One probable outcome of the emergence of knife wielding jihadis on British streets will be an increase in British people arming themselves as well. Of course, this will be treated as a bigger threat than the jihadis by the state, but one might speculate how many unarmed people would have been killed and wounded if the jihadis had not chosen to attack in well protected central London but rather some part of the country where armed policeman are few and far between.
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British people will start arming themselvesJune 4th, 2017 |
 160 comments to British people will start arming themselves |
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I hope so.
But the problem is that the cops will be peeing their pants to bring down and make an example of anyone who dares to do so to discourage the rest.
If you are old enough get a walking stick ( and be trained in its use–merely having a weapon without having some skills in using it is little help). Impact weapons are the easiest to carry. A heavy duty cop-style metal torch is a good idea.
Only guns can beat guns tho’–21 foot rule not withstanding.
The difficulty here of course is that the probability of encountering a Muslim nutter with a weapon is infinitely smaller than encountering the police.
From their perspective, the police see the problem of ‘civilians defending themselves’ as a far bigger threat than Muslim nutters, therefore arresting a civilian for going about armed with anything more than a teaspoon is a priority.
The police are agents of the state and whilst they might come in handy during an attack like last nights on normal days they are more of a threat to the freedom and liberty of you and I than the terrorists are.
Therefore the only sensible option seems to be to go about your business as normal and remember that you’re more likely to win a million quid on the lottery than get killed or seriously injured by a terrorist (Islamic nutcase or not)
Sure, I would prefer to ensure my own personal safety with a nice, M1911 pistol or a decent Glock at my back, but I’m not allowed to do that am I?
When you’re disarmed by your own government because of your own governments fear of you, who is the real threat to your life and liberty?
HINT: It’s not the guy with the beard.
Quite.
Exactly why you will never see an attack like this in the open street in a place like Dearborn, MI, a city with a large Middle-Eastern population and more-then-its-fair-share of Islamist nutters. Because the chance of coming across an armed citizen is actually quite high. Even though the nutter wants to die and go to meet Allah, his death at the hands of a citizen would send the wrong message.
These attacks only occur in places where the public is (effectively) powerless to respond. That’s the point of them – to reinforce the message that ‘we can attack you at any time, your puny state is powerless to prevent it, and it prefers you to be hapless victims. But submit to us, and this will stop.’ Armed citizens putting a stop to such things shows that there is a different way, and that you do NOT have to submit to make it stop. And that is a key message, because once you pay the Dane-geld, you can never get rid of the Dane.
llater,
llamas
I just saw on BBC TV news a senior police lady, by the name of Cressida Dick, praising the courage of those who ran towards the attacks, and who joined in against the attackers. Praised their courage, etc. It sounded like a bit of a deviation from the usual “leave it to us” line. Maybe she’ll be reprimanded. But she did say it.
Her name rings a bell – wasn’t she OIC of the de Menezes cock-up? Would have thought that would have been a career-ender. But perhaps her gender points outweigh her other attributes.
llater,
llamas
The attacks would have been stopped if the police had been armed, at least in the US, as the Ohio State University attack showed.
On the other hand, just who were the cops on the beat? In majority Muslim London, were they (sympathetic) Muslims?
Is is possible that two world wars devastated the European gene pool?
Why not just nuke the terrorist enablers in Saudi Arabia.
Notice how the snAckbars never attack the Saudi owned areas of London.
Bob, Muslims are very much a minority in London.
Also, the attack was stopped when armed policemen shot the attackers.
Brian Micklethwait (June 4, 2017 at 11:26 am), I saw that too. I’ve also seen some web praise of those who (it is said) fought back with chairs and suchlike improvised weapons. And I saw David Davis praising the “real heroism” of those who ran towards, not away from, attackers with explosives vests (fake ones, but, as he pointed out, the civilians he was praising did not know that).
It will be a long hard slog to prise even some of our rulers from even some of their PC mantras, but events will (sadly) be on our side even as their prejudices will not be. Asking the usual suspects whether they still demand running and hiding should be done whenever opportunity offers.
According to reports that I’ve read, the Met’s counter-terror chief, Mark Rowley said that the losers were confronted and shot by police “within eight minutes of the first call.”
One of the first maxims that I encountered on moving to Texas was “When seconds count, the police are minutes away.” This would appear to confirm that.
As I recall, illicit handguns are not that difficult to obtain in the UK. There’s another maxim over here: “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.”
Yup. Cressida Dick was the commander during the de Menezes shooting and to this day I can’t understand why she wasn’t fired for that. 😐
It might be because she’s a doubly-protected class in the Met as both female and lesbian. As of 10th April 2017 she is the head of the Metropolitan Police, although this has become an essentially a political appointment as much as anything in recent years as the tenure if Sir Ian Blair (now Baron Blair of Broughton) demonstrated.
As to her operational effectiveness, I cannot say.
It’s worth noting that the mass attacks of whatever sort that have occurred in the US and led to casualties have, without exception, occurred n ‘gun free zones’. From the aircraft on 9/11 to the school shootings before and since, to all the other attacks (possible exception: San Bernardino) theaters, schools, many publics spaces are enforced ‘gun free’. And those are natural targets for the nutters.
I encourage those of you in Britain, and elsewhere, to point this out when the arguments begin to happen. A disarmed populace is a defenseless populace.
Not all nutters are Muslim. All nutters are armed or harmless. A populace pseudo-randomly seeded with weaponry is not defenseless and tends to render nutters, armed or not, harmless.
Illicit handguns might not be difficult to obtain (indeed I could purchase them on the dark web and have them delivered in the mail), what is difficult is that possession of ANY firearm without a license carries draconian 5 year minimum tariff.
By making possession an absolute offence, no proof of intent or “mens rea” is required, simply being found with it on your person or on your property is sufficient to get thrown in the pokey for 5 years.
JG – I am aware that it is a strict liability offence, which I consider disgraceful, as I do the application of strict liability to all mala prohibita offences.
Nevertheless, many people might consider five years in chokey to be preferable to certain death. And there’s always the prospect of jury nullification.
The inevitable response of the government will be further restrictions on liberty for all while doing absolutely nothing about the fundamental cause: the continued import of people with belief systems that are in conflict with modern secular civilization.
It seems clear that once Islam reaches a certain percentage of the population, assimilation stops, these primitive beliefs become entrenched and social pathologies proliferate. After all, terror is just the extreme manifestation of a culture rooted in a 1000-year-old past.
Half of the UK’s Muslims are born overseas. There is no net benefit to the country for this migration. It’s patently an awful policy. Eastern Europe knows it. Most Americans realize it. The British, French, Germans and Swedes are lighting candles.
Where to? USA? No thanks, First Amendment is a very nice bulwark that more or less works as intended, and whilst gun laws are great, at least outside major cities (where you really need them), property rights in USA are even worse than UK and ‘justice’ system is nightmarish.
Coincidentally, I was just talking to my brother-in-law about this. I predict that there will be a very bad ethnic cleansing event in London within the next 5 years.
Tolerance can’t be a universal principle. One can’t tolerate people who want to murder you in the streets.
My response to Londoners every time yet another terrorist attack happens there…you elected a muslim mayor…WTF? Are you not aware that Islamic eschatology, in every faction, is world conquest by violence? Why don’t you ask your mayor about this?
On past trends I think it far more likely you will have to apply for a licence, subject to vetting procedures in order to buy a simple kitchen knife.
A few observations.
1) Would someone please tell me what’s so wrong with Donald Trump’s proposal to restrict immigration from some majority-Muslim countries? As a libertarian, I hate writing those words, but believe a continuation of the UK’s current immigration policy is utter madness.
2) You can be sure that if these atrocities were being committed by some fundamentalist Christian sect, it would now be a banned organisation and its leaders would be in prison.
3) The authorities undoubtedly will prosecute those who arm themselves or try to defend themselves. So the other rob is on to something: we need to spread awareness of jury nullification. It’s an old English Common Law concept, dating back centuries, which allows juries to acquit, even when they believe the defendant is guilty as charged. It would also be useful in other areas, like “hate speech” cases.
Well I’m not a fan of this run and hide advice,that’s for sure.
Indeed, Rob, there’s a remarkable contrast between the UK and the Czech Republic on this.
UK govt: Run and hide.
Czech govt: Shoot them yourselves.
à la guerre comme à la guerre
Protect yourself!
On Jury Nullification (in U.S.)
Fully Informed Jury Association: http://fija.org/
Glenn Reynolds, “Nullifying juries more interested in justice than some prosecutors,” 8/6/15, USA Today:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/08/06/jury-nullification-prosecutorial-discretion-column/31124011/
Ancillary to the narrow topic of Jury Nullification, but pertinent to our situation before the Law: Glenn Reynolds, “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime,” 4/2013, 7 pp. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2203713
And the string (with quotation marks) “jury nullification” Volokh turns up more articles. E.g. Ilya Somin for, Orin Kerr against, more, including a piece on New Hampshire’s adoption of a statute allowing jury nullification (I used Duckduckgo.com for the search.)
John Galt wrote:
‘Yup. Cressida Dick was the commander during the de Menezes shooting and to this day I can’t understand why she wasn’t fired for that. 😐
It might be because she’s a doubly-protected class in the Met as both female and lesbian. As of 10th April 2017 she is the head of the Metropolitan Police, although this has become an essentially a political appointment as much as anything in recent years as the tenure if Sir Ian Blair (now Baron Blair of Broughton) demonstrated.’
For some reason, I had it in my mind that she was black. Apparently not, but she still managed to hit 2 out of 3 in the social-justice special-treatment grievance-Olympics trifecta. So not doing too badly there.
So let me get this straight – being OIC of a giant cock-up, which led to the ordered execution of a completely-innocent civilian is now no bar to rising to be the Commissioner of the Met?
I always recall that advancement in the public service in the UK was equal parts of the Peter Principle and the old adage of ‘F*ck up, move up’, but it always used to be that there were some things that would torpedo your career no-matter-what. It would appear that that bar has moved some.
Given that it appears that her career is based in po-mo identity politics and ‘social justice’ principles, look for the civilians who tried to beat back the knife-wielding nutters with chairs and beer glasses to be haled up before the beak on charges of ABH and religiously-motivated hate crimes.
llater,
llamas
I cannot see the UK government doing anything to protect its native citizens. If Theresa May was really serious about preventing terror attacks she would legalize possession of firearms immediately.
of course any sane person would have left Londonistan as soon as they elected an Islamist to rule them, indeed most of the major UK cities are now ruled by Islam.
Captain Capitalism notes that for the most part it is the Left that is getting murdered. In the US: New York – 9/11, government offices, Boston Marathon, a gay Latino bar and so forth. Places where Republicans and Libertarians are endangered species.
In Europe: Nice, Paris, Berlin, London, Manchester and Paris. Why? Well, easy targets, no guns, eloi Left and a government that clearly doesn’t give a shit.
So, enjoy the decline.
How it looks to us here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/britain_surrenders_to_islam.html
I can understand your concern about property rights to some extent, but I think it’s overstated in your mind.
Civil Asset Forfeiture is a problem that is being addressed as it becomes more notorious, and, while the proceeds are alarmingly high, one should remember that the vast bulk of them came from huge drug transactions interrupted. Much of the rest comes from the ongoing war on cash, which seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. In any case, it’s a process that has definitely hit its peak and is now on the downslope.
Eminent domain – well, we have your side of the ocean to thank for that particular tradition. It’s another process that hit its peak already, with the moronic Kelo decision, and we’ve rebounded drastically from that.
Not sure at all where your “and ‘justice’ system is nightmarish” comment comes from. Half of the country thinks we coddle transgressors and don’t lock anyone up until they’ve committed multiple felonies, and the other half thinks we’re locking up too many. Myself, I think we have too many sub-cultures for whom violation of law is their internal sign of proper revolution against the system, and so their young males are not surprisingly overrepresented in our jails, but that’s for them to work out.
In any event, I feel very safe in my property, I know no one who has lost anything to eminent domain or to forfeiture, I’m confident that I and everyone I know is safe from wrongful imprisonment, and I think our justice system still rightfully errs on the side of mercy. I think you’ve overblown some philosophical disputes into practical worries.
(And did you know that you can now carry a weapon in most cities outside of a couple large outliers? More and more, local restrictive firearms laws are giving way to uniform federal law.)
In any case, here’s hoping you feel secure in London, where somewhere around 15% of the population is Muslim. I wouldn’t.
Shillelagh
A couple of responses to Schrodingers’s Dog’s comment at 3:52PM:
1) There is nothing wrong with Trump’s policy, and the 4th Circuit decision was very badly reasoned to the point of irrationality (I’ve read it). (The 4th used to be one of the saner circuits, but Obama managed to pack it with his cronies during his 8 years in office, and they are now a majority. That will change, given time.) The fact that the Supreme Court has granted expedited treatment to the appeal suggests to me that saner heads will prevail, and that we won’t have to wait too long for the result.
2) As to jury nullification, Julie provided some good links, and the FIJA does great work. There is plenty of legal precedent supporting it (going all the way back to trial of William Penn in England in 1670, and on these shores the trial of Peter Zenger in New York in 1735), but judges and prosecutors hate it so it’s difficult to get the word out. And just last week a court in Michigan convicted a man for handing out jury nullification materials, on a charge of “jury tampering”. To my knowledge (and I’ve read a lot on this subject) that is the first such conviction in US history. It will be interesting to see what happens on appeal.
As to Perry’s original comment, as I recall you guys have a relatively important election under way right now, don’t you? The idea that people should actually be permitted to defend themselves (even if you aren’t yet ready to return to the days of private ownership of handguns) should very quickly be made into a significant political issue. You should seize the moment while this latest atrocity is fresh in people’s minds and the election is impending. By my reading of her, Theresa May seems to blow with the political winds, so with enough “wind” in this directly you might actually be able to make a little progress in the direction of sanity. Just a suggestion.
The great thing about jury nullification is that it requires no permission. No juror ever need give a reason for voting “not guilty.”
The hard part is letting jurors know this is a possibility. The system is algorithm-based; give the jury a set of explicit rules and binary choices. “If A and B, then “guilty.”” They decidedly do not like “if A and B, then so what? He did the right thing!”
FIJA keeps getting in trouble because they try to inform people of this right as they walk in to courthouses for jury service. Defense lawyers get in trouble for any mention to a jury that their choice isn’t necessarily binary. The only party to this issue who can’t get in trouble is the juror who says “you want to put him in prison for THAT?!” People should know this.
llamas:
Sir Humphrey:
.
:>) Thanks for putting me onto it, by the way. My favorite is Sir Arnold! :>)))
It’s a tough issue.
We clearly have the right to speak of nullification most anywhere, but the statute at issue in Woods’ case prohibits it on the courthouse property, which may be a valid “time, place and manner” regulation of speech.
I once had a drug possession case in district court where the potential jurors were confronted, as they walked into the courthouse, by a man handing out pamphlets describing how drugs were ruining our youth, our cities, and our lives. He was there because, in his words, that’s where the jurors were.
After lots of argument, we got the jury pool dismissed, the trial rescheduled, and the pamphleteer sent packing from courthouse property.
It’s the exact same issue that FIJA faces, and it left me believing that the court should properly exclude such speech from its own property.
Both viewpoints are clearly proper speech in the community. But if I felt that my anti-drug pamphleteer should be sent out of the courthouse, then I have to agree that FIJA needs to do its work elsewhere too.
Doubtless the UK’s main political parties will wish that they had any form of policy to deal with the mass slaughter currently afflicting parts of the UK. Here are some helpful suggestions from me to them for the next few days, please feel free to plagiarise.
1. Scrap (or reduce) VAT on Teddy Bears. It’s expensive putting all those bears out at the scenes of massacres, and it’s going to cost a lot of people a lot of money before this is all sorted. The Treasury shouldn’t really receive a windfall from massacres, even if it does help to pay widows’ pensions for departed Jihadis. Problem is, we still need the permission of our EU partners for this policy.
2. Plant a forest to offset the carbon generated by all those candles left at massacre scenes, one hectare per massacre per day (self-explanatory).
3. Scrap Donald Trump’s planned State Visit until he apologies for trying to impose a travel ban. This will reassure anyone concerned that we might host a ‘–phobe’.
4. Ban Jaffa Cakes in case the Zionist implications of the brand name ‘trigger’ some dopey criminal welfare-dependant scumbag to start a stabbing frenzy in a supermarket.
5. Make hiring any vehicle conditional upon accepting British values. This will prevent radicalised individuals from using them to launch attacks.
bobby, request for education.
I thought there is more to jury nullification than just a hung jury due to a “lone holdout” (Richard s/ know better than to keep harping on “lone holdouts” — thank the Great Frog for them!), which I thought would usually trigger a re-trial. Does a jury nullification do that also, or does it push the “double jeopardy” button?
Also, speaking of Lone Holdouts — Henry Fonda to the contrary, such a person has to have a great deal of intestinal fortitude. Or else an unusually strong streak of Adolescent Rebellion. But maybe I underestimate the number of people who possess one or the other of those qualities (or a perfectly healthy, matter-of-fact attitude that’s pretty focussed on getting things right).
Which is not to deny your very good point.
.
By the way, Randy Barnett discusses the issue in a posting from 2008 headed “Judge Nullifies Juror Nullification,” at
http://volokh.com/posts/1218815216.shtml .
From the piece:
There are comments.
Great list, Mr. Ed! 😆
Imagine an ignition interlock system (similar to what we give to drunk drivers) into which one must sing “God Save The Queen”, with feeling, before the car will start.
Where is Q when you need him!
British people will do nothing for a while.
Elected (i.e. political) prosecutors. Winning a case can still financially break you as loser does not pay costs. Plea bargaining. By far the highest incarceration rates of any non-shithole country. Asset forfeiture that reverses burden of proof (and which seems to be actually used vastly more often then in UK).
USA has systems that in theory are vastly better than the UK in oh so many ways, yet in reality that does not seem to be the case in a great many instances. That said, the parts of the US system that actually work are much to be admired (i.e, things relating to the 1st & 2nd Amendment for the most part, the two bits the constitution that are not mostly dead letters).
Julie, jury nullification, as a practical matter, usually does involve just the one lone holdout, or maybe two.
– Not many people know that jurors aren’t outright required to answer the ultimate question of guilt based simply on the sub-questions the court chooses to pose.
– of those that do, only some small percentage will see a problem with the prosecution of the specific case in which they’re involved.
– and, yes, it’s very hard to be that lone holdout.
But that one lone holdout can go a long way in convincing other jurors that they do have that right, and that it is properly exercised in the case at hand. A few comments such as “if we find him guilty of this, he’ll go to prison for years” or “do we really want to call this boy who had sex with his slightly-younger girlfriend of several years a sex offender?” (sentencing options are very much excluded from jurors’ information in court) can add a dose of realism to an otherwise abstract prosecution. So, nullification is as much based in the interaction of jurors as in that one juror’s vote.
And, yes, it can mean a re-trial if the prosecution chooses to try again. When a jury simply fails to reach a unanimous verdict in a criminal case (except in two states, I believe, which don’t require unanimity), double jeopardy isn’t invoked. But that’s expensive, and they’ve already received the negative feedback of at least the one holdout, so re-trial isn’t the automatic response. A publicized deadlock can be a strong disincentive to an elected prosecutor.
As a practical matter, a hung jury most often results in more liberal plea-bargaining by the prosecution in that particular case in order to avoid a retrial.
The National Institute of Justice put out a comprehensive paper on the holdout issue back in 2002 that goes into depth on these issues if you’re interested.
I have a friend in the US that on the two occasions he was summoned for jury duty (in two different states) wore a t-shirt with the words “JURY NULLIFICATION” in big letters on it… and was send home pretty much instantly both times 😆 Make of that what you will.
I’m amazed the Russians haven’t yet been blamed for this….but still enough time for that
A nice thought but I fear too much of our population is well and truly cucked beyond redemption. In many ways they are more contemptible and a bigger problem than the Islamists.
Likewise, I am a vehement anti-communist but in hindsight I think the cultural marxists in Britain are a much bigger actual threat than the old school Bolsheviks that dominated the Soviet Union, particularly after Stalin’s death. Easy to say in hindsight I know, but Maggie should have spent more time purging the bureaucracy and universities, and shouldn’t have been allowing in any Libyans or other Muslims just because they hated Gaddafi, the USSR, etc.
Perry, the most horrid part of being charged with a crime is knowing you will be judged by a group of people too dumb to get out of jury duty.
Exactly why you will never see an attack like this in the open street in a place like Dearborn, MI
That they don’t do it on open streets doesn’t mean that they don’t do it. They move to churches, clubs, schools, concerts etc, where people are not generally armed and even if they are they’ll kill more people with their random shooting than the terrorists would.
There have been plenty of mass shootings in states where people are armed. There have been attacks on army bases, for goodness sake.
(Dearborn has pretty much the US average for violent crime, which is well above the UK average. Guns just shift the nature of the crime. You may perhaps decrease the chance of a lone nutter killing you, but at the cost of increasing the risk of being caught in some shooting between well-armed gangs.)
You don’t see knife killings in the US. Because the nutters all have guns.
More likely than arming themselves (illegal in Britain) the British will compete with each other to denounce “Islamophobia” (that adaption of Frankfurt School of Marxism language by the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist network) – the attacks “have nothing to do with Islam” or are a “perversion” or “misinterpretation” of Islam. Anyone who questions this will be denounced as a “racist”.
The London my father knew is dead. And most people in London will vote Labour (the party led by Jeremy Corbyn – with his DECADES of support for Islamic, and nonIslamic, terrorist groups) on Thursday – and the same will be true in Manchester and so on.
Think about that – people are attacked (repeatedly) and they vote for a party led by someone in sympathy (for decades) with their attackers.
In the United States New York and other such cities are not really different – they are also (like British cities) worm eaten by Frankfurt School intellectual corruption of the culture. Many years of work by the education system and the mainstream media (especially the entertainment media) have done their work.
Raw strength (riches – or even tanks and aircraft) is worthless if the population are corrupted in their minds. And they are mentally corrupted.
Arm themselves? How dare you carry a knife (let alone a gun) – you RACIST! That is how most people have been trained to think.
It really is that bad.
US domestic military bases have very strong weapons prohibitions. Soldiers on base are disarmed. I’m willing to bet you know this already.
Citations as to situations where this has ever occurred? No? Thought not.
Legalizing the carrying of weapons won’t affect the use of weapons by the gangs. Felons are one of the classes of people who cannot possess weapons already, and it’s not slowed them down. Perhaps return fire will.
Chester,
Not to disagree with your general point, but –
On US Army bases, soldiers not actually on security duty (e.g. gate guards) are not usually armed.
There are other exceptions, like the “sleep with your rifle” phase of early training, but most weapons live in the armory most of the time.
(My info is very dated. If I’m wrong go ahead and correct me.)
Something else to consider- the men attacked with knives because they couldn’t get guns (or so I presume). If guns were more readily available, wouldn’t the murder-toll have been much higher?
bobby,
Thanks very much for the information. I’ve studied Law for a long time now … beginning with Mr. Perry Mason’s radio lectures, continuing on through his technical casebooks such as The Case of the Daffy Dame and so on, and more recently the post-J.D. papers of people like Lisa Scottolini and others whose names I forget. But I’ve been busy elsewhere, so that I’ve missed the video lecture series like CSI and its brothers, sisters, cousins, daughters-in-laws’ great-great-grandchildren, and so forth. So I know there are holes in my legal knowledge.
.
I’ve gotten the paper you recommended; thanks very much for the link. Only 99 pp. Hm, I don’t have to be in bed for half an hour yet. S/b plenty of time to read it. 😉
. . .
At the moment, you may consider me a major Epstein Phreak. :>)) I have the urge to transcribe the last week’s worth of listening (most of it re-listening) so as to post everything here; but I shall be strong and resist. But he’s sure touched on a lot that we’ve discussed. By the way, did you ever read his paper on the importance of language? And he brought it up again in one of tonight’s segments, the lecture he gave to an audience at Utah Valley University.
Perry, your “JURY NULLIFICATION” T-shirt lets me re-make a point I have made before.
The left acts, the right blusters.
Your “JURY NULLIFICATION” friend was a big mouthed idiot, a fool, a loser, Jesus, what a putz. By all means keep him as friend, but scorn his ideas.
Likewise to all the bloggers and commenters, especially Yanks, who bluster about how the right has all the guns, we’re the dudes, we’re the tough guys, what a load of horse shit. So far we are spineless, inactive couch potatoes who don’t bother to join political parties, to support them, to march, to riot, to do fuck all.
Julie, a side comment: Lisa Scottolini was a classmate of mine in law school. (Well, technically she was a year ahead of me.) I thought that might amuse you.
Laird, cool! Where did you go to school?
Did you get to know her? If so, what was she like?
I’m afraid the raccoons got all but maybe one of her books. :>(
Schrodingers’s Dog @June 4, 2017 at 3:52 pm:
Note the word “organisation”. Islam is not organized, except somewhat among the Shi’a. There are many Islamic organizations, but none of them have any real authority, not even as much as the Church of England. Most mosques are independent of any larger organization.
Islamist terror attacks have been largely perpetrated by disconnected individuals, often clearly influenced by a mosque or an Internet preacher, but not taking orders from anyone.
That’s hard to fix.
BTW – some people have alluded to London Mayor Sadiq Khan. There was another candidate for Mayor at the last election, Syed Kamall, who is also Moslem – and a Tory MEP, and a contributor at The Cobden Centre.
bobby b @ June 4, 2017 at 10:29 pm:
Such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon Mobil?
You have no idea what his ideas are. He disdains the right to the state to conscript him, and that includes conscripting him into a jury. I can also say with confidence he would sneer at your willingness to engage in make-believe political empowerment by joining one of two largely interchangeable political parties 😉
Alisa: “Also, the attack was stopped when armed policemen shot the attackers.”
That isn’t much of a consolation, you can slit a lot of throats in 8 minutes.
I know Syed and last spoke with him a few weeks ago at the funeral of Helen Szamuely. He is a splendid fellow and would have made a magnificent Mayor of London, unlike the ghastly Sadiq Khan. But the thing is the Tories ended up pushing such an awful candidate (Zac Goldsmith) that they pretty much just handed London to Labour.
John Galt, llamas
Yup. Cressida Dick was the commander during the de Menezes shooting and to this day I can’t understand why she wasn’t fired for that. 😐
It might be because she’s a doubly-protected class in the Met as both female and lesbian. As of 10th April 2017 she is the head of the Metropolitan Police, although this has become an essentially a political appointment as much as anything in recent years as the tenure if Sir Ian Blair (now Baron Blair of Broughton) demonstrated.
I think that you’ll find that Ms Dick is a member of Common Purpose – that is the real reason she wasn’t fired; though no doubt being female and lesbian helped too. If she’d been black as well, she’d be completely untouchable.
Alisa – “Muslims are very much a minority in London” – Not in the Peoples Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets they’re not. For how much longer do you think they’re going to remain a minority? Demographically speaking, muslims will constitute the majority by 2050.
I cannot take seriously anyone who makes inane comments like this. It is a bit like saying “Donald Trump wore a KKK outfit” because they read it in some newspaper. It really is that daft.
I’m guessing readers of this blog do not think much of (liberal) judge nullification (e.g. 4th and 9th circuits saying what was legal for Obama to do is illegal for Trump to do, etc.). Our attitude to jury nullification should in honesty be restrained by that. I’ve known a few cases in the UK where I either approved what may have been nullification or was shocked at its absence, but we’d all think very little of PC holdouts on juries (in “Twelve Angry Men”, the accused is clearly guilty beyond reasonable doubt).
Wise laws recognise this. For example, back in the 18th century, Fox’s libel law (probably in fact Burke’s libel law, as Fox’s East India bill was in fact Burke’s East India bill) restricted judges to ruling whether given words were ‘capable of a libellous interpretation’, explicitly leaving it to juries to rule on whether they were in fact libellous. If no better restoration of free speech were immediately in prospect, I’d welcome a similar explicit treating of juries as gown ups in ‘hate speech’ cases. But since UK juries have been known to act sanely in such cases anyway, the powers that be try to arrange magistrate trials wherever possible.
Niall, I do understand your concern with the idea of individual jurors (or jurists) taking the law into their own hands. I myself do not approve of the 4th Circuit taking executive power unto itself as a political move.
Let me just say in defense of the concept that it is pretty much only an issue in criminal trials, and the “nullification” aspect only works to limit state power over defendants.
Jury nullification does not cause awards of money to happen or not happen in civil court, and it does not work to increase the chance of anyone being jailed or fined or executed. It only limits the use of state power of imprisonment over individuals.
With that limitation, I’m comfortable with it.
I have a sensible friend in California (knowns global warming is a scam, voted for Trump rather than her, etc.). He has been put on the list for jury duty twice in the last three years, and accepts it from duty. Not all offer themselves because they are “too dumb to get out of jury duty” (bobby b @ June 4, 2017 at 10:29 pm; I was also aware of the link Rich Rostrom posted in his reply at June 5, 2017 at 6:39 am; it is worth a read).
Being on the list for the week and actually serving in a trial are two different things. I know that decades ago the defence in US trials – or at least in California trials – had disproportionate power to strike jurors they disliked the look of, but I do not know whether the disproportion persists. I would fear a jury negatively chosen by liberal lawyers striking those they disliked more than one that merely consisted of those “too dumb” to get out of it.
The friend of Perry de Havilland (London (June 5, 2017 at 7:35 am), is very entitled to deny the state’s right to conscript him for jury duty service – but he thereby ensures that if he’s ever charged with a crime then he will be judged by people with different principles. If left-wingers are keen to serve on juries and libertarians disdain it, laws will skew (even more) left. It’s easier to state the problem than to solve it, and I expect Perry and his friend have discussed that consequence of the friend’s principles, but I prefer my Californian friend’s approach.
Not cooperating with a process you disagree with is a nice start.
Niall, that’s an old saying that I thought Perry would get a kick out of.
I’ve served on two juries myself. (No, they don’t automatically exclude lawyers.) I’ve picked enough juries to have learned that we do best when the people who can least afford to give up the time, give up the time. Although I have on occasion worked hard to get the dumbest jurors possible.
Excellent. Now without looking for the lyrics on the Internet, sing the 2nd and 3rd verses of the standard version.
APL and rapscallion: I was replying to Bob Sykes’ comment with a very specific factual correction. I offered no interpretation of these facts, and so there is no reason to attribute any such interpretation to my comment – otherwise you risk making a straw-man argument.
Oh yes, I too remember the shooting incident where Cressida Dick ordered her team to shoot an innocent man. I was totally surprised when immediately after she was promoted and now again to lead the Met. I had expected jail time not promotion. We are badly served by those who are or should be, our servants.
Well up in Grimsby, (a fishing port in Lincolnshire/Humberside) the following alarming incident occurred near a mosque:
The following charge was laid against a Mr Jake Jones, 24:
I have come to the view that conscription for the armed forces is ultimately beneficial for liberty in general. Professional soldiers can be turned against the civilian population. I would make a difference between military conscription in war time, and national service. The population should be trained to defend the nation, but not forced to go out and fight war. If the cause is just, immediate and necessary, there will be no shortage of volunteers.
As for London and gun rights, if you want a solution that stands a non-zero chance of being adopted, then arm some section of the population that has been vetted and trained “properly” and perhaps formally police deputies. I support gun rights, but I have no doubt that adopting these in the UK could increase the amount of violent crime (or make existing crime more violent.) The case for gun right is fundamental, not based on outcomes.
Because compelling unwilling people to work for the state & kill under orders really just screams “liberty!”, right?
History is filled with conscript armies that were turned against the civilian population of their own countries.
I certainly agree with that.
Geoff Ho, a good pal of mine and a fellow journalist, was one of those stabbed by the deathcultists. He does martial arts, and tried to stop a security guard at a pub from being attacked by one of these fuckers. Geoff is now recovering from a stab wound to the neck and is in hospital for a few days. http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/812907/London-Bridge-attack-brave-Sunday-Expres-journalist-stopped-attackers-stab-bouncer
There does seem to have been a subtle shift in the public mood; there has been praise for how people resisted, threw tables, chairs and other objects at these creeps. Of course, being armed is the logical next step, but I suspect we will wait a long, long time before that becomes possible.
I think some version of zero tolerance policing, more foot patrols, etc, will need to happen. That isn’t about police budgets, but about changing how policing is actually done.
Also, if there aren’t changes made, I see some version of vigilantism taking off; it is no good those in power bleating about this; there is going to be a point where a critical mass of the public, of all backgrounds, are going to demand practical steps to fight back.
I take your point Perry, but what I had in mind was not a standing army of 20-22 year old people, but citizen soldiers that would have to be dragged out of their day jobs in order for the government to be able to fight a war. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to expect that such an arrangement would make it less likely that wars were started frivolously.
Niall, regarding your last comment concerning jury nullification (8:59 AM), in addition to bobby b’s reply I would also like to add that judges and prosecutors have always had a de facto power of nullification: judges can dismiss a case, and prosecutors can simply decline to bring it. It is only the jury which is effectively denied its historical power by prohibiting defense counsel from even mentioning nullification (as well as by harassing and even arresting people attempting to inform juries of their powers by distributing literature outside).
It wasn’t always thus. There are US Supreme Court decisions as recent as the 20th century acknowledging that power. In 1794, less than 10 years after ratification of the Constitution and only 5 years after the adoption of the 6th Amendment (which guarantees jury trials in criminal cases), John Jay, the first U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, in one of the rare jury trials conducted by that Court instructed the jury:
Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 1, 4 (1794).
That instruction was far from unusual; it aroused no comment. Indeed, the concept of jury nullification was so ingrained in our early jurisprudence that one Supreme Court associate justice, Samuel Chase, was impeached in part for allegedly preventing attorneys from arguing for it. The Articles of Impeachment charged him with “open contempt of the rights of juries, on which, ultimately, rest the liberty and safety of the American people.” His acquittal was partially based on the demonstration that in the trial of one John Fries he had specifically instructed the jury that they were to judge both law and fact.
The open hostility of our judicial system to jury nullification shows just how far that system has degenerated. One of the fundamental purposes of juries is to shield defendants from the awesome power of the state, whether that is expressed in the form of politicized prosecution, a corrupt judge, or merely bad law. It injects community values into the criminal justice system, which is a very good thing. Limiting a jury to being a mere “trier of fact” is a perversion of the entire system.
(A side note: The NH statute Julie mentioned was essentially eviscerated by that state’s Supreme Court a year or so after passage, when it chose to read the language of the statute in such a was as to strip it of any meaning. I understand that legislation was subsequently introduced to clarify the original language and overturn the court’s decision, but as far as I know it has gone nowhere.)
John Galt,
Surely the first two verses would suffice, and if an American can play, they arem, I believe.
God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our Noble Queen!
God Save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and Glorious,
Long to Rein over us,
God Save the Queen!
Thy choicest gifts in store,
On her be please to pour,
Long may she reign.
May she defend our laws,
And give us ever cause,
To sing with hart and voice,
God save the Queen!
I see I was mistaken,I gave the first and third.
Stephen, a couple of typos there. (“Hart” = “heart, for instance).
Anyway, I’m rather partial to the last verse:
Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring
May he sedition hush
And like a torrent rush
Rebellious Scots to crush
God save the King.
Yes, well I am badly dyslexic.
Apparently Theresa May thinks warrantless searches of everyone’s online history is what’s required to rein in extremists.
So all of you worrying about this or that regarding weapons laws can chill…
Dear Mr de Havilland
The police have form on taking a tough stance on people attempting to defend themselves. If memory serves, while Peter Sutcliffe was murdering prostitutes, the police avidly prosecuted prostitutes they caught in possession of offensive weapons, such as combs with sharp handles and large keys.
I am sure Mr Sutcliffe was duly grateful.
I am sure all would-be terrorists will be similarly grateful for any assistance the police might offer in protecting them from their victims.
Scott Adams has an interesting opinion of our beloved government’s response:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/161427038341/helping-the-terrorists-recruit
DP
Good advice about what to do with Islam here:
http://www.barnhardt.biz/2017/06/05/cut-the-crap-islam-must-be-exterminated-heres-how/
People might wonder why anyone should care what Ms. Barnhardt has to say about Islam, or anything.
She’s a very interesting individual.
(I know a lot of people who are involved in ag, and in cattle. That’s how I know this.)
A decade or two back, there was a movement that tried to educate farmers about how to reclaim some of the profit of the business that had been taken from farmers by the banking and market system. Banks tend to hire people more cunning and more numbers-oriented than the typical cattleguy, and so had devised the marketing system that moved profits out of the farms and into the banks. (Banks make more money from a cow than does the farmer.) Ann and her ilk were trying to educate the farmers – nationwide – with a system that would short-circuit this taking.
Around the time of the last bank depression, and more specifically following the Great Bank Bailout, she determined that it was impossible – that the banking hold on profits was too imbedded, and too protected by the political class, to have a hope of changing it. She gave up. You can see that she still sells her opus CD-series on marketing cattle futures at the top of her website, but she is no longer involved in that effort.
She’d always been very religious, and that part of her life subsumed everything else (as can be seen from her current writings.) She remains very outspoken, and she has quite a large and devoted audience across the USA.
Anyway, it might not be obvious from her current writings, but that’s why anyone cares what she thinks.
Not actually helpful as that will not happen this side of a western city getting nuked, but I agree that Islam needs to be thought of as a political ideology and only incidentally a religion.
Still good advice minus the nuking. Re-identify Islam as a political rather than a religious movement, criminalise, deport, contain. It is too dangerous to be around civilisation.
A limited form of conscription? Like Singapore’s? Keep in mind, you still need a rigorous initial training period and then annual training to retain combat skills.
The deterrence factor is very real. When we can mobilise with 90%+ personnel, it sends a strong message unmatched by other countries in the region. Malaysia was said to be only able to mobilise 30% of its reserves, and of that 30%, only 30% would be combat effective.
But it still doesn’t help the issue of internal security and terrorist threats. That’s why the state monitors all religious bodies in Singapore and Muslim clerics need to be approved by local authorities. And their sessions are regularly infiltrated by state agents to ensure they’re on the straight and narrow. Internet dissemination is tracked by ISD, and it’s strongly emphasized that the muslim community needs to snitch on its members who are getting attracted to the extremist view.
Still, our local clerics need to be convincing 100% of the time, and they’re matched against fundie and ISIS religious leaders with vastly higher qualifications and credibility (PhDs in Islamic studies, theology etc), and religion is based all around authority and credibility. The Singapore government has been pushing the ‘Not if, but when’ message for the past few years now.
Quite helpful actually, even if not going to happen.
Laird (June 5, 2017 at 2:51 pm), I strongly support juries being treated as (and acting as) grown ups. It seems very legitimate for a jury to notice if a law is blatantly unconstitutional – and desirable they make a realistic assessment of how blatant that should be before their experience qualifies them to decide that. hHowever for the US to have a constitution, judges must feel constrained by it. I admire Neil Gorsuch for saying that a judge who likes every conclusion he comes to is a bad judge. If that is true of judges it must also be true of juries. I never want to be tried by a jury whose attitude is ‘never mind the law or the constitution, we’ll decide based on how we feel about this guy”.
(At least, in high-minded theory I never would. 🙂 I’ve made this a US-oriented discussion because the UK’s constitutional position adds additional issues.)
PeterT (June 5, 2017 at 11:53 am), I have long thought that selective arming of civilian first-responders, to supplement our increasingly outnumbered security forces, is one probable way in which the only-criminals-can-be-armed state of today’s UK may be gradually eroded. (The TA is one organisation that might provided a base for such recruitment and training; former TA-ers and regulars provide a natural pool of initial recruits.)
The government – when finally forced to start this – will be terribly concerned that the chosen few (over time, not so few) be ever so PC (and statistically ‘diverse’). We should be alert to that, pushing back with the demand that they be first and foremost sane and trustworthy. Events and processes may let us win that fight, despite a likely lack of support from the ‘great and good’.
TA?
No, I’d have to agree with Mr. de Havilland, not helpful at all. Rolling out a few sensible points conjoined to some totally lunatic ones is like adding a little shit to a nice apple pie: people aren’t going to just pick out the good bits with a fork, they’re going to bin the whole thing.
Territorial Army, now called the Army Reserve.
I see no prospect whatsoever of the British state “allowing” its subjects to regain their right to keep and bear arms for their self-defence.
What I do see is civil unrest, which may amount to a Yugoslavian type civil war. In that scenario, the people will simply reassert their common law and constitutional right to own arms.
The arms in question will not necessarily be firearms, but will include them, possibly home made varieties, I don’t know. But what I do foresee is that the day may come when the writ of the British government ceases to run, and the people have to act in their own defence, as is their right.
In Britain, is this something that could be changed with a mere statutory enactment, or is it more complex than that?
This is an issue that, with correct handling, could become incredibly popular in a very short time. If it’s as simple as, convince your local MP to vote for it, why couldn’t it become law?
(Yes, this question is driven by my lack of knowledge about your legal system.)
And you will be the one deciding for people which is which? Thanks, but I think people can do that for themselves. Thanks for explaining ‘TA’ though.
Dieu Et Mon DroitUnited 93, motherf*cker!
Yes people can think for themselves, but a lot of sane people will stop reading after 5. or perhaps 8. and write this person off as a lunatic headjob. At the very least, I concluded Tomsmith is a basement dwelling nutter not worth reading merely because he linked to it approving.
So where’s the problem then?
bobby b (June 6, 2017 at 11:53 am), returning to the situation of a century ago, when George Orwell, aged 10, could walk into a British shop and buy a .22 ‘saloon rifle’ (for 7 shillings and sixpence – £37.5 pennies in today’s currency) with no questions asked would be an ordinary law voted through parliament just like the Brexit law or any other. However John K (June 6, 2017 at 10:19 am) is right that any such law is so far from possibility here today as to be ludicrous. You speculate that it might become popular with the hoi polloi. Less talk from our leaders about the religion of peace and how it has nothing to do with terrorism would be much more immediately popular, but that’s not happening!
The brutal pressure of events and budgets on the ‘need to do something’ could create a situation in which my ‘first-responders club’ might be created. There would then be a ratchet, as more and more people wanted to be in it, and refusing each proposed expansion would make the government responsible for the next un-responded terror attack. If the arming of the public happens at all, it will be by such gradual means, not by our government suddenly going sane. That will so not happen. The Tories may replace May – the Neville Chamberlain of today’s politics – with someone better, but the grip of “you can’t say that – or think it” on those with the megaphone in our society is strong.
The whole thing is useful in terms of dealing with Islam. In this respect it is good advice. Nuking Mecca and Medina (with fair warning) would show that the particular sky fairy of Islam is imaginary, and would be very demoralising for actual believers. Without the religious veneer, the many psychopaths attracted to that ideology for the reason that it justifies behaving as they want to would then be exposed more obviously for what they are. I think many of those dragged along by Islam would abandon it under such conditions.
That it is unlikely to happen because we don’t have rulers that care about our wellbeing does not change the fact that it would be a good approach if the will to deal with Islam existed. Other parts of the approach (ones which are more likely to happen) including re-classification of Islam as a political movement, criminalisation, deportation, and regional containment are not at all invalidated by their inclusion in an article advocating the destruction of the holiest Islamic sites- that part of your reply is simply nonsense. People will decide what they decide.
The problem (still) is that even the sensible ideas listed will get written off as the raving of a nutter (and she obviously is a nutter). If I was arguing to delegitimise Islam as a religion and get people to look at it as an awful political creed, I wouldn’t link to that loony, hence my remark about it not being helpful, unless someone does think delegitimising Islam as a religion inevitably leads to nuking Mecca as just a series of logical steps. Just because Mussolini made the trains run on time, if I was making an argument about transport policy I’d say it was unwise to link to an Italian fascist manifesto, even if a few thing they wrote might be sensible.
In my post above, £37.5 pennies should have been £0.375 or 37.5 pennies. (I expect you all worked that out without this addendum.)
Yes I think reasonable likelihood of this happening if the right people said the right things right now. I guess there is quite a lot of pressure to be as PC as possible at the moment from editors and producers though.
You badly underestimate the popularity of Ann Barnhardt as a blogger, and the number of people (in the USA, at least) who share beliefs five through eight.
Bulldog, what is sensible is a matter of opinion of course, but more fundamentally it is a matter of context and circumstances. What may not seem sensible now, might well seem so when circumstances change (as they will given time, for better or worse, most likely the latter). To me that piece is helpful, in that it presents the options that may well begin to seem sensible to far more ordinary folks than they do now, when things do go too far downhill if no sensible steps are taken now. To me, that piece says ‘do the right thing now, otherwise you may be forced to do the less-right things later on, and those things are X, Y, Z). That, independent of what the writer herself would prefer to see right now, or what she thinks of as sensible. YMMV.
Sorry, I’m still unclear on one point.
Would this be ludicrous because the bulk of the people would never go along with such an idea, and so MP’s would never feel pressure to enact such a law, or because those people presently in power would quash the idea (even if it were held by a large majority of voters) because they would think it uninformed and dumb?
(I guess I’m back to my “representatives or rulers” distinction.)
If a ‘nutter’ says things that are sensible to you then do they become nonsensical because a nutter said them? Not the case for me, and I would hope most independent minded people would feel the same way. What you are expressing is a variety of PC.
It would still be helpful if you got the idea from her and thought it was a good one, but were too ashamed to admit where you found it and instead tried to pass it off as your own. Your personal cowardice and your perception of the person who originally came up with the idea wouldn’t change the idea itself.
This is a bit hysterical and silly. Read her site- she is far from Mussolini. She is probably just more honest with herself than you are and has a worse opinion of Islam than you do. I think that destroying the religious shrines and containing the adherents of a fake religion/real political movement that has the intent and potential to destroy Western Civilisation is quite reasonable, don’t you? If you don’t think Islam is such a thing then simply imagine something that is. A nuclear weapon doesn’t have to be big or to kill people. But it does have the advantage of completely destroying its target.
I think that it could happen, but that it would require opinion formers to push it, and that the window of opportunity is small. It could be a career destroyer for politicians so most likely they would ignore it until they couldn’t any more.
Mere belief from the people would not make it happen, because in the UK citizens being armed is a thing that is not allowed, like the death sentence, racism, and so on
If it ever did happen here then chances are that it would be so riddled with PC ideas that it might be crippled from birth.
Bobby:
The armed self-defence which was a feature of British life until 1920 has been entirely forgotten. It is legally impossible for any British subject (not in Northern Ireland) to own a gun for self-defence.
Due to 97 years of increasingly strict gun control laws, legal gun ownership is less than a million in a population of 60 million. Most British people have never seen a real gun, much less used one. The Scottish government has just brought in licensing for air guns! They are running out of things to ban.
So most British people have no knowledge of or familiarity with guns. There is no groundswell of opinion which would influence lawmakers, who are themselves the products of a society with 97 years of gun control.
An analogy might be the National Health Service. The NHS was created in 1948. It has been around longer than almost every living British person. Very few people can even remember a time before the NHS existed. All doctors and nurses have been trained within it. They can imagine no alternative to it. Thus, a policy of the most socialist government Britain has ever had is firmly embedded in the psyche of the British people. They grumble about it, but fear to change it in case we “become like America”.
It is the same with guns. After 97 years, anyone who dares to raise the topic of armed self-defence is accused wanting us to “become like America”. The British people hate crime and do not feel safe, but the idea of using guns in self-defence has been bred out them.
I am not saying this will never change. If civil society collapses, as I think it will, then things will change, and people will arm themselves with whatever they can. But I cannot see any prospect of our government ever moving towards any sort of acceptance that armed self-defence should be legal in Britain. But governments don’t last forever. Neither, for that matter, do countries.
The woman advocates nuking a city to express her displease with an ideology. So I must in turn agree with ‘Bulldog Drummond’ (who is presumably an H.C.McNeile fan!), she is either unhinged or just shooting her mouth off in a manner akin to a political conversation in a pub. It is not being “PC” to not want to share a platform with, or be associated with, people who are crazy or dangerous fools, and Anne Barnhardt is obvious either one or both of those things. So even if I also agree that Islam needs to be de-legitimised, anyone who views nukes as something other than deterrents or military theatre weapons for high intensity conflicts, but rather as a way for Western civilization to wave it’s Christian dick around, is someone who needs to be kept well away from political power or positions of influence. Pakistan also has nukes.
Plus he was clearly not likening her to Mussolini if you actually read what BD wrote, any more than he was suggesting Anne Barnhardt was discussing how to make trains run on time. It is called an analogy.
I have no idea where Bulldog got his ideas from, but I have been arguing for regarding Islam primarily as a political ideology that just happens to be a religion for years right here on samizdata. And I had never heard of Anne Barnhardt until today.
Perry, you’re coming off as being as PC as the people you decry. You just define “correct” differently. Atheists and Jews are probably more comfortable with beliefs 5 through 8 than are Christians.
She’s advocating nuking the shrines of Islam because she thinks that Islam is very dangerous and threatens our existence. She advocates giving warning in order than people can be evacuated. She isn’t advocating the use of nuclear weapons because Islam ‘displeases’ her and she isn’t advocating killing lots of people for no reason. You and he obviously don’t agree with Anne Bernhardt about the danger presented by Islam. It would be more productive to argue this point than to shout her down as a nutter.
You are being PC now in your refusal to consider how the writer perceives the danger presented by Islam. Obviously you find this idea unpalatable.
If he’s making an analogy using the policies of Mussolini and Anne Bernhardt, then he is comparing them because there are similarities between the two (presumably he means that they share a similar level of pathological nutterishness and should be similarly ignored by right thinking people). This is what an analogy is. Hope this helps.
I am glad you can still agree with something a nutter has said, unlike Bulldog apparently.
I do not find it ‘unpalatable’, I find it utterly preposterous, at least as stated, and sorry mate, but disagreeing with you does not make me politically correct, just rational. I am perfectly happy to slag off Islam and laugh in the face of people who reply with accusations of ‘Islamophobia’.
Islam is only a threat to the west because of western anti-capitalist political forces acting as enablers. Islam itself is laughably weak, yet clowns like Anne Barnhardt are acting as if there is a literal army at the gates of Vienna, thus we must nuke Mecca to save ourselves. Seriously, just fuck off. Get a grip.
Frankly blowing up Westminster when Parliament is in session (ideally with a very very very small nuke as I live right next to it), plus Washington DC and 7th Arrondissement of Paris, would probably do a better job of defending western civilisation than blowing up Mecca. I will really miss the ASI, Cinnamon Club & Quirinale but hey, such is life… 😆
Oh dear. No. Bulldog Drummond can speak for himself, but he is clearly suggesting that unless you think fascism is just peachy, it is not a good idea to use a fascist manifesto as a quoted source for your ideas on transport policy, regardless of the merits of that policy.
Likewise unless you think nuking cities based on their symbolic value is just peachy, it might be best not to quote an article arguing Islam needs to be delegitimised as a religion and treated as a political ideology, but which also argues that disagreeable symbols needs to be turned into radioactive glass: people might conclude the company you keep casts doubts on the merits of the arguments you make.
How brave of you. It isn’t disagreeing with me that makes what you say appear to be PC. It is how you say it, the way you moderate what you say, the things you are proud to say, and the way you attempt to de-legitimise other views on the basis of rules of taste rather than logical argument. Your views on this issue definitely come across as intensely PC in this comment thread. In many ways libertarianism of this sort comes from the same place as angsty student socialism.
There will be a literal army at the gate when enough Muslims have arrived in Europe. What is going to stop them from coming here? The actions suggested by Bernhardt are some practical and effective possibilities for when European leadership gets a grip of the situation, if ever.
PC is dated by its particular flavour
That isn’t analogy. Analogy relies upon similarity between the things compared in order to further insight. Plus it is plainly nonsensical to disregard true things just because you don’t like some other things the person saying the true things also said.
Perry de Havilland (London) (June 6, 2017 at 4:13 pm), Alisa made the point pithily when she compared political correctness to HIV – after you’ve caught either, something that you would otherwise deal with easily can kill you.
A few other remarks on some comments in this thread.
– Islam is very obviously a religion. Claiming it isn’t is as absurd as Dawkins claiming that communism and nazism are religions. Some commenters in this thread who suggest that someone – presumably the state ! – should be able to redefine it as a political movement, not a religion, are too far into newspeak for me. We have enough politically correct, i.e. actually false, statements hurled at us without adding an absurdity so gross to them. We need more sense, not more nonsense, in public discussion of islam.
– The commenters who suggest that nuking Mecca would cause muslims to think, “Oh, Allah did not prevent this – so he must not exist”, have no understanding of religion in general or islam in particular. It would be more likely to persuade many that the end times were at hand – and to act accordingly. If we nuke anything, let it be the nuclear development facilities in Iran. (Of course, I’d rather see them destroyed by conventional means – if that is still possible.) I suppose the proposal has one advantage: when compared to nuking Mecca for the symbolism of it, nuking Iran’s nukes so Iran doesn’t have any to give to terrorists sounds positively restrained.
1. The two Anns: IIRC, Ann Coulter also came out with the Sea-of-Glass prescription. So did Lenny. Both of them are considered Nutters by some segment of the populace. As a general rule, people who are comfortable enough bandying about this sort of stuff in private conversation with relatively (relatively) like-minded acquaintances, in pub or Internet conversations, become quite a bit less so when the conversants may include those who disagree strongly, and also when it becomes really real to them what such an action would mean and what it would entail.
This is merely an observation.
.
2. As it happens, I know a woman of 44, a Muslim and a mother, who is the daughter of Pakistani Muslims who came here in 1958. Her father was an ophthalmologist who decided his prospects (whether overall or merely financial I do not know) were better here than in Pakistan. (Apparently he was correct.)
She was sent to Christian schools, including Augustana College in Iowa, a Lutheran school IIRC (I’ve read that it’s more librul than Lutheran nowadays, but when I was looking at colleges 800 years ago, it was still definitely Lutheran). She took her M.S., in physical therapy, at the U. of Michigan.
She tells me that her family was always comfortable with such things as Christmas; that they grew up with stockings hung about, the Tree I think, Christmas presents and Christmas Dinner and, in her words, all the “secular part of Christmas.” She told me that they all greatly enjoyed the Christmas festivities.
She believes that her religion “has been hijacked” by a bunch of radical nutters. She adds that to her, the strictures of Islam proper come only from the Koran, not from the hadiths or any other writings; and that furthermore not every word of the Koran is to be taken seriously as a guide to the teachings of Islam. In other words, for her one has to decide which parts to take as read and which not. (She doesn’t eat pork, by the way, but my Jewish Honey’s close family included people whose stomachs turned over at the very thought of shellfish.)
On the morning when Trump’s victory was announced, she came to me in grief and fear: Fear for her family. (She has relatives in the UK and elsewhere also, I think.) She was seriously afraid that he was going to bomb Pakistan wholesale.
As far as I know, she’s the only Muslim I’ve ever met. And I will say that I myself am leery of Muslims, not because I think most of them are pro-terrorism or pro-jihad in any active sense, but there’s plenty of evidence that some are, and no one knows which is which. There’s also a lot of testimony to the effect that even presumably-American American Muslims sympathize with the symbolic (at the least) taking down of America (WTC, for specific example), and with the goal of the world-wide dar-al-Islaam. To the point that I boycott all the businesses that I can, that are owned at least in part by Muslims. Better to be safe than sorry, and absolutely better that I not contribute to Shari’ah-promoting or jihadi/terrorist-promoting people and organizations.
But I think of my friend (not a close friend generally, but with some serious, even intimate, discussions) and her reaction to the election’s outcome. She was afraid, very afraid.
So the question is: How many American Muslims are like her? Do the Anns and the Lennys and the Anns of this world — of this country — help to support pro-American American Muslims in their independence, with all this sea-of-glass talk? Does it comfort them to know that some Americans call for that drastic option, even if only metaphorically? Or do they feel less safe and less a part of America and our society and our culture because of it?
.
As a former Christian, I do have to remember that there are sociopathic nutters who operate, according to themselves, as Christians doing the Lord’s work. (Plenty of people, including some here, seem to think that Hitler was a genuine representative of the Christian religion.) How would I, were I a Christian in a non-Christian country, feel if that country were under attack from Christians who, by my own lights, were not so much Christians as pathologically nuts?
I know the argument: I should speak out. My friend should speak out. But for one thing, she does speak out, however cautiously: as my report here shows. And for another, of course it is socially somewhat dangerous (thanks in part to the Anns and Lennys in their public pronouncements), and even physically dangerous — fatwas, not “true Muslims,” etc.
Personally, I think we should be trying to encourage Anns and Lennys* to keep their rage, their fear, and their passion in defense against “Radical”-Political-Totalitarian-Murderous Islam, but to channel all that in a manner that encourages the healthy American Muslim in his pro-American attitudes, while also working to defeat Shari’ah and terrorism in a forthright manner.
I think Pamela Geller is an example of one who is very close to being this sort of defender.
.
*Lenny. I have read that he and other like-minded Objectivists, at least at ARI, have back-pedaled quite a bit on the sea-of-glass, while continuing to despise the jihadis and terrorists. If so, good for them, and I applaud.
About 1/3 of the non-Muslim progressives that I know think that we deserved what happened on 9/11 and that the world would be better off if the USA were taken over by pretty much anyone else but preferably France, because the French are cool.
Our danger is as much internal as external.
Not necessarily. Scientology is but the most recent practitioner of the “Let’s do shit we couldn’t get away with if we didn’t claim to be a religion” lark. It doesn’t make them a religion any more than the ability to swim makes me a fish.
There have been religious charlatans claiming to have secret knowledge or speak the word of god since before the beginning of recorded history.
Just because Mo the Pedo and his Muslim death cult happen to be very successful and long lived charlatans doesn’t make their obvious lies and bullshit any more meaningful.
Julie near Chicago (June 6, 2017 at 5:39 pm): “IIRC, Ann Coulter also came out with the Sea-of-Glass prescription.”
My memory is that Ann, back in 2001, suggested we vigorously pursue converting muslims to a religion whose founder was less violent, i.e. Christianity, with such supportive military activity as would allow the evangelists access, kill those who would kill their successes as ‘apostates’, and prevent more attacks in the meantime. (Dawkins was so shocked by this ‘convert them’ idea that he proudly boasted that “I assumed this Ann Coulter was a satirical fiction – but my students assure me she is real.”)
Since Ann says many things, and uses comical exaggeration a lot, and 2001 is a while ago now, I may be misrepresenting her, or she may have joked about Sea-of-Glass as a comical exaggeration, or said it seriously at a later date, or I could be remembering wrong.
Julie
Sorry to have to talk about your age lady, but memories play tricks and I think that you must have meant not Lutherans but some other lot back around Simon de Montfort’s time, like the Cathars.
On another topic, I am seriously thinking of taking up archery and getting a longbow, yew if possible, but ash would do.
Niall, Ann C., 2001 & ff!.,
Yes indeed — I too remember it. By now, I can’t help suspecting that Ann C. was purposely using hyperbole. As for Ann(e?) B., back when people were posting her anti-Islam stuff to Individual Sovereignty, I didn’t get the feeling that she was being hyperbolic.
After awhile, however right she may have been in her professional pronouncements, I did think she was on the “Nutter” side of the line wrt Muslims. So I’m trying to get along without her.
. . .
O/T — Another Asinine Nutter:
I also won’t have anything to do with ZeroHedge. Or somebody calling him- or her-self “Dr. Éowyn.” The worst, most uninformed, vitriolic and spittle-flecked hate speech I ever read was by-lined “George Washington” and published by ZeroHedge. It told us what a Dreadful Excuse for a Human Miss R. was. A terrorist! A Nietzschean Superman-loving the-hell-with-everybody-else Demon SEED! –This is merely a sample. You’d have to read it yourself. I don’t have a link. (This was back before the Tell-All by whatever buddy of “Tyler Durden” it was.)
Our “Dr. É.” saw fit to post large excerpts from this screed to the “Fellowship of the Minds” website, which was cross-posted to I-S. She added her own samples of enraged acid-throwing to her piece.
I won’t read anything by her (?) anymore, either. By the way, the “real” Éowyn would never have behaved like that. She was a bit of a romanticist, one could argue, but not unhinged and certainly not someone pretending to state the facts.
Mr Ed,
God knows I definitely suffer from the slippage of memory, but in this case I never got it straight in the first place, I guess. Per the Great Foot, Augustana is located in Rock Island, Illinois, across the river from where I put it, in Davenport, Iowa. But yes, Lutheran. From the Great Foot:
Who cares if it is a religion or not?
Given how disconnected from reality I find your views generally, I am as bothered by your accusations of being PC about as much as I am bothered by accusations of Islaophobia/Racism/etc. etc… i.e. not a whole lot.
I am of the view that once the indigenous cultural Marxist are defeated (not easy but doable), Islam will be a trivial flourish underlining that. So first things first.
Quite. Which is why I always say it should be regarded as a political movement that just happens to also be a religion. Simply stating it is not a religion at all is indeed preposterous.
Indeed, I would say no understanding of human nature either. And every time a kitten dies in a Christian household, does that cause children to therefore deduce the only Jesus is the one who cuts the lawn?
More to the point, her solution is a bit like thinking strategic bombing cities could shock-and-awe an enemy into simply surrendering in WW2, long past the point where the evidence to the contrary made it clear that Giulio Douhet was wrong about a great m,any things. Anyone thinking nuking a symbol of Islam (Mecca) would in any way make Muslims world wide more tractable and reasonable is engaged in wishful thinking of the most toxic kind, but people really do crave simple solutions. That is why I described Anne Barnhardt notion as “western civilisation waving its dick in Islam’s face” and expecting that to actually achieve anything other than making nuclear proliferation at any cost the only sane strategy for any Muslim state with even a modicum of survival instinct.
For purposes of attacking Islam politically and culturally, it does indeed matter, as being viewed primarily as a religion places certain avenues of attack off limits both socially and legally.
Yes it is. The analogy is between two equally crazy world views, tied to at least one sensible notion (transport & Islam-as-political-ideology respectively).
She adds that to her, the strictures of Islam proper come only from the Koran, not from the hadiths or any other writings; and that furthermore not every word of the Koran is to be taken seriously as a guide to the teachings of Islam.
The Koran was dictated to Mohammed as the unaltered word of Allah. It is the word of God, not man, and is to be followed to the letter.
If the lady you speak of does not believe this to be true, she is not a muslim, and IS would be happy to cut her head off along with ours.
Yes, and so these limits need to be changed, so that it being a religion or not no longer matters. What should matter instead is the question: can it (whatever it is) coexist with other beliefs/ideologies? If it can – great, if not – to hell with it. And that in turns means that truly peaceful Muslims like Julie’s friend would have to renounce it, at least in its current form, and they will have to be protected by the larger society and the State from retribution for their apostasy.
Perry de Havilland (London) (June 6, 2017 at 7:57 pm): … being viewed primarily as a religion places certain avenues of attack off limits both socially and legally.”
We could always start by making it socially and legally possible to treat Islam the way lefties treat Christianity.
John K,
That’s certainly how many Muslims see it; but there are also people who consider themselves Muslim, because they do try to follow what they believe are the core, or the true, or the important — whichever word you use — tenets of Islam. My friend may or may not be Muslim if we go by the rules as upheld by al-Zarkawi or any number of other pieces of Muslim trash; but then again, these also pick and choose what to go along with.
By the lights of St. Augustine and even, I am sorry to say, St. Thomas (reluctantly, I understand), I myself would not be Christian (if I were as I am now, save only that I believed in the Christian God and in Jesus as His Son and as the Redeemer) properly speaking; at best I would be a heretic, and properly put to death.
Whereas even as a Christian, I would argue that Augustine’s belief is way outside the bounds of Christianity properly speaking. Translated to Islam, this is precisely what my friend says she believes as a Muslim. I’m not the Great Frog and cannot read her mind nor see her heart, and misjudgments in these matters are always possible (but Mr. Philby was such a quintessentially patriotic and reliable Brit! Ana Montes such a wonderful help to America as an intelligence person (officer? analyst? dunno) in the CIA. Robert Hanson. Aldrich (?) Ames. Alger Hiss. Etc, etc.
So maybe she lieth through her teeth, but my own judgment is “I don’t think so.”
bobby,
I have to say that I am shocked and disgusted by your statistic, but I can’t say I’m really surprised. (Shocked but not surprised? Well, yes.)
I agree very strongly with Perry and some others hereabouts that Leftism/Marxism/Progressivism, depending on one’s personal taxonomy, is the project or belief-system or whatever you want to call it that has ploughed the field and worked in the fertilizer for such a bunch as those Islamic people whose project is to subjugate the entire world (and not just the Two Satans) in the name of their unpleasant idea of the requirements of Islam.
I also believe that the only version of “Islam” that is purely “religious” and therefore entirely protected by the Constitution’s “freedom of religion” is such as is espoused by such Muslims as have no political ambitions for Islam; nor for themselves as Muslims; and who in their own minds eschew such. Keith Ellison, for instance. Is he really at heart a Convinced Muslim? Heck if I know. I only know there’s political capital to be made by Muslim politicians up there in the frozen climes of Minneapolis and so forth.
Trying to support peaceful Muslims socially and to defend them as human individuals as best we can; to disabuse the Proggies and their cousins or forebears the Communists; and hence in the end the libruls generally, that the Islam we non-Muslims see most of, is out to kill us; is a terribly difficult task.
We have to separate Islam as a religion from Islam as a sociopathic political system in the minds of some very large percentage of the American people, including a very large percentage of politicians and lawyers, is extremely difficult. Probably the only harder job is to defeat Leftism. Because their socialistic beliefs and dictatorial traits, not to mention the aspect of “adolescent rebellion” that is now, unfortunately, socially acceptable, are part of human nature. (Strong in some persons and in some respects; weakish in others.)
Oh. I just have to say that I think there’s still a portion of the glamour of Radical Chic among those folks.
On that happy note, I will adjourn for supper.
Niall,
That would be a great place to start, except the question is, how to get there from here.
Laird on jury nulification – quite correct Sir.
However, that depends on juries being made up of human beings.
The creature I watched on ITV news tonight in the United Kingdom (with a ring in his nose and prating on about “communities coming together”) is not someone I would like to see on a jury.
How many of the public are like that? How many the British people have become orcs?
We will find out on Thursday. But I fear that the education system and the media (especially the entertainment media) have done their evil work rather well.
Mr Ed,
I’m a dimwit for sure. I missed the joke. Now I get it, and am laughing. :>)
There are strains of Christianity that view the spread of itself across the world as its prime tenet. I can’t imagine that, if Islamics nuked the Salt Lake Temple, the Mormons would realize that they should stay home.
. . .
The US Constitution – as it now stands after several central cases have interpreted the Establishment Clause/Free Exercise Clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . .“) – holds that government shall not help to establish or prevent any religious belief system. However, that protection does not extend to actions in furtherance of a religion.
We’re free to believe that god mandates multiple wives per marriage, but bigamy is prohibited. We’re free to consider marijuana to be a sacrament to god, to be used in all celebrations of god’s majesty, but smoking marijuana is (generally) illegal. We’re free to believe that god says meat animals must be killed in specific ways, but we’re not free to kill animals in that manner if it violates health codes.
That’s why it matters if Islam is or isn’t a religion, at least in the USA. We have to respect the beliefs contained within Islam if it is. We do not, however, have to respect the concrete practice of those beliefs as they affect others.
We can make a political party illegal, and thus prohibit political thoughtcrime. We cannot do the same to a religion.
ok
Taken together this is exactly what I identified Bulldog as saying here, which you disagreed with:
Again of course it makes absolutely no sense to write off things you do agree with because someone you don’t agree with on other issues said them. Things that are good ideas are still good ideas, no matter who verbalises them. Some might say that basing acceptance or non acceptance of ideas on such trivial criteria is a bit PC.
Which leaves the mystery as to why you started this argument in the first place with this odd comment completely at odds with those later ones above:
You state clearly that he is comparing her views to those of Mussolini above.
One signature of PC is that it is a fundamentally dishonest way of viewing the world
Prof. Richard Epstein defends Ann Coulter against Howard Dean on “Law Talk” at
https://d11k1eidkpp6ab.cloudfront.net/2017/04/Law-Talk-97.mp3
No need to watch the whole video; the boys, Richard, John Yoo, and Troy Senik start in on the execrable ignoramus Howard Dean’s statements about Hate Speech, at ~48:34; the part defending Ann starts ~52:08, and lasts less than 1’30”. But naturally the entire 5-minute interval is worth hearing, with considerable entertainment value as well as clarification about whether Hate Speech is Constitutionally protected. :>)
WHO THE FUCK CARES???
The West (and by West I mean in this case white nominally-Christian/secular Europe) possesses the tangible weaponry but not the will to prevail over the Muslim world. So, there are only three fucking things that matter.
Those three things are: demographics, demographics, demographics.
Period.
The question is not about precious feelings – let alone those of American Muslims. The question is about birth rates. The question is how many secular or Christian babies can be made in Europe, particularly over the next thirty years. I’m not optimistic.
Demography is destiny.
This is stupid nonsense. This is the kind of dumb bullshit that has helped lead to the current crisis of identity plaguing the West.
Politics and religion are not separate matters. They are often, even usually, intertwined in many perspectives people have.
The Western world is primarily Christian or the secular religion called Enlightenment. Its politics, its history, its heritage, its culture, its heroes, its holidays, are basically either Christian or Enlightenment or a mix.
Many, many people (Catholics, Orthodox Jews, etc) oppose abortion on mostly or even entirely religious grounds and these people vote for, contribute to, and support politicians who want to impose their morality onto the broader population.
Many, many people (Protestants, Orthodox Jews, etc) oppose gay marriage on mostly or even entirely religious grounds and these people vote for, contribute to, and support politicians who want to impose their morality onto the broader population.
Many, many people (Christians, Orthodox Jews, etc) oppose pre-marital sex on mostly or even entirely religious grounds and these people vote for, contribute to, and support politicians who want to impose their morality onto the broader population through lack of sex education in public schools.
Many, many people (Lefties, environmentalists, etc) have a belief that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is settled science on mostly or even entirely religious grounds and these people vote for, contribute to, and support politicians who want to impose their morality onto the broader population through all manner of economy-destroying initiatives, politics, taxes, and bureaucracies.
Affirmative action, Keynesian economics, pot legalization, etc.
Well, Shlomo, as usual you’ve got one thing right:
That is, they’re usually not entirely separable in the Real World, just as your foot is not entirely separable from your mouth.
They are, however, conceptually separable, as are, say, the root and the branch, although in reality they are both parts of the one tree.
And it may be that there is the odd Muslim here or there who is of neither the character nor the outlook of Keith Ellison or Al-Zarkawi, nor any of those folks.
Sure, but you’re missing the point.
The point is that your conceptual difference doesn’t matter. It’s not a valid resolution to the demographic threat to the Western world. It’s not an effective response to the offer to convert to Islam or otherwise pay tribute or die. It’s besides the point.
It’s just something Westerners say to themselves to evade confronting the hard truth.
Westerners (a mix of secularists and Christians of various stripes) are at war with Muslims. This is zero sum. The culture and/or people of one side will be exterminated, eventually.
Until the use of weapons, there are 3 things that matter. Demography, demography, and demography.
Any weakening of the constitutional protections of religion in the US will play out exactly as the loss of free speech played out in the UK: christians will be persecuted and muslims will be protected.
Really? Trump and the Republican majority in congress can make the Democrats illegal? I know that’s what old media love to imply he’s planning but they always say it would be unconstitutional. And while making Republicans illegal does seem to be the programme in many a US university, I believe this is (fairly obviously) unconstitutional.
Notoriously, Woodrow Wilson went a bit OTT against opponents during and just after WWI, but he was rapidly reigned in. I believe even the US communist party was never made illegal. They had their legal difficulties at times – but so did the little sisters of the poor recently and many another group, religious or political, when those with the megaphone decide that freedom doesn’t include them. What political parties have been formally declared illegal in the US in the last century?
The above question is actual, not rhetorical. Was any US nazi or fascist party declared illegal during WWII?
Well, if any ideology should be made illegal, it should be Progressivism, everything else will take care of itself.
More seriously, Niall: that is a question I have been asking myself. But regardless, since I personally do not see a material distinction between secular and religious belief systems (yes, to me Communism is a religion for all practical purposes), I think that they should be treated in the same manner, i.e. equally protected or unprotected.
I also see the legal point some here are making about constitutional protection of religion (which to me should be more generally understood as protection of belief systems). Apparently the founders could not envision some particular religions/ideologies becoming so much of a problem (like Islam or Communism) – but the question is, was there a flaw in their logic, or does the problem lie elsewhere? Which leads me back to my HIV analogy, Progressivism, etc. Oh well.
The analogy could just as easily been with a flat earth theorist who says sensible things about childcare… it would not imply that Anne Bernhardt thinks the earth is flat, merely that it is unwise to choose a flat-earther when quoting approvingly about notion on childcare if you want to be taken seriously and advance your views. It is not helpful.
That is only true when there is no assimilation process going on, which is why the left works so hard to impose ‘hate speech’ laws and laws that abridge freedom of association at work: because when not actively prevented from turning ‘them’ into ‘us’, the west is spectacularly good at ensuring demographics is not destiny.
Julie:
St Thomas and St Augustine were no doubt wise Christian thinkers, but neither of them claimed to be God, and no-one will behead you if you reject their religious thinking.
I am afraid that if your friend thinks she can pick and mix from the Koran then she cannot be a muslim. If you are a muslim, then every last word was dictated to Mohammed by God, and must be followed.
Since I am not a muslim, I am free (for now) to say this is nonsense, and that the early Koran was transmitted orally, and differing versions of the early written Koran are to be found. And for the record, I do not believe that God spoke to Mohammed either. But if you are a muslim, you have to believe that, and what is more, if you deny that, you are an apostate, for which the penalty, laid out in the Koran, is, unsurprisingly, death.
I advise your friend not to share her views on the Koran with any devout muslims, because there is every chance they will kill her. And I am not joking.
Alisa (June 7, 2017 at 7:48 am) “Apparently the founders could not envision some particular religions/ideologies becoming so much of a problem”
The founders lived closer to the reformation that we do, and were well aware that the mild style of government in Britain that they had reproduced and wanted to preserve in the colonies was the aftermath of a civil war with a strong religious component; after both Royalists and Roundheads had experienced both victory and defeat, the pursuit of absolute victory seemed less desirable (and less Christian).
They also well knew European history, in which Catholic v. Protestant warfare had loomed large in their recent past. They were well aware the USA would be receiving immigrants from Europe.
Thanks to its founder, its creeds and its long (and repeated) early history of being the underdog, not the ruler, Christianity is indeed very different from Islam. But the US founders had every reason to know that any religion can be made the vehicle of a power agenda at a given historical moment.
Check out the Communist Control Act of 1954. It’s USA federal law, signed into effect by Eisenhower.
It’s actually still in effect. It makes membership in the Communist Party illegal. Several state jurisdictions have refused (recently) to enforce it, but the Supreme Court has not ruled on it. I agree that there should be several constitutional problems with it, but it remains the law.
It is also mirrored in many state statutes. Just this past May, the California legislature repealed its own state law that made being a member of the Communist Party a firing offense for state employees.
Niall, I forgot to mention The Alien Registration Act of 1940 (a/k/a The Smith Act).
While it didn’t target political parties by name, a portion of it made it illegal to be a member of any organization “dedicated to the overthrow” of our government, and it was used against Communists and Nazis.
bobby b, that is most interesting. I was already aware that in WWII and the run-up to it, naturalised Japanese citizens were unable to enforce some constitutional rights, and there was at least de facto criminalisation of US nazi / fascist party (leading members were arrested) and I think I had heard of the Smith act.
However I knew enough of very explicit and public communist-party-of-USA activity in the states in the 50s to be very surprised that it was made formally criminal. I was therefore very unsurprised to read in the wikipedia article that:
One could argue that the effective non-use of the act leaves the constitutionality of anything like it still open to defensible challenge.
Nial, I suspect you are correct. I think it would, in the correct court environment, be found to be unconstitutional.
But we seem to have established a tradition of enacting such laws in an environment where no one wants to be seen fighting against them. Fighting for the rights of Nazis in the forties, or Communists in the fifties, was not the way to make friends.
So, this leaves the possibility of prohibiting Islam – if it were a political movement and not a religion – during some crisis period and leaving the constitutional arguments until the crisis abates and popular opinion wouldn’t crucify someone defending Islam.
It doesn’t say much for our Constitutional fortitude, but there is the old saying “the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact.” A cynic might suggest that this means we’re willing to ignore it when we think it’s necessary.
And, of course, the political party/religion question might be moot anyway. If we’re willing to violate the Constitution to prohibit a party, why would we hesitate to prohibit a religion?
Laird:
True. But judges and prosecutors are answerable for their conduct; a jury is not. JN can be a convenient way to protect socially dominant criminals.
Not so, Rich. Judges and prosecutor are rarely answerable for their conduct; that only occurs in extreme cases. (And BTW I forgot to mention that the Executive also has its own form of “nullification” power, through clemency and pardons.) “Socially dominant” criminals don’t need JN; they’re simply not prosecuted (see Hillary Clinton). It only serves to protect the powerless from governmental abuse. And, as I said before, historically that was the primary purpose of juries: to protect the little guy from the King.
Laird is right that prosecutors and judges with agendas are too well known in the modern world (and not exactly absent from the past), and the effective restraints on them are poor in practice. Paraphrasing Churchill, one might say the balance of powers is the worst form of government in the world – except for the other known forms.
Laird is also right that one important purpose of the jury system is to compel the law to keep in touch with the public. Rich is right to say that juries can be intimidated or corrupt.
We want judges to enforce the law and the constitution – and we don’t want them to indulge their agendas instead, while insolently pretending to do so. Talk of jury nullification should always be aware of that same tension; juries have a legitimate job to do and an illegitimate self-indulgence not to do. A nullifying jury needs more reason than “well, it appears a majority of us here did not vote for the party who passed this law” and, human nature being what it is, any discussion of jury nullification needs strong reminders of that.
I have the impression the film ‘Runaway Jury’ is the left’s fantasy of how wonderful it would be if juries would just enact the agenda, not the law, and nullify the 2nd amendment – garnished of course with the usual claptrap of corrupt wealthy firearms sellers and their evil right-wing lawyers, stupid socially-ugly right-wing 2nd amendment supporters, etc.
Worth noting that JPD was not actually completely innocent. He was in the process of committing a minor crime, which was why he ran from the police that then shot him. Doesn’t excuse what happend, but in the interest of accuracy.
Conrad,
Can you give a bit more context to your remark? I find it rather cryptic.