Alamo was kind of a stupid idea, because the Alamo was not strategically important. Surrendering to the Mexicans after a spirited defense should have been what Travis and David Bowie did.

Because the Alamo held up the Mexican for a thirteen days, Sam Houston was able to get his troops and equipment together and fight a month later at San Jacinto. The Alamo fell on March 6, 1836. San Jacinto ended the War of Texas Independence on April 21, 1836. If Travis and the others had not died to the last man at the Alamo, the war could have gone on for years. By making a stand at the beginning of major hostilities, the Texans forestalled a long bitter war.

Today, we have entered into a war that spans thirty to fifty years. George Bush said this to the American people in his speech of September 21, 2001. Most people ignored that clear warning that the Irreconcilables would not be defeated quickly. Too many people in this country have deluded themselves with the idea that the Irreconcilables are fighting for a cause where they can be appeased.

Rudyard Kipling said it best in a poem called Dane-geld:

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night---we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to says:

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

The Irreconcilables are not asking just for our money. They are asking for our freedom. They are asking that we admit that they are superior to us AND that we will adhere to their rules whether we become Muslims or not. As I said before, the Irreconcilables will not give up until all opposition is killed, converted to Islam, made second class citizens or enslaved. To believe otherwise is silliness. Pay not danegeld at all or you will rue the day you did.

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