Month: May 2014

Gay Repub Running for Cali’s 52nd Congressional District – Harassed

Published by Papa Giorgio

The Inquisitr brings us up to speed on the main issue at hand, and it is this — totalitarian thinking of the LEFT, which includes the Gay Laeft:

Gay Republican congressional candidate Carl DeMaio feels he is being attack by liberal groups and LGBT-friendly organizations simply because he is a Republican. Ads mocking DeMaio have included putting his likeness on the body of a drag queen.

Dana Perino of Fox News first brought the Carl DeMaio race to national attention after flying to the state to meet the man who might become the first openly gay Republican to be elected to the state Congress. Perino was moved by Demaio’s life story and achievement working across the aisle to foster economic growth when serving in other elected positions. The man referred to by many as “the gay Republican” was orphaned at 13 when his dad left the family a few weeks for his mother died. He and his brothers and sisters were separated into different foster homes by social services.

As a young adult, Carl DeMaio worked to put himself through a top-tier college and ultimately went on to build and then sell two multi-million dollar companies. The Californian’s story sounds like the embodiment of the American dream, but the attack ads he has endured since throwing his hat into the ring for a congressional seat have been deemed as demonizing, demoralizing, and full of “gay-baiting” hate speech. Media Matters is among those who appear to not support DeMaio and have mocked Fox News for supporting the candidate. The gay Republican was also booed during a gay pride parade in California…

…read more…

The story was brought to my attention (and the video starting out the post) are with thanks to Gateway Pundit. GP puts it thus:

Carl DeMaio was orphaned when he was 14. He was taken in by Jesuits and earned his way to Georgetown University. After college, Carl founded two successful businesses before the age of thirty. He sold the businesses and was elected to San Diego City Council. Now Carl DeMaio is running for Congress.

That’s why the liberal gay groups hate him. Ads mocking DeMaio, by far left groups, have included putting his likeness on the body of a drag queen.

On Wednesday Carl DeMaio’s San Diego office was vandalized. Computers were destroyed and electrical cords were cut only six days before the primary election.

Another recent story that encapsulates the totalitarianism (total thought) of the LEFT is this story via Gay Patriot about a law professor at the University of Virginia, WHO ACTUALLY SUPPORTS GAY MARRIAGE, has a campaign by the gay-left against him because his thinking also includes “religious freedom.” This apparently is not “total” enough for the left:

Douglas Laycock is a law professor at the University of Virginia, a supporter of gay marriage, but also a supporter of religious liberty. Therefore, he is now the target of an intimidation and harassment campaign from the intolerant gay left.

An outfit called GetEQUAL (led by its co-director Heather Cronk) has launched a national e-mail campaign attacking Laycock for his role in shoring up the legal arguments of those who support what it calls “religious bigotry.”

GetEQUAL has also recruited a University of Virginia law student (Greg Lewis) and an alum (Stephanie Montenegro) to send an open letter to Laycock asking him to consider the “real-world consequences that [his] work is having.” And they have submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking e-mails between Laycock and various right-wing and religious liberty groups.

Laycock has apparently committed the unforgivable Thoughtcrime of valuing religious liberty and freedom over the oh-so-delicate feelings of … I’m just going to say it… pansies. (Not used as a pejorative against their sexuality, but against their mewling, whiny, complete lack of emotional strength.)…

…read more…

Poet and Radical, Maya Angelou, Dead at 86 ~ Supported Butchers

Published by Papa Giorgio

The problem with the above video is that the idea leftist have of “love” are never born out in their lives. It is used, rather, as a cover for their more radical ideals, which in thew twentieth century have been the bloodiest in all of history.

(Click Pic)

Gateway Pundit notes that “Angelou was a talented poet. She also was a hardened leftist who supported killers Fidel Castro and Mumia Abu-Jamal.” Here is more via Discover the Networks:

…In the early 1960s, Angelou championed Fidel Castro‘s rise to power in Cuba. Her first published story appeared in the Cuban periodicalRevolucion. In September 1960, she was deeply moved by the sight of Castro’s exhuberantly warm public embrace of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in New York, where both men were attending a United Nations session. “The Russians were O.K.,” Angelou laterreminisced. “Of course, Castro never had called himself white, so he was O.K. from the git. Anyhow … as black people often said, ‘Wasn’t no Communist country that put my grandpappa in slavery. Wasn’t no Communist lynched my poppa or raped my mamma.’”

Also in the early Sixties, Angelou supported the anti-South African apartheid movement and worked as a journalist and editor in Egypt and Ghana.

During the ensuing decades, Angelou gained enormous renown for her writing. She authored seven autobiographies—most famously, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)—as well as several collections of essays, theatrical works, and volumes of poetry. In 1993, at the request of president-elect Bill Clinton, Angelou composed an original poem, titled “On the Pulse of the Morning,” which she read at Clinton’s inauguration.

In 1994 the NAACP presented Angelou with the prestigious Spingarn Medal, which has been described as the “African American Nobel Prize.” In 2009 Angelou was again honored by the NAACP, receiving an Image Award for her book, Letter to my Daughter.

In 1995 Angelou spoke at the Million Man March organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. That same year, she lent hersupport to the convicted cop-killer and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Indeed, Angelou joined such luminaries as Alec Baldwin,Derrick Bell, Noam Chomsky, Spike Lee, and Norman Mailer in signing a full-page New York Times ad advocating a new trial for Abu-Jamal.

In a 1997 interview, Angelou lamented: “A black person grows up in this country — and in many places — knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue.” Reasoning from that premise, she lauded affirmative action and Head Start as programs that were not only “good for the country” but quite necessary—because, she said, “the playing field” had been “terribly unlevel, terribly unfair for centuries.” In the same interview, Angelou was asked if she thought “our free-market system—capitalism itself—creates divisions and inequality,” to which she replied: “Yes. Absolutely. Unfortunately, I can’t find many other ‘isms’ that don’t do the same thing.”

In March 2006 Angelou participated in a New York City event honoring the late Rachel Corrie, an American anti-Israel activist who had been accidentally killed while trying to block an Israeli anti-terror operation in 2003. Angelou praised Corrie as a “peace lover” who possessed exceptional “courage.” Others who spoke at the New York gathering included Anthony Arnove, Huwaida Arraf, Brian Avery,Eve Ensler, Hedy Epstein, Amy Goodman, Vanessa Redgrave, Ora Wise, Howard Zinn, and James Zogby….

…read more…

Why Not Discuss Elliot Rodger’s Secularism? (Misogyny Claims)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager brings up an issue of secularism in regards to Elliot Rodgers and the many generalities already being discussed about misogyny, spoiled, male-nature, mental illness, gun-control, the NRA, and the like. But no one generalizes about one of the most restraining aspects in our culture. Religion.

For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to visit: http://www.dennisprager.com/

This comes via Truth Revolt: Rutgers Professor: Killing Spree Result of White Privilege

Salon.com contributing writer Brittney Cooper, who also teaches Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, has figured out what caused Elliot Rodger to go on his rampage: white privilege. Absent from the article is any acknowledgment that the shooter was half-Asian.

“Welp. Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem,” she begins. “How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?”

She then states,  “Black men are not rolling onto college campuses and into movie theaters on a regular basis to shoot large amounts of people. Usually, the young men who do that are white, male, heterosexual, and middle-class.”

Cooper offers an analysis of Rodger’s video and 140-page note and says that his behavior is definitively attributed to white privilege:

And make no mistake: from my standpoint as an arm chair therapist — having read transcripts of Rodger’s videos —  his anger is about his failure to be able to access all the markers of white male heterosexual middle class privilege. He goes on and on about his status as a virgin, his inability to find a date since middle school, his anger and resentment about being rejected by blonde, sorority women. In fact, he claims he will “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see.” As Jessica Valenti so thoroughly demonstrates: “misogyny kills.” I am struck by the extent to which Rodger believed he was entitled to have what he deemed the prettiest girls, he was entitled to women’s bodies, and when society denied him these “entitlements” he thought it should become the public’s problem. He thought that his happiness was worth the slaughter of multiple people.

As noted by the Daily Caller, there are several examples that dispel Cooper’s narrative that mass shootings are done exclusively by white men:

  • Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 in last year’s Navy Yard shootings in Washington, D.C., was black.
  • And the largest university campus mass murder in U.S. history was carried out by Seung-Hi Cho, who was Asian. He killed 32 at Virginia Tech University in 2007.
  • In 2004, Chai Vang, an immigrant from Laos, killed six hunters in the woods of Wisconsin.
  • Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 at Fort Hood in 2009, was Palestinian.

…read more…

Breitbart has more on the woman mentioned by Miss Cooper:

It would be quite wrong to attribute the Isla Vista killings to the work of a lone madman, a U.S. feminist author argues today in the pages of the UK Guardian.

The real reason, says Jessica Valenti, is much simpler: “misogyny kills.”

According to Santa Barbara County sheriff Bill Brown, the murders were clearly the work of a deranged individual, as evidenced by the killer Elliot Rodger’s YouTube videos and also by his “141 page rambling… combination of an autobiography and a diary.”

Brown said: “The fact that he had been and was continuing to be seen by a number of healthcare professionals makes it very, very apparent that he was very mentally disturbed when he made that document.”

However, Valenti—an American blogger and feminist author of books including He’s A Stud, She’s A Slut—has ruled out mental illness as the cause of the killings.

According to his family, Rodger was seeking psychiatric treatment. But to dismiss this as a case of a lone “madman” would be a mistake.

It not only stigmatizes the mentally ill—who are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it—but glosses over the role that misogyny and gun culture play (and just how foreseeable violence like this is) in a sexist society. After all, while it is unclear what role Rodger’s reportedly poor mental health played in the alleged crime, the role of misogyny is obvious.

She goes on:

Rodger was reportedly involved with the online men’s rights movement: allegedly active on one forum and said to have been following several men’s rights channels on YouTube. The language Rodger used in his videos against women – like referring to himself as an “alpha male” – is common rhetoric in such circles. These communities are so virulently misogynist that the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks hate groups, has been watching their movements for years. Yet, as the artist Molly Crabapple pointed out on Twitter: “White terrorism is always blamed on guns, mental health—never poisonous ideology.”

…read more…

Most women are not convinced of the above arguments… that is, unless they went to graduate school and spent $30,000 a year to be brainwashed. For instance, the Independent Women’s Forum, after quoting Jessica Valenti profusely, says “What can you say about something as unhinged as this?”

IWF quotes psychologist Dr. Helen Smith, who writes about the feminist take on the Rodger rampage over at PJ Media, she writes:

The Left is making an intensive effort to change mentally-ill spree killer Elliot Rodger into a caricature that will better enable the agenda of disarming law-abiding citizens and demonizing White Males. Whatever the real Elliot Rodger was, the Narrative has decided that he is a misogynistic right-winger representing the White Patriarchal Rape Culture.

Just like the left created the myth of that nice, 12-year-old Honor Student, Trayvon Martin, an innocent who was brutally gunned down by a trigger-happy White Supremacist on his way home after buying some Skittles to further… well, essentially to further the same agenda.

Mythologies require archetypes, not real, actual people. It is highly inconvenient to the left that Mr. Rodger subscribed to a left-wing YouTube Channel and that three of his victims were men….

(GayPatriot)

…As many people have pointed out, Rodger killed more men than women, including himself. Of course, the men he killed don’t count; the main story here is that women were targeted and it makes for a more sympathetic story. Also, writers like Hess above can use the killings to really stick it to Pick-Up Artist types that she sees as deserving of blame. It’s all political fodder.

Judgy Bitch makes the best interpretation I have seen thus far:

The fact is that Elliot’s outburst does indeed highlight an issue of central importance to the MHRM – the inadequate, almost non-existent treatment of mental health problems for young men. Socially, our treatment seems to be to wait until the tortured young man puts a bullet in his own head, and just pray that he doesn’t take innocent victims with him.

As a strategy for health, it’s not working very well.

Compare that to how we respond to women who are mentally fragile after giving birth. We screen for Post Partum Depression and throw money and resources into keeping both the women and their children safe, because if we don’t do that, a lot of babies will end up dead. Women struggle with mental issues, too, and take it out on the innocent. But rather than ignore those women and hope for the best, we create programs designed to identify and help them.

Perhaps it is the feminists and their supporters who block funding and education going to boys’ and men’s issues that are to blame. Case in point? Warren Farrell tried to give a talk in Toronto about suicide in young men and other topics and was accosted by nasty feminists who did not want him to speak.

As a psychologist who has worked with men and boys for over 20 years, I can say that our society is devoid of programs and help for mental health issues for men or we try to give help that is not helpful….

…read more…

See Also:

European Happiness and Crime Rates Compared To America’s

Published by Papa Giorgio

“It’s become common knowledge that Denmark, Sweden and Norway routinely rank highest on lists of the world’s happiest nations…” (The World’s Happiest Countries Take The Most Antidepressants)

(As usual, all graphics/pics are linked to other resources.) Often I hear about how much lower the crime rate is in Europe, at times having the “Peace Index” thrown into the conversation without any meditation on what exactly this “index” says. Happiness is another moniker often thrown around without any comparisons of “what constitutes ‘happiness’.” So lets deal first with happiness, and then get into the peace index and gun-control/stats.

HAPPINESS

What constitutes happiness between the States and Europe? Let’s delve — quickly — into this topic via Forbes (2006):

The average American works 25 hours a week; the average Frenchman 18; the average Italian a bit more than 16 and a half. Even the hardest-working Europeans–the British, who put in an average of 21 and half hours–are far more laid-back than their American cousins.

Compared with Europeans, Americans are more likely to be employed and more likely to work longer hours–employed Americans put in about three hours more per week than employed Frenchmen. Most important, Americans take fewer (and shorter) vacations. The average American takes off less than six weeks a year; the average Frenchman almost 12. The world champion vacationers are the Swedes, at 16 and a half weeks per year.

Of course, Europeans pay a price for their extravagant leisure. The average Frenchman produces only three-quarters as much as the average American, even though productivity per hour is slightly higher in France.

This raises more than one interesting question. First, why do Americans choose to work so much? (Or, if you prefer, why do Europeans choose to work so little?) Second, who’s happier?…..

Why indeed.

I think this is answered a bit later in a newer poll/study, found at Live Science (see also FoxNews):

Americans really do love to work, it seems, while Europeans are much happier if they skip burning the midnight oil in favor of leisure. That’s according to a new study finding longer work hours make Europeans unhappy while Americans get a very slight (albeit not statistically significant) bliss boost from the extra grind.

“Those who work longer hours in Europe are less happy than those who work shorter hours, but in the U.S. it’s the other way around,” said study author Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, a clinical assistant professor of public policy at The University of Texas at Dallas. “The working hours’ category does not have a very big impact on the probability of happiness of Americans.” [Happiest States’ List]

The study, based on survey data, can’t tease out whether work causes happiness or unhappiness, though the researchers speculate the effect has to do with expectations and how a person measures success.

Okulicz-Kozaryn used surveys of European and American attitudes for the study. The surveys included questions about the number of hours worked and asked respondents to identify if they were “very happy,” “pretty happy” or “not too happy.”

They found that the likelihood of Europeans’ describing themselves as “very happy” dropped from around 28 percent to 23 percent as work hours climbed from under 17 hours a week to more than 60 hours per week. Americans, on the other hand, held steady, with about a 43 percent chance of describing themselves as happy regardless of working hours.

The results held even after the researchers accounted for possible confounding factors, such as age, marital status and household income….

[….]

“Happiness depends upon satisfaction with your income, satisfaction with you family life, satisfaction with your work, satisfaction with your health,” he said.

“People trade off work and leisure,” Easterlin explained, and so any attempt to explain the results of this study would have to take that into account. “[Happiness] has to do with what you think the goals are of people in the two countries.”

American happiness is a pursuit important enough to include in one of our Founding documents, right next to life and liberty. This “pursuit” we are use to (and is being harmed/deformed by the welfare state growing larger) creates innovation. For instance David Mamet notes the following:

In my family, as in yours, someone regularly says, “Hey, you know what would be a good idea … ?” And then proceeds to outline some scheme for making money by providing a product or service the need for which has just occurred to him. He and the family fantasize about and discuss and elaborate this scheme. Inherent in this fantasy is the unstated but ever-present truth that, given sufficient capital and expertise or the access to the same, the scheme might actually be put into operation (as, indeed, constantly, throughout our history, such schemes have), bettering the lives of the masses and bringing wealth to their creators. Do you believe such conversations take place in Syria? In France?

David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), [FN] 120.

Some can be happy with less pay and trusting the state will care for them enough to go on 12-week vacations. While doctors, for instance, may enjoy a month-long vacation in France [mandatory vacation], this “happiness” rather than hard-work often has deadly consequences, one being — for instance — nearly 15,000 people dying in a heat wave in France in 2003 (a record for Europe… previously Italy held it with 3,000).

  • …Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei has ordered a separate special study this month to look into a possible link with vacation schedules after doctors strongly denied allegations their absence put the elderly in danger. The heat wave hit during the August vacation period, when doctors, hospital staff and many others take leave…

So Europe being “happier” than the United States is something of a misnomer.

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We pursue it, not expecting government to provide it for us. If government doeas, a simple economic law states — basically — that creativity is squelched:

  • “A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge”

George Gilder, Interview by Dennis Prager {Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world.}

When people do, austerity more-often-than-not leads to riots and collapse. And why in many European countries the EU is being rejected, and conservative parties are getting landslides (like UKIP in the UK). People are fed up with horrible health care, no incentive to succeed, taxes, crime, and immigration issues. 

Okay, I feel my point has been made. Innovation comes by a drive to work hard, as much as you wish in fact… whereas Europe forces people to work less, and thus is stagnant in relation to this said innovation. What about crime rates and violence, yes, even gun violence? Lets see. Firstly, I deal with some of the more pressing issues with the Peace Index here. But in this conversation, I wanted to deal with violent crimes… which include more than gun violence. As Europe gives birth to a generation divorced of their cultural heritage, you will see a rise in violence, and then a rise in reaction to it. Maybe an over-reaction?

VIOLENCE

Firstly, if you are an in-depth kind of reader, at this link you will find multiple debates and appearances of John Lott on CNN and other programs discussing gun crime. But let’s deal with a place that has for years made gun ownership illegal, the United Kingdom. Here is the headline from The Telegraph on the topic:

UK is violent crime capital of Europe: The United Kingdom is the violent crime capital of Europe and has one of the highest rates of violence in the world, worse even than America, according to new research.

Analysis of figures from the European Commission showed a 77 per cent increase in murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offences in the UK since Labour came to power.

The total number of violent offences recorded compared to population is higher than any other country in Europe, as well as America, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

Opposition leaders said the disclosures were a “damning indictment” of the Government’s failure to tackle deep-rooted social problems.

The figures combined crime statistics for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The UK had a greater number of murders in 2007 than any other EU country – 927 – and at a relative rate higher than most western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain. 

 It also recorded the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU, and the highest absolute number of burglaries, with double the number of offences recorded in Germany and France.

Overall, 5.4 million crimes were recorded in the UK in 2007 – more than 10 a minute – second only to Sweden.

Chris Grayling, shadow home secretary, said: “This is a real damning indictment of this government’s comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock-on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.

“We’re now on our fourth Home Secretary in this parliament, and all we are getting is a rehash of old initiatives that didn’t work the first time round. More than ever Britain needs a change of direction.”

The figures were sourced from Eurostat, the European Commission’s database of statistics. They are gathered using official sources in the countries concerned such as the national statistics office, the national prison administration, ministries of the interior or justice, and police.

A breakdown of the statistics, which were compiled into league tables by the Conservatives, revealed that violent crime in the UK had increased from 652,974 offences in 1998 to more than 1.15 million crimes in 2007.

It means there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe.

Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland.

By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000 population.

France recorded 324,765 violent crimes in 2007 – a 67 per cent increase in the past decade – at a rate of 504 per 100,000 population. 

…read more…

Which segways into a recent comparison in crime and gun-control in a Wall Street Journal article by Joyce Lee Malcolm, entitled: “Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control: After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.” Here is an interview of her in regards to the article, followed by excerpts from said article:

Larry Elder Interview & Wall Street Journal Article

Here are portions of the article:

…Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.

In 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed—as were the police—Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.

Nine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life.

Since 1920, anyone in Britain wanting a handgun had to obtain a certificate from his local police stating he was fit to own a weapon and had good reason to have one. Over the years, the definition of “good reason” gradually narrowed. By 1969, self-defense was never a good reason for a permit.

After Hungerford, the British government banned semiautomatic rifles and brought shotguns—the last type of firearm that could be purchased with a simple show of fitness—under controls similar to those in place for pistols and rifles. Magazines were limited to two shells with a third in the chamber.

Dunblane had a more dramatic impact. Hamilton had a firearm certificate, although according to the rules he should not have been granted one. A media frenzy coupled with an emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.

The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.

[….]

Six weeks after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Martin Bryant, an Australian with a lifelong history of violence, attacked tourists at a Port Arthur prison site in Tasmania with two semiautomatic rifles. He killed 35 people and wounded 21 others.

At the time, Australia’s guns laws were stricter than the United Kingdom’s. In lieu of the requirement in Britain that an applicant for permission to purchase a gun have a “good reason,” Australia required a “genuine reason.” Hunting and protecting crops from feral animals were genuine reasons—personal protection wasn’t.

With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.

To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides “continued a modest decline” since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was “relatively small,” with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.

According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported “a modest reduction in the severity” of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.

In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven’t made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don’t provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.

Ms. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including “Guns and Violence: The English Experience,” (Harvard, 2002).

Of course America’s worst massacre involving a school is the Bath Bombing (below), Michigan (1927). And a bomb killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City Bombing. So if someone wants to kill another… no amount of government regulation will decrease this fact:

  • “…we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

John Adams, first (1789–1797) Vice President of the United States, and the second (1797–1801) President of the United States. Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull (New York, 1848), pp 265-6.

Hollywood Libs Caught On Camera (UPDATED w/ Simpsons)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(H/t ~ Gateway Pundit) EPIC! Via Progressives Today:

Via The Hollywood Reporter:The conservative journalist duped progressives Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemmingway to get involved in an anti-fracking film that was funded by Middle Eastern oil interests. O’Keefe will unveil the movie at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday!

James O’Keefe says he duped Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemmingway into agreeing to get involved with an anti-fracking movie while hiding that its funding comes from Middle Eastern oil interests.

Journalist James O’Keefe, known for his controversial undercover sting operations aimed usually at liberals — is set to unveil at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday the first of a group of videos that he says will reveal hypocrisy among Hollywood environmentalists….

…read more…

Just Press Play, It Works:

This is one of the scenes from the Simpsons in 1999 where Ed Begley Jr.’s made a cameo appearance:

MSNBC Panel Is Reminded That the UCSB Killer Also Used a Knife and Car

Published by Papa Giorgio

“You know, I wonder if I missed something. My understanding is that some of his victims were stabbed to death. Other of his victims were hit by a car that he was driving. And all of a sudden one weapon is, in fact, under attack. And not only is it under attack, people are talking about stepping on the constitutional rights of law-abiding people.”

(Via Truth Revolt) n MSNBC this afternoon, commentator and Republican politician Ken Blackwell was on as part of panel discussion about guns and gun control in the wake of this weekend’s killing spree in Santa Barbara. Host Craig Melvin runs down a laundry list of various ways of saying gun or shooting and so on before finally asking Blackwell how something like this could happen. Blackwell’s response was absolutely pitch perfect.

Of course, he immediately interrupted by the host. Diverting attention away from MSNBC’s anti-gun agenda is the fastest way to get cut off during an interview on the network. Melvin says he didn’t mean to “attack guns” and the he was just trying to lay out “the facts.” Only the facts are as Ken Blackwell laid them out, contrary to Melvin’s one-note recitation.

There were three weapons used in this murderous rampage. That is the fact. It’s a fact that the hosts at MSNBC clearly aren’t interested in dealing with. Ken Blackwell, however, isn’t going to let them get away with it.

Gay Patriot notes a story about registering cars like you do guns:

For every purchase, you will have to fill out a questionnaire confirming you’re a US citizen, do not use drugs or abuse alcohol, have never had a conviction for alcohol related incidents or reckless driving.  Lying on this form will be punishable by 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.

New cars will only be purchased from Federal Automobile Licensees who must provide fingerprints, proof of character, secure storage for all vehicles, and who must call the Federal Bureau of Motor Vehicles to verify your information before purchase.  They may approve or decline or delay the sale.  If they decline, you may appeal the decision in writing to a review board.  If they delay, it becomes an approval automatically after 10 days. However, the dealer may decline to complete such a sale in case of later problems.

Federal Automobile Licensees must agree to submit to 24/7/365, unannounced, unscheduled searches of their entire homes, businesses and any relates properties and personal effects to be named later.

Read the whole thing.

If You Are Juden’s, er, Conservatives, You Need Not Apply

Published by Papa Giorgio

★ If you are a Republican, you need not speak at a university commencement or convocation.
★ If you are a conservative Republican you need not apply for a job, as a waiter or an CEO

Totalitarian thinking is rampant on the left (http://youtu.be/6Hm6Le4pDM8), lesbian author Tammy Bruce wrote about this many years ago in her book, “The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds.” As the book “The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America’s Campuses” pointed out many years ago, as well as many others.

Martin Niemöller

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

  • True for You, But Not for Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith
  • True Tolerance: Liberalism and the Necessity of Judgment
  • Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism
  • The Intolerance of Tolerance
  • The New Tolerance
  • Natural Law and Public Reason
  • Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality: Contemporary Essays
  • Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality
  • Clash Of Orthodoxies: Law Religion & Morality In Crisis
  • Natural Law and Natural Rights
  • The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values
  • The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
  • Liberalism: Fatal Consequences
  • Death by Liberalism: The Fatal Outcome of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies
  • At War with the Word
  • Political Correctness The Cloning of the American Mind
  • Muzzled: From T-Ball to Terrorism-True Stories That Should Be Fiction
  • Are You Politically Correct?: Debating America’s Cultural Standards
  • Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air
  • A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist
  • Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics
  • Moral Apologetics for Contemporary Christians: Pushing Back Against Cultural and Religious Critics
  • The Assault: Liberalism’s Attack on Religion, Freedom, and Democracy
  • The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals
  • Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media

The Left has a propensity for totalitarian thinking. Leftist movements throughout the twentieth century are harbingers (http://youtu.be/iQcUkd1w_TY) to the idea that inside every progressive/liberal there is a tyrant waiting to get out. Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh City, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, etc., these were men not pushing a conservative ideal, but a leftist ideology. A “total” way of thinking.

They just didn’t — overnight — come and take Jews, priests, pastors, gypsies, and the like and kill them in NAZI Germany. [NAZI means: National Socialist (Nationalsozialismus) Party of Germany — again, leftist ideology.] There was years of demonization, firing from jobs, shouting down of rather than dialogue, and the like.

History is a harbinger, who will stand up on the Left and say, “Whoa, enough-is-enough?” Black sports writers cannot dissent from the liberal mantra (http://youtu.be/LKXKccyb2e8), to Democrates changing names of fish [the Asian Carp, which came from Asia] to the “Evasive Carp,” because it is somehow less derogatory.

Democratic Senators on the floor of the Senate calling for the name of the Redskins to be changed (why not Oklahoma? That is Choctaw for “Red-Man”), to saying swastika flags were at T.E.A. Party rallies (http://youtu.be/M58Wewdaurc), to yet others saying opposition to Obama-care is racist (http://tinyurl.com/mmad43o) — or that Obama-care, the term, should be outlawed (https://vimeo.com/20273419).

This is some older commentary by me explaining What Fascism Is:

…a librarian at Ohio University recommended the book, The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom, and was voted on by his fellow professors 21-0 [with nine abstentions, so kinda like 30-0] as being a sexual harasser for recommending a conservative book. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.

See blog for Friday, April 14, 2006 (political commentary): TigerHawk – “Shame of Ohio State Univesity”

Another example:

The political commentators of the same political philosophy, when on campuses are shouted down and threatened with bodily harm (Ann Coulter), when opposing viewpoints are not shouted down on university campuses, and the guests dont need bodyguards (Cindy Sheehan).

See blog (political commentary): Audacious Epigone – “Fascism in Connecticut”

Let us look at what we are told is suppose to be the political landscape if it were to be put into a line graph. Again, the following graph is wrong:

Really this is misleading. For one, it doesn’t allow for anarchy, which is a form of governance (or lack thereof). Also, it places democracy in the center… as if this is what one should strive for, a sort of balance. (The most popular — college level graph — is wrong and misleading as well):

[….]

The following graph includes all political models and better shows where the political beliefs lie e.g., left or right is the following (take note, this graph is from a book I do not support nor recommend… but these visual insights are very useful):

In actuality, during WWII, fascism grew out of socialism, showing how close the ties were. I would argue that the New Left that comprises much of the Democratic Party today is fascistic, or, at least, of a closer stripe than any conservative could ever hope to be. I will end with a model comparing the two forms of governance that the two core values (conservatism/classical liberalism versus a socialist democracy) will produce. Before you view the below though, keep in mind that a few years back the ASA (American Socialist Association) on their own web site said that according to the voting record of United States Congressmen and Women, that 58 of them were social democrats. These are the same that put Hitler and Mussolini in power.

…read more…

Sweden Goes Insane (the latest from Pat Condell)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Some Barbary Pirates History and the Creation of Our Military

Published by Papa Giorgio

This was to be the first of many times that an American president would plot to overthrow a foreign government–a dangerous game but one that the Jefferson administration found as hard to pass up as many of its successors would. Wrote Madison:

“Although it does not accord with the general sentiments or views of the United States to intermiddle in the domestic contests of other countries, it cannot be unfair, in the prosecution of a just war, or the accomplishment of a reasonable peace, to turn to their advantage, the enmity and pretensions of others against a common foe.”

Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2002), 23-24.

This audio is with a h/t to The Religion of Conquest:

America’s first foreign war: lessons learned from fighting muslim pirates, by Michael Medved:

Most Americans remain utterly ignorant of this nation’s first foreign war but that exotic, long-ago struggle set the pattern for nearly all the many distant conflicts that followed. Refusal to confront the lessons of the First Barbary War (1801-1805) has led to some of the silliest arguments concerning Iraq and Afghanistan, and any effort to apply traditional American values to our future foreign policy requires an understanding of this all-but-forgotten episode from our past.

The war against the Barbary States of North Africa (Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli—today’s Libya) involved commitment and sacrifice far from home and in no way involved a defense of our native soil. For centuries, the Islamic states at the southern rim of the Mediterranean relied upon piracy to feed the coffers of their corrupt rulers. The state sponsored terrorists of that era (who claimed the romantic designation, “corsairs”) seized western shipping and sold their crews into unimaginably brutal slavery.

By the mid-eighteenth century, European powers learned to save themselves a great deal of trouble and wealth by bribing the local authorities with “tribute,” in return for which the pirates left their shipping alone. Until independence, British bribes protected American merchant ships in the Mediterranean since they traveled under His Majesty’s flag; after 1783, the new government faced a series of crises as Barbary pirates seized scores of civilian craft (with eleven captured in 1793 alone). Intermittently, the United States government paid tribute to escape these depredations: eventually providing a bribe worth more than $1,000,000—a staggering one-sixth of the total federal budget of the time – to the Dey of Algiers alone.

When Jefferson became president in 1801, he resolved to take a hard line against the terrorists and their sponsors. “I know that nothing will stop the eternal increase of demands from these pirates but the presence of an armed force, and it will be more economical & more honorable to use the same means at once for suppressing their insolencies,” he wrote.

The president dispatched nearly all ships of the fledgling American navy to sail thousands of miles across the Atlantic and through the straits of Gibraltar to do battle with the North African thugs. After a few initial reverses, daring raids on sea and land (by the new Marine Corps, earning the phrase in their hymn “….to the shores of Tripoli”) won sweeping victory. A decade later, with the U.S. distracted by the frustrating and inconclusive War of 1812 against Great Britain, the Barbary states again challenged American power, and President Madison sent ten new ships to restore order with another decisive campaign (known as “The Second Barbary War, 1815).

Continuing with the article:

The records of these dramatic, all-but-forgotten conflicts convey several important messages for the present day:

  1. The U.S. often goes to war when it is not directly attacked. One of the dumbest lines about the Iraq War claims that “this was the first time we ever attacked a nation that hadn’t attacked us.” Obviously, Barbary raids against private shipping hardly constituted a direct invasion of the American homeland, but founding fathers Jefferson and Madison nonetheless felt the need to strike back. Of more than 140 conflicts in which American troops have fought on foreign soil, only one (World War II, obviously) represented a response to an unambiguous attack on America itself. Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a long-standing tradition of fighting for U.S. interests, and not just to defend the homeland.
  2. Most conflicts unfold without a Declaration of War. Jefferson informed Congress of his determination to hit back against the North African sponsors of terrorism (piracy), but during four years of fighting never sought a declaration of war. In fact, only five times in American history did Congress actually declare war – the War of 1812, the Mexican War, The Spanish American War, World War I and World War II. None of the 135 other struggles in which U.S. troops fought in the far corners of the earth saw Congress formally declare war—and these undeclared conflicts (including Korea, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, and many more) involved a total of millions of troops and more than a hundred thousand total battlefield deaths.
  3. Islamic enmity toward the US is rooted in the Muslim religion, not recent American policy. In 1786, America’s Ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, joined our Ambassador in London, John Adams, to negotiate with the Ambassador from Tripoli, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. The Americans asked their counterpart why the North African nations made war against the United States, a power “who had done them no injury”, and according the report filed by Jefferson and Adams the Tripolitan diplomat replied: “It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.”
  4. Cruel Treatment of enemies by Muslim extremists is a long-standing tradition. In 1793, Algerian pirates captured the merchant brig Polly and paraded the enslaved crewmen through jeering crowds in the streets of Algiers. Dey Hassan Pasha, the local ruler, bellowed triumphantly: “Now I have got you, you Christian dogs, you shall eat stones.” American slaves indeed spent their years of captivity breaking rocks. According to Max Boot in his fine book The Savage Wars of Peace: “A slave who spoke disrespectfully to a Muslim could be roasted alive, crucified, or impaled (a stake was driven through the arms until it came out at the back of the neck). A special agony was reserved for a slave who killed a Muslim – he would be cast over the city walls and left to dangle on giant iron hooks for days before expiring of his wounds.”
  5. There’s nothing new in far-flung American wars to defend U.S. economic interests. Every war in American history involved an economic motivation – at least in part, and nearly all of our great leaders saw nothing disgraceful in going to battle to defend the commercial vitality of the country. Jefferson and Madison felt no shame in mobilizing – and sacrificing – ships and ground forces to protect the integrity of commercial shipping interests in the distant Mediterranean.  Fortunately for them, they never had to contend with demonstrators who shouted “No blood for shipping!”
  6. Even leaders who have worried about the growth of the U.S. military establishment came to see the necessity of robust and formidable armed forces. Jefferson and Madison both wanted to shrink and restrain the standing army and initially opposed the determination by President Adams to build an expensive new American Navy. When Jefferson succeeded Adams as president, however, he quickly and gratefully used the ships his predecessor built. The Barbary Wars taught the nation that there is no real substitute for military power, and professional forces that stand ready for anything.
  7. America has always played “the cop of the world.” In part, Jefferson and Madison justified the sacrifices of the Barbary Wars as a defense of civilization, not just the protection of U.S. interests – and the European powers granted new respect to the upstart nation that finally tamed the North African pirates. Jefferson and Madison may not have fought for a New World Order but they most certainly sought a more orderly world. Many American conflicts over the last 200 years have involved an effort to enfort to enforce international rules and norms as much as to advance national interests. Wide-ranging and occasionally bloody expeditions throughout Central America, China, the Philippines, Africa and even Russia after the Revolution used American forces to prevent internal and international chaos.

The Barbary Wars cost limited casualties for the United States (only 35 sailors and marines killed in action) but required the expenditure of many millions of dollars – a significant burden for the young and struggling Republic. Most importantly, these difficult battles established a long, honorable tradition of American power projected many thousands of miles beyond our shores. Those who claim that our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan represent some shameful, radical departure from an old tradition of pacifism and isolation should look closely at the reality of our very first foreign war—and all the other conflicts in the intervening 200 years.

Religious Implications of the Treaty of Tripoli

A friend recently quoted this:

“As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims]… it is declared… that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries” …. “The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.” 

Firstly, those who cite the Treaty of Tripoli as evidence that this nation was not founded on the Christian religion, usually ignore the Treaty of Paris of 1783. This Treaty, negotiated by Ben Franklin and John Adams among others, is truly a foundational document for the United States, because by this Treaty Britian recognized the independence of the United States. The Treaty begins with the words, “In the Name of the most holy and undivided Trinity… ,” and there is no dispute about its validity or its wording. This “disputed validity” can be seen in the article by Tekton. A fuller dealing with the treaty can also be found at the Wall Builder’s site.

The United States Constitution and the American political system were based on Christian principles.  Included in those Christian principles are the following theological and moral imperatives:

  • Government power and sovereignty should be limited to the specific theological and moral commands of the Christian God.
  • There should be a balance and separation of powers within the government so that a small group of evil people will be unable to tyrannize others.
  • All citizens should have the right to own property and to buy and sell freely, according to the moral law of the Christian God.
  • The right to life and property cannot be abridged without due process.
  • The ultimate source of all authority lies with the God of the Bible.
  • The American Government was designed to be a sacred covenant between the people, the state, and God.  If the state breaks this covenant, then the people have the right, and the duty, to oppose the state but to use violence only as a last resort.
  • As the Constitution clearly states, Jesus Christ is our Lord because He is the second member of the “most Holy and undivided Trinity.”
  • Although the Constitution affirms a belief in the deity of Christ and in the Holy Trinity, neither the church nor the state is allowed to physically force people to believe these biblical teachings.  The state should, however, do everything it can to facilitate the spread of the Christian Gospel and to place moral limits on the behavior of people.

For instance, one of many examples the Left gives for a secular founding of our nation is Benjamin Franklin. However, we can see his advice to his own kin in these quotes, he wrote to his daughter in 1764,

“Go constantly to church, whoever preaches. The act of devotion to the common prayer book is your principle business there, and if properly attended to, will do more towards amending the heart than sermons generally can do. For they were composed by men of much greater piety and wisdom, than our common composers of sermons can pretend to be; and therefore I wish you would never miss the prayer days; yet I do not mean you should despise sermons, even of the preachers you dislike, for the discourse is often much better than the man, as sweet and clear waters come through very dirty earth. I am the pore particular on this head, as you learned to express a little before I came away, some inclination to leave our church, which I would not have you do.”

And at age 84, when the President of Yale asked his opinion of Jesus of Nazareth, he replied that “I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.” Something in all the quotes on the atheist monument that are assumed to be “set in stone” (answered here in part 1):

Other posts in this series:

Below, however, is my dealing with a signature (every time someone posts a response in a forum, you/they can choose to have the same “signature” display at the end of their comment — similar to email) of a person in a forum I was in a decade[+] ago. Enjoy, but again, I recommend the above linked articles as well as the one by Apologetic Press. You may ask why many apologetic sites deal with this? It is because atheists primarily latch on to this as an argument against the religious history of this nation. See also my paper on the Separation of Church and State.

Blancho’s signature states:

✂ “‘As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…’ – Article XI of the English text of the Treaty of Tripoli, approved by the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797 and ratified by President John Adams on June 10, 1797.”

(I have been wanting to address this quote for some time now, just haven’t had the time, sorry.)

How does this quote that Blancho uses fly in the face of other quotes by John Adams? What is the background to this treaty that caused such a signing to enter the record books of our hallowed halls. Let us first see a few quotes by Adams before we enter into the proper context of this treaty.

[speaking on why Christmas and the Fourth of July were out two top holidays] “Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?”

“Religion and virtue are the only foundations… of republicanism and of all free governments.”

Okay, the Treaty of Tripoli, one of several with Tripoli, was negotiated during the “Barbary Powers Conflict,” which began shortly after the Revolutionary War and continued through the Presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. The Muslim Barbary Powers (Tunis, Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and Turkey) were warring against what they claimed to be the “Christian” nations (England, France, Spain, Denmark, and the United States). In 1801, Tripoli even declared war against the United States, thus constituting America’s first official war as an established independent nation.

Throughout this long conflict, the five Barbary Powers regularly attacked undefended American merchant ships. Not only were their cargoes easy prey but the Barbary Powers were also capturing and enslaving “Christian” seamen in retaliation for what had been done to them by the “Christians” of previous centuries (e.g., the Crusades and Ferdinand and Isabella’s expulsion of Muslims from Grenada).

In an attempt to secure a release of captured seamen and a guarantee of unmolested shipping in the Mediterranean, President Washington dispatched envoys to negotiate treaties with the Barbary nations. (Concurrently, he encouraged the construction of American naval warships to defend the shipping and confront the Barbary “pirates” – a plan not seriously pursued until President John Adams created a separate Department of the Navy in 1798.)

The American envoys negotiated numerous treaties of “Peace and Amity” with the Muslim Barbary nations to ensure “protection” of American commercial ships sailing in the Mediterranean. However, the terms of the treaty frequently were unfavorable to America, either requiring her to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of “tribute” (i.e., official extortion) to each country to receive a guarantee” of safety or to offer other “considerations” (e.g., providing a warship as a gift to Tripoli, a gift frigate to Algiers, paying 525,000 to ransom captured American seamen from Algiers, etc.)

The 1797 treaty with Tripoli was one of the many treaties in which each country officially recognized the religion of the other in an attempt to prevent further escalation of a “Holy War” between Christians and Muslims. Consequently, Article XI of that treaty stated:

“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion AS it has in itself no character of enmity [hatred] against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] and as the said States [America] have never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

This article may be read in two manners. It may, as its critics do, be concluded after the clause “Christian religion”; or it may be read in its entirety and concluded when the punctuation so indicates. But even if shortened and cut abruptly (“the government of the united states is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion”), this is not an untrue statement since it is referring to the Federal government.

Recall that while the Founders themselves openly described America as a Christian nation, they did include a constitutional prohibition against a federal establishment; religion was a matter left solely to the individual states. Therefore, if the article is read as a declaration that the federal government of the United States was not in any sense founded on the Christian religion, such a statement is not a repudiation of the fact that America was considered a Christian nation.

Reading the clause of the treaty in its entirety also fails to weaken this fact. Article XI simply distinguished America from those historical strains of European Christianity which held an inherent hatred of Muslims; it simply assured the Muslims that the United States was not a Christian nation like those of previous centuries (with whose practices the Muslims were very familiar) and thus would not undertake a religious holy war against them.

This latter reading is, in fact, supported by the attitude prevalent among numerous American leaders. The Christianity practiced in America was described by John Jay as “enlightened,” by John Quincy Adams as “civilized,” and by John Adams as “rational.” A clear distinction was drawn between American Christianity and that of European in earlier centuries.

As Noah Webster explained:

“The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruption’s of it.”

Daniel Webster similarly explained that American Christianity was:

“Christianity to which the sword and the fagot [burning stake or hot branding iron] are unknown – general tolerant Christianity is the law of the land!”

While discussing the Barbary conflict with Jefferson, Adams declared:

“The policy of Christendom has made cowards of all their sailors before the standard of Mahomet. It would be heroical and glorious in us to restore courage to ours.”

Furthermore, it was Adams who declared:

“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were… the general principles of Christianity…. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature.”

Adams’ own words confirm that he rejected any notion that America was less than a Christian nation. Additionally, the writing’s of General William Eaton, a major figure in the Barbary Powers conflict, provide even more irrefutable testimony of how the conflict was viewed at that time. Eaton was first appointed by President John Adams a “Consul to Tunis,” and President Thomas Jefferson later advanced him to the position of “U. S. Naval Agent to the Barbary States,” authorizing him to lead a military expedition against Tripoli. Eaton’s official correspondence during his service confirms that the conflict was a Muslim war against a Christian America.

For example, when writing to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, Eaton apprised him of why the Muslims would be such dedicated foes:

“Taught by revelation [the Koran] that war with the Christians will guarantee the salvation of their souls, and finding so great secular advantages in the observance of this religious duty [the secular advantage of keeping captured cargo], their [the Muslims’] inducements to desperate fighting are very powerful.”

Eaton later complained that after Jefferson had approved his plan for military action, he sent him the obsolete warship “Hero.” Eaton reported the impression of America made upon the Tunis Muslims when they saw the old warship and its few cannons:

“[T]he weak, the crazy situation of the vessel and equipage [armaments] tended to confirm an opinion long since conceived and never fairly controverted among the Tunisians, that the Americans are a feeble sect of Christianity.”

In a letter to Pickering, Eaton reported how pleased one Barbary ruler had been when he received the extortion compensations from America which had been promised him in one of the treaties, he said:

“To speak truly and candidly…. we must acknowledge to you that we have never received articles of the kind of so excellent a quality from any Christian nation.”

When John Marshall became the new Secretary of State, Eaton informed him:

“It is a maxim of the Barbary States, that ‘The Christians who would be on good terms with them must fight well or pay well.”

And when General Eaton finally commenced his military action against Tripoli, his personal journal noted:

“April 8th. We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots with confidence in us or to persuade then that, being Christians, we can be otherwise than enemies to Musselmen. We have a difficult undertaking!”

May 23rd. Hassien Bey, the commander in chief of the enemy’s forces, has offered by private insinuation for my head six thousand dollars and double the sum for me as prisoner; and $30 per head for Christians. Why don’t he come and take it?”[/i][/list]Shortly after the military excursion against Tripoli was successfully terminated, its account was written and published. What was the title?

  • The Life of the Late Gen. William Eaton… commander of the Christian and other forces… which Led to the Treaty of Peace Between The United States and The Regency of Tripoli

Context Blancho… context.

Here is the appendix from John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1987), 413-415, that will shed more light on this: