1930's Redux?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
****************
Over the past few weeks I have been wondering why none of what's happening today in America seems new, or even surprising. A short time ago it became clear. We've experienced it before. We've seen this movie before. It's pre-1945 Germany -- all over again.
"The U.S. had been moving toward a total police state since about 1913; but in 2012 the final nail in the coffin of democracy and justice was hammered into place with the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act. NDAA allows for the U.S. military to arrest, imprison, and torture American citizen without due process of any kind!
Contemporary America has adopted the identical police state, economic-military imperialist policies and operations that Nazi Germany did--though the enactment of those policies differs to some degree. The sound of Gestapo jackboots is now heard in the land of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt." SOURCE: http://www.hermes-press.com/germany1930.htm
Oh, yes. I expect to get hammered for even broaching this subject. Any time a conservative points out the obvious -- especially when it has to do with Hitlerian Germany -- we are hammered by the political left.
Problem is -- there are still a few of us around who remember those days, and the war, and the years after the war when so much more was uncovered about the leftist movement in Germany that produced Nazism and nearly destroyed the world.
In his book: "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change," Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.
The sad truth is -- they are doing it again. This time America is their target and, unfortunately the average American citizen is so ignorant of politics, so ignorant of their own country's history and its founding documents they are allowing a leftist dictatorship to roll-up America as they stand idly by fiddling with their latest electronic gadget totally oblivious to their loss of freedom.
So why speak up now and risk bringing an excrement shower down on our heads? Because we have a duty to our fellow man to issue a warning.
Those of my generation remember these few words well. They are burned into our psyche:
"In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't communist.
They they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionists.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Finally, they came for me, but there was no one left to speak up."
Those words were penned by Martin Niemoeller, a Lutheran Pastor who was sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp in 1938. He paid the price.
We could easily insert the words "Tea Party", "The Press," "Christians," "Conservatives" into the Rev Niemoeller's words above and they would fit, exactly, where we are today in modern America.
In an oped piece for the Washington Times back in 2009, Walter Williams, a professor of economics at George Mason University, said this: "The path we're embarked upon, in the name of good, is a familiar one. The unspeakable horrors of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism did not begin in the '30s and '40s with the men usually associated with those names. Those horrors were simply the end result of a long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the name of "social justice." In Germany, it led to the Enabling Act of 1933: Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation. After all, who could be against a remedy to relieve distress? Decent but misguided Germans, who would have cringed at the thought of what Nazi Germany would become, succumbed to Hitler's charisma.
Today's Americans, enticed, perhaps enchanted, by charismatic speeches, are ceding so much power to Washington, and like yesteryear's Germans, are building the Trojan horse for a future tyrant." SOURCE: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/13/americans-love-government/
Consider this from John Myers: "It seems the Obama-media and members of Congress have not read a word of history. They seem to have never heard of a democratically elected leader who enslaved Europe and started a war that killed 60 million people while his government, police and justice system turned a blind eye to every excess. All they have to do is a Google search for “Adolf Hitler.” Maybe they don’t do that because it would be a record of subversive inquiries." SOURCE: http://personalliberty.com/2013/06/12/warning-obamas-secret-police-know-you-are-reading-this/
I came across an article entitled: "26 Similarities Between America and Nazi Germany -- Three Forces Destroying the America We Know" By Brannon Howse recently. I'd like you to consider a few of those similarities Mr. Howse points out:
In 1935, under Hitler's rule, prayers ceased to be obligatory in schools. In 1962, The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed school prayer.
Hitler eliminated Christian holidays in the schools first by calling Christmas "Yuletide." Most American public schools now call Christmas vacation a "winter break."
Hitler took Easter out of schools and instead honored that time of year as the beginning of spring. It has likewise become common for schools in America to refer to time off at Easter as "spring break."
Hitler controlled the church using intimidation and threats. A half-century ago, U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, promoted a bill that included an amendment to use the Internal Revenue Service to remove the non-profit status of a church that speaks against the election of any specific political candidate. (We all KNOW what the IRS has recently publicly admitted to doing.)
Hitler enticed thousands of pastors to promote paganism in their congregations. Neopaganism is one of the fastest growing religions in America, doubling every 18 months according to a June 2008 article in The Denver Post.
Hitler was an environmentalist and vegetarian. Marriages performed by the Nazi state frequently included blessings of "Mother Earth" and "Father Sky." Today Americans increasingly accept radical environmentalism, pantheism, and the celebration of Earth Day.
Hitler was fascinated by eastern mysticism. Today an increasing number of American pastors encourage their followers to become "mystic warriors".
Hitler's holocaust killed between 8 and 11 million Jews and non-Jews. Americans have killed an estimated 50 million babies since abortion was legalized through the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973.
By 1938, all private schools were abolished by Hitler and all education placed under Nazi control. There is constant pressure from federal and many state education authorities to require that Christian schools use state-mandated, humanistic textbooks.
Hitler prevented dissenters from using radio to challenge his worldview. Many powerful liberals in America have made clear their intent to reintroduce the "Fairness Doctrine" that would require conservative and religious radio stations to offer equal time to anti-Christian, anti-conservative worldviews.
Pastors who spoke against Hitler's worldview and his murderous regime found themselves on trial and frequently imprisoned for "Abuse of Pulpit." In America, hate-crime legislation has the potential to criminalize Christians and pastors who speak out against the homosexual agenda.
Hitler outlawed the cross and replaced it with the swastika. Today many churches, Christian colleges, and universities have willingly removed the cross from their buildings. Numerous court cases sponsored by the ACLU have required the removal of the cross from public grounds. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the Ten Commandments cannot be posted on public grounds for religious purposes.
Hitler exploited the economic collapse of Germany to take over as dictator and usher in his brand of socialism. America's financial crisis has given liberals in both political parties the opportunity to grow the size of government and implement freedom-robbing socialism at lightning speed.
Hitler was obsessed with globalism, and many of America's most powerful political leaders are willing to subjugate American sovereignty to contemporary globalism.
Many Germans responded to Hitler by retreating into neutrality. Today most Americans prefer to remain neutral on moral issues that they think don't affect them personally.
On trial after World War II, Hitler's henchmen used the defense that they had not broken any laws. True, they had not defied the laws of Germany since those had been re-written to fit the goals and objectives of Hitler. The Nazi leaders were nevertheless found guilty because the courts at the time recognized a "law above the law." Yet now the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the law of nature and nature's God by claiming that as society evolves, morals evolve, and so the law, too, must evolve.
Calling upon Darwinian evolution, Hitler convinced the German people that purging millions of people was acceptable because of the need to create a pure race; also referred to as eugenics. American students across the board have been educated in Darwinian evolution because the Supreme Court has ruled that creation cannot be taught in our schools-even if both creation and evolution are taught side by side.
Germans accepted socialism to avoid pain. Today's Americans are rejecting capitalism in exchange for government-sponsored "free" healthcare, education, and countless other government handouts.
America is rushing toward government-sponsored, national healthcare. (Obamacare is already the law of the land in America.) We already have a form of this in Medicare and Medicaid. Hitler, too, expanded and centralized Germany's healthcare system. As Melchior Palyi explained, "The ill-famed Dr. Ley, boss of the Nazi labor front, did not fail to see that the social insurance system could be used for Nazi politics as a means of popular demagoguery, as a bastion of bureaucratic power, [and] as an instrument of regimentation."
There is much more in this article and we recommend you read it -- whether you agree with it or not. You will find it here: http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=4881
I don't know about you, but I experienced an involuntary shudder as I read the similarities above. It's akin to reliving a terrifying nightmare.
What's even more distressing is watching my fellow Americans happily and energetically promoting and then voluntarily lining up for the FREE hot government showers.
It has been said that the only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition, and incompetence. I would add one more -- apathy.
Many conservatives are losing hope today that America can survive. Unless there is an act of God, I feel certain America will install another president in the mold of the current occupant of the Oval Office in 2016. I believe that will truly mark the end of days for America.
America rode to the rescue of the world in the 1940's. But there is no one, no country, remotely interested in riding to America's rescue today. So, if America is to be rescued, she must rescue herself.
And therein lies the deepest hurt of all.
There is virtually no homogeneity in America these days. There is precious little similarity, or comparability in kind or nature amongst Americans anymore. Diversity and multiculturalism took care of that. We have so little in common with our neighbors and fellow countrymen that we really could not care less what happens to them and -- by extension -- to our country. Thus our vulnerability.
It is not enough to ask as the ancient Psalmist did: "If the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" -- Psalm 11:3. It seems so inadequate to answer by sounding ONLY the alarm.
But America is not alarmed -- not yet! Until she is -- and until she is ready to pay the fiddler, her race to self immolation will continue.
© J. D. Longstreet
Miranda Rights: for terrorists before Americans
Miranda Rights: for terrorists before Americans
Recent revelations that many facets of our communications are being monitored by government entities, is a chilling reminder of how far America has moved away from the Constitution. Edward Snowden, a former employee of Booz Allen Hamiliton, a defense contractor to the National Security Agency, was revealed as the source of the recent intelligence leaks. Now in hiding overseas, Snowden revealed yet another scandal surrounding the Obama White House. President Obama quickly responded to media criticisms of this obvious overreach by his Administration. He stated that a country to be safe from terrorism must give up some of its freedoms to achieve that goal. Democrats, in a harmonious chorus, noted the spying programs now in place were initiated under President Bush. The two glaring facts Democrats left unstated were: most of them voted for the Patriot Act which empowers these programs and the legislation only permits intercept of foreign communications not those of Americans within our borders. Much more insidious than trolling through our lives via social networks, the postal system and other forms of electronic eavesdropping is: how will the information be utilized?
Information that is brought to light which does not imply a terrorist threat, yet is incriminating under other circumstances could be violating a person’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Worse, in the event information is given to law enforcement officials, from these forays into our privacy, could the government be trampling on our Miranda Rights? Though Miranda addresses the spoken word in regards to self-incrimination, the written word is only an extension of its voiced counterpart, as recognized by law. Government’s intrusion into our private communications precludes a warning that information gathered might be used against us at some future date. Obama’s security teams skipped over the part in the law that advises Americans they should be notified of their Miranda Rights before these clear intrusions into our privacy occur. Sixteen hours after the Boston Marathon Bombing, Eric Holder’s team and a federal judge ran to the bedside of the bomber, Dzhokhar Tsamaev, to advise him of his Miranda rights. Why Eric Holder moved so quickly to quiet this murderer remains a mystery. Yet, in the minds of Obama Administration officials, terrorists have more rights than their victims. Edward Snowden’s controversial revelations only affirmed what most of us suspected, that Uncle Obama has moved into our backyards. Whether you consider Snowden a patriot, hero or traitor one thing for certain: he did us all a favor. Mark Davis MD, President of Healthnets Review Services, www.healthnetsreviewservices.com, platomd@gmail.com, Author of Demons of Democracy and the forthcoming book, Obamacare: Dead on Arrival, A Prescription for Disaster. Manager of the group on LinkedIn, Government in Transition.
Foolish big-government policies continue to impede economic recovery
Economic news continues to be slightly positive, with May's numbers a mixture of good and bad.
Unemployment ticked up one-tenth, from 7.5 percent to 7.6 percent and, oddly, that isn't as bad as it seems, because 420,000 people who had dropped out of the labor force thought that the environment had improved sufficiently to start looking for work again last month. Had those folks remained on the sidelines, the rate likely would have held at a too-high 7.5 percent. However, 101,000 of those new job-seekers didn't find work, pushing the unemployment rate up.
The influx of new job-seekers, however, moved the labor force participation rate from 63.3, a 34-year low, to 63.4.
New jobs totaled 175,000 last month, a little better than the 155,000 average of the last three months, but most were low-paying jobs that are not likely to increase consumer spending. And that number is well below the number needed monthly to make real progress in lowering the unemployment rate. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's calculator shows that more than 400,000 new jobs per month will be needed to get the unemployment rate down to the full-employment level of 5.0 percent in a year, and nearly 261,000 new jobs a month to hit 5.0 percent in two years.
Four years after the $1 trillion stimulus package that was supposed to generate a 5.1 percent jobless rate, we are still a long way from that number with unemployment 50 percent higher than that. And as long as consumer confidence remains low and business uncertainty remains high, unemployment will not change much.
Businesses that scaled back workers during the recession continue operating with fewer employees, uncertain of how their costs may increase through higher taxes and costs related to health care reform, and won't hire more workers until those uncertainties are put to rest, or until there is a surge in consumer demand. However, consumers also are nervous about spending in the current economic environment, and are waiting for stability.
Last Thursday's Labor Department numbers showed that non-farm productivity, defined as output per hour of all workers, rose at a 0.7 percent annual rate in January through March, reversing the trend in the last quarter of 2012, as the economy sputtered.
One explanation for the recent pickup is that businesses saw higher demand for products and services over the winter, and that typically leads to higher wages for workers, ultimately improving living standards. However, it might also mean that employers are getting more out of their current workforce and thus have no urgent need to hire, which does not improve the unemployment picture.
On the topic of health care reform, the public has never embraced the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, and is even less enamored of it today, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Rasmussen found that only 41percent of the 1,000 likely voters that participated now hold at least a somewhat favorable opinion of the health care law, while 54 percent view it unfavorably. A tiny 15 percent view Obamacare very favorably, while 40 percent have a very unfavorable view of the law.
A slightly better rating appears in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which shows that 49 percent of Americans say they believe the Affordable Care Act is a bad idea, while just 37 percent say it is a good idea. Like the Rasmussen poll, the NBC/WSJ poll had a substantial number of participants who strongly believe Obamacare is a very bad idea, at 43 percent.
These numbers reflect an increase in unpopularity since July 2012, when 44 percent of NBC/WSJ poll respondents called it a bad idea, while 40 percent called it a good one.
Some of the reasons for this unpopularity are that while the Affordable Care Act promised to lower premiums for families, regulators decided to impose a 3.5 percent surcharge on insurance plans sold through federally run exchanges. There also is a $63 fee for every person covered by employers, and a "premium tax" that will require insurers to pay more than $100 billion over the next decade. The Joint Committee on Taxation expects insurers to simply pass this tax onto individuals and small businesses, boosting premiums another 2.5 percent.
Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office said that 7 million people will likely lose their employer coverage thanks to Obamacare — nearly twice its previous estimate. The CBO said that number could be as high as 20 million.
And in December, state insurance commissioners warned Obama administration officials that the law's market regulations would likely cause "rate shocks," particularly for younger, healthier people forced by Obamacare to subsidize premiums for those who are older and sicker.
Combined with the other liberal policies that have caused the recovery to stall for four years, the unpopular federal takeover of health care deepens uncertainty for businesses and raises insurance and health costs for consumers. Then there is Obamacare's planned involvement of the IRS.
A stagnant recovery and pain and suffering are what happens when the narrow ideological dreams of the ruling elite take precedence over addressing the real needs of Americans.
OUT and ABOUT in NEW YORK
... here I'm with a first look from my mini trip to New York and it looks like this: denim suit (on repeat), leopard print heels along with my newest purchase, this 3.1 Phillip Lim burgundy bag (P.S great sales at Neiman Marcus).
Many things to do but always we find a way to enjoy this beautiful city and also to meet with great and talented people.
More photos soon!
The winner of the ME CHAR clutch giveaway is Tinkerbell of Laka!
p.s NEW GIVEAWAY coming SOON!
Shirt: American Eagle/ option Here
Jeans: Levis/ great option Here
Bag: 3.1 Phillip Lim/ Here
Heels: Daniblack/ similar Here
Sunglasses: c/o zeroUV/ option Here
Cuff bracelet: St.Thomas/ option Here
Illegal Immigration Can Be Stopped ... J. D. Longstreet
Illegal Immigration Can Be Stopped
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
The Obama Administration has been excellent at keeping a crisis of some kind ongoing in the US while they continue to get their crash socialist programs through the Congress and made into law before the American people figure out what hit us. It’s called “misdirection.” Magicians use it all the time. The reason Magicians and politicians use it - because it works!
We warned some time ago that when the Obama people run out of crises and the smoke clears a little and the American people begin to get a look through the low hanging mist, there would be a lot of jaws dropping and dragging the floor. Well, those "thumps" you've been hearing in the past few weeks are the sound of those aforementioned jaws hitting the floor. Yep, it has finally begun.
It is sometimes known as “Buyer’s Remorse.” You know, it's that sinking feeling you get after you get home from a shopping trip with something that you felt -- at the time the salesman was pitching it to you -- that you absolutely had to have. Now that you are home with that item, which is now ALL YOURS, you realize, you really didn’t need it at all! In fact, you don’t even want the “cussed thing”, but. - Now you OWN IT! THAT is "Buyer’s Remorse."
That is what a lot of Obama supporters are feeling these days. It is certainly not because we conservatives didn’t warn them, we did, loud and clear and long, we warned them. Too late, they discovered we actually DID know what we were talking about. But, as I said, it is now too late.
Hopefully, enough of those misdirected voters will clear their heads in time to help those of us already in the trenches stop Obama’s attempt to grant amnesty to the nearly, what, 30 million (?), or so, illegal immigrants in the US. Yes, it is the illegal immigration amnesty program now referred to as Immigration Reform. It's nothing more than a new effort to get that Illegal Immigrant Amnesty Program pushed through a socialist Congress.
It will not be easy to stop immigration reform in the US Senate. In fact, it will probably pass the Senate. But, we expect to stop it with an all out effort in the US House of Representatives.
Is it time to close the Golden Door and out lady Liberty’s Torch? I think it is… at least for a time. We desperately need to get a handle on immigration.
The US is being overrun with immigrants, legal and illegal. So many are coming in that we can no longer keep up with them… and as a result, we haven’t a clue who is here… and what their intentions are. Granted the recession has slowed the invasion, for a time, but that won't last forever and, soon, those numbers will begin climbing again.
Now we are in serious danger of losing our country.
Consider this: Three immigrants babies are born for every baby born to a US Citizen. See what I mean? See how the numbers are against us? Those babies, born of immigrant parents, become an American citizen at the moment of birth. In a few years, that same young American citizen can sponsor other members of his, or her, family and bring them to live in the US, as well.
Something has to be done… and quickly.
We need to shut down legal immigration for a few years… a moratorium, if you will, on immigration. That will allow us to catch our national breath. And then we need to close, and seal, the southern, and northern, borders of the US.
We must also understand that terrorists find our wide-open southern border an open invitation to enter through their enemy’s soft underbelly and deal death and destruction to the citizens of this once great country. We know this because we have caught at least a few of them.
We must ask the troubling question: "For those terrorists we caught… how many got through?" That should keep you up tonight!
A country must be able to control its borders, or it is doomed. There is no such thing as a nation without borders. That is a leftist pipe dream. If a nation cannot, or will not, control its borders, it will cease to exist as a nation.
Sorry to say, I do not see the will in our elected officials, including the President, to take the nations security seriously and close and seal those borders. See, those folks stealing across that border look very much like democrat voters to the democrat/socialists now running the US government.
Please don’t tell me it can’t be done. DO NOT TRY to tell me we cannot close and seal that border with Mexico. We have US troops patrolling the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and we have US troops patrolling the border between North and South Korea. It is even rumored that we have US troops overseeing the Syrian/Jordan border. But, we have no US troops patrolling the borders between the US and Mexico and the US and Canada. Does that make any sort of sense to you? Because it, sure as heck, does not make sense to me!
Sealing the border(s) can be done. But, one thing is missing. The political will to do it. This is another point at which “the governed” and “the governors” differ in the US. Again, I fear the explanation is simply – votes for the Democrat/Socialists and a cheap labor pool for the GOP.
I am convinced the American people would like to preserve their identity and their national security. Unfortunately, our legislators seem interested only in securing more and more power for themselves… and if that means allowing illegal, and legal, immigrants into this country in hopes of persuading them to align themselves with one, or both, of our political parties, then so be it. (And, as noted above, there, in a nutshell, is the problem.)
When the 2016 political campaigns swing into high gear, in a few months, I’d like to see this problem front and center on the list of things the candidates need to address and actually do something about! I doubt it will be on that list, but if we push long enough, and loud enough, we will, at some point, get their attention. If we don’t speak up, if we don’t rattle their cages, we are going to be steam-rolled by the democrat/socialist juggernaut.
Look. Until we are ready to colonize the stars we are going to have to make a home for ourselves here… on THIS planet. As in 15th, and 16th, century Europe, many of us are ready to pull out and go establish ourselves another society. We haven’t the means, yet. But in the future we will, and the stars will really be our homes. But, ‘til then, we must do everything in our power to secure the place on this planet we call home. We can begin by sealing our borders - especially the southern border with Mexico.
J. D. Longstreet
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
The Obama Administration has been excellent at keeping a crisis of some kind ongoing in the US while they continue to get their crash socialist programs through the Congress and made into law before the American people figure out what hit us. It’s called “misdirection.” Magicians use it all the time. The reason Magicians and politicians use it - because it works!
We warned some time ago that when the Obama people run out of crises and the smoke clears a little and the American people begin to get a look through the low hanging mist, there would be a lot of jaws dropping and dragging the floor. Well, those "thumps" you've been hearing in the past few weeks are the sound of those aforementioned jaws hitting the floor. Yep, it has finally begun.
It is sometimes known as “Buyer’s Remorse.” You know, it's that sinking feeling you get after you get home from a shopping trip with something that you felt -- at the time the salesman was pitching it to you -- that you absolutely had to have. Now that you are home with that item, which is now ALL YOURS, you realize, you really didn’t need it at all! In fact, you don’t even want the “cussed thing”, but. - Now you OWN IT! THAT is "Buyer’s Remorse."
That is what a lot of Obama supporters are feeling these days. It is certainly not because we conservatives didn’t warn them, we did, loud and clear and long, we warned them. Too late, they discovered we actually DID know what we were talking about. But, as I said, it is now too late.
Hopefully, enough of those misdirected voters will clear their heads in time to help those of us already in the trenches stop Obama’s attempt to grant amnesty to the nearly, what, 30 million (?), or so, illegal immigrants in the US. Yes, it is the illegal immigration amnesty program now referred to as Immigration Reform. It's nothing more than a new effort to get that Illegal Immigrant Amnesty Program pushed through a socialist Congress.
It will not be easy to stop immigration reform in the US Senate. In fact, it will probably pass the Senate. But, we expect to stop it with an all out effort in the US House of Representatives.
Is it time to close the Golden Door and out lady Liberty’s Torch? I think it is… at least for a time. We desperately need to get a handle on immigration.
The US is being overrun with immigrants, legal and illegal. So many are coming in that we can no longer keep up with them… and as a result, we haven’t a clue who is here… and what their intentions are. Granted the recession has slowed the invasion, for a time, but that won't last forever and, soon, those numbers will begin climbing again.
Now we are in serious danger of losing our country.
Consider this: Three immigrants babies are born for every baby born to a US Citizen. See what I mean? See how the numbers are against us? Those babies, born of immigrant parents, become an American citizen at the moment of birth. In a few years, that same young American citizen can sponsor other members of his, or her, family and bring them to live in the US, as well.
Something has to be done… and quickly.
We need to shut down legal immigration for a few years… a moratorium, if you will, on immigration. That will allow us to catch our national breath. And then we need to close, and seal, the southern, and northern, borders of the US.
We must also understand that terrorists find our wide-open southern border an open invitation to enter through their enemy’s soft underbelly and deal death and destruction to the citizens of this once great country. We know this because we have caught at least a few of them.
We must ask the troubling question: "For those terrorists we caught… how many got through?" That should keep you up tonight!
A country must be able to control its borders, or it is doomed. There is no such thing as a nation without borders. That is a leftist pipe dream. If a nation cannot, or will not, control its borders, it will cease to exist as a nation.
Sorry to say, I do not see the will in our elected officials, including the President, to take the nations security seriously and close and seal those borders. See, those folks stealing across that border look very much like democrat voters to the democrat/socialists now running the US government.
Please don’t tell me it can’t be done. DO NOT TRY to tell me we cannot close and seal that border with Mexico. We have US troops patrolling the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and we have US troops patrolling the border between North and South Korea. It is even rumored that we have US troops overseeing the Syrian/Jordan border. But, we have no US troops patrolling the borders between the US and Mexico and the US and Canada. Does that make any sort of sense to you? Because it, sure as heck, does not make sense to me!
Sealing the border(s) can be done. But, one thing is missing. The political will to do it. This is another point at which “the governed” and “the governors” differ in the US. Again, I fear the explanation is simply – votes for the Democrat/Socialists and a cheap labor pool for the GOP.
I am convinced the American people would like to preserve their identity and their national security. Unfortunately, our legislators seem interested only in securing more and more power for themselves… and if that means allowing illegal, and legal, immigrants into this country in hopes of persuading them to align themselves with one, or both, of our political parties, then so be it. (And, as noted above, there, in a nutshell, is the problem.)
When the 2016 political campaigns swing into high gear, in a few months, I’d like to see this problem front and center on the list of things the candidates need to address and actually do something about! I doubt it will be on that list, but if we push long enough, and loud enough, we will, at some point, get their attention. If we don’t speak up, if we don’t rattle their cages, we are going to be steam-rolled by the democrat/socialist juggernaut.
Look. Until we are ready to colonize the stars we are going to have to make a home for ourselves here… on THIS planet. As in 15th, and 16th, century Europe, many of us are ready to pull out and go establish ourselves another society. We haven’t the means, yet. But in the future we will, and the stars will really be our homes. But, ‘til then, we must do everything in our power to secure the place on this planet we call home. We can begin by sealing our borders - especially the southern border with Mexico.
J. D. Longstreet
The Year of Scandals...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
Yeah, it's true.
2013, the year of the great scandals. We have many. Just ask the "Golly Gee" folks.
Feral government spying on its citizens. Quick, gotta stop that Marxist Commie Black President. You know, the dude that has managed to pretty much follow in the prior dudes footsteps.
We won't talk about that. It doesn't fit the narrative.
IRS, lefties using the powers of a questionably unconstitutional bureaucracy to target conservatives. Damn socialist commies. Plotting to bring American freedom and liberties to a screeching halt. Never been done before.
Richard Milhaus Nixon, the author of the Watergate era. Targeting his lefty opponents. Using the IRS nonetheless.
Benghazi. Four Americans dead because of inept leadership. Cover up by a nefarious and secret Muslim administration in the big house. Never happened before.
1952 - 2012 - 44 attacks on USA embassies or 1.18/year. 2009 - 2012 7 attacks on USA embassies or 1.40/yr/. Is it Obama or a sign of a increasingly violent time in world history? Ask the "Golly Gee" folks for the anticipated answer.
Partisan politics. Has always been and will always be. Something our founding fathers also experienced. Not necessarily a bad thing as the history of that time will bear out. Unless of course one is focused on revisionist history.
Unfortunately the practice of partisan politics has resulted in the pursuit of gaining advantage through the often dishonest pursuit of fabrication and character assassination of ones "opponent." Quite UN-American by standards of rational thought.
America, if it continues on the current trajectory has seen its better days. Those that are paying attention will understand the proceeding statement. For those who aren't? Well, just ask the "golly gee" folks. The internet is replete with them.
Signing off for now. Have a great evening. Remember, you heard it here first...
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
Yeah, it's true.
2013, the year of the great scandals. We have many. Just ask the "Golly Gee" folks.
Feral government spying on its citizens. Quick, gotta stop that Marxist Commie Black President. You know, the dude that has managed to pretty much follow in the prior dudes footsteps.
We won't talk about that. It doesn't fit the narrative.
IRS, lefties using the powers of a questionably unconstitutional bureaucracy to target conservatives. Damn socialist commies. Plotting to bring American freedom and liberties to a screeching halt. Never been done before.
Richard Milhaus Nixon, the author of the Watergate era. Targeting his lefty opponents. Using the IRS nonetheless.
Benghazi. Four Americans dead because of inept leadership. Cover up by a nefarious and secret Muslim administration in the big house. Never happened before.
1952 - 2012 - 44 attacks on USA embassies or 1.18/year. 2009 - 2012 7 attacks on USA embassies or 1.40/yr/. Is it Obama or a sign of a increasingly violent time in world history? Ask the "Golly Gee" folks for the anticipated answer.
Partisan politics. Has always been and will always be. Something our founding fathers also experienced. Not necessarily a bad thing as the history of that time will bear out. Unless of course one is focused on revisionist history.
Unfortunately the practice of partisan politics has resulted in the pursuit of gaining advantage through the often dishonest pursuit of fabrication and character assassination of ones "opponent." Quite UN-American by standards of rational thought.
America, if it continues on the current trajectory has seen its better days. Those that are paying attention will understand the proceeding statement. For those who aren't? Well, just ask the "golly gee" folks. The internet is replete with them.
Signing off for now. Have a great evening. Remember, you heard it here first...
The Resurgence of National Pride and the Future of Europe
Stolen From Gates of Vienna
Speech by Geert Wilders
Los Angeles, June 9, 2013
Dear friends, thank you for inviting me to Los Angeles. I always like coming to the United States. There are many things that I admire Americans for. One of them is that they are unashamedly patriotic.
The American Freedom Association has asked me to speak to you about the future of Europe.
Europe is in a terrible state. Bit by bit, European countries are losing their national sovereignty. The economy is in shambles. Islamic immigrants riot and terrorize the many locals. And when people’s throats are slit in the streets, while the murderers shout “Allahu Akbar,” the authorities appease the killers and declare that Islam has nothing to do with it.
Europeans feel that the gap between them en those who rule them is growing. Many no longer feel represented by their politicians. There is a complete disconnect between the people that truly rule Europe and the people that live in it.
The blame lies to a large extent with the European Union and the weak leadership within the European countries which have signed away their national sovereignty. The EU cannot be compared to the United States. Europe is a continent of many different nations with their own identities, traditions and languages. The EU is a supranational organization, but its leaders aim to turn it into a state. To this end they are destroying the wealth, identity and freedoms of the existing nation-states of Europe.
Before I elaborate, let us take a closer look at the terrible mistake that Europe made.
Following the Second World War, Europe’s leaders mistakenly thought that patriotism was the cause of the war.
All over Europe, not just in Germany, but everywhere, they equated the defense of national identity with extremism.
Politicians told the electorate that the nation state was dangerous.
On the rooftops of Europe’s parliaments and official buildings, they flew the EU flag next to the national flag, as if the nation is nothing but a province of a Pan-European empire.
On the number plates of European cars, they put the EU flag instead of the national flag, thereby forcing people to drive around with the symbol of their subjection.
They signed away their national interests for the goal of so-called Europeanization.
Such policies could never have been possible if the ruling elite had not fallen for the ideology of cultural and moral relativism. Patriotism, which is a virtue, came to be seen as a vice.
Today, the citizens of Europe are reaping the bitter harvest of this arrogance, this refusal to stand by the ancient nations of Europe, the mothers of modern democracy, the guardians of our liberty.
The European Union has brought one-size-fits-none policies that have resulted in economic disaster. It has led to growing tensions between the nations of Europe. It has led to the loss of democracy and liberty. Because the premise on which it was built, was false.
Robert Schuman, one of the EU’s founding fathers, said that the EU’s aim was — I quote — “to make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.” — end of quote. But the idea that Germany, France, Britain and other nations in the past went to war because they were sovereign nations is simply ridiculous.
As I tell my audience whenever and wherever I speak in Germany, it was not German patriotism that started the Second World War; it was Hitler’s vicious totalitarian ideology of Nazism.
It was not German patriotism that caused the holocaust. German patriots, such as Count Stauffenberg, fought Hitler. “Let the world see that not all Germans are like Hitler; that not all Germans are Nazis,” he wrote in his diary the evening before Hitler’s hounds executed him.
Likewise, it was not Russian patriotism that sent people to the Gulag; it was the Soviets’ vicious totalitarian ideology of Communism. Russian patriots, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, stood up against the Soviets.
Nevertheless, the proponents of the EU keep pretending that without the EU, the Germans, the French, the British, the Dutch and the other nations of Europe would go to war again. The European Union has even been given the Nobel Peace Prize for the achievement of preserving peace in Europe — an achievement that is according to me NATO’s rather than the EU’s.
My friends, no-one knows this better than American patriots such as you: True patriots are always democrats. Because true patriots love their people and their country. You do not want your nation to be invaded by other countries. But neither do you want a totalitarian ideology, such as Communism or Nazism or Islam, to rob you of your own identity and enslave you.
Patriots want their country to be free. But people only care about the freedom of their country if they love it first. That is why one of my heroes Ronald Reagan said in his Farewell Address that we have to teach our children what our country is, what it stands for, what it represents in the long history of the world. Reagan said that Americans need — I quote — “a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.” — end of quote.
Patriotism is not a totalitarian ideology aiming for world control; it is love of one’s own country and identity — and as such it is the strongest force against totalitarian ideologies aiming for world domination.
Love your country, appreciate its national institutions. As long as you do this, your country will remain the land of the free. But if you fail to do so, you will lose your freedoms. That is the lesson that we, Europeans, have learned the hard way after the past six decades of experimenting with EU transnationalism.
And the worst thing, my friends, the worst thing is that we could and should have known better.
In her last book, Statecraft, Margaret Thatcher wrote — I quote: “That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked on will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.” — end of quote.
My friends, let me tell you about the terrible consequences of this folly.
The Europeans set out to build a political tower of Babel.
In 1957, six European nations, including my own, the Netherlands, signed the Rome Treaty. They committed themselves to the formation of — I quote from the Treaty’s preamble — “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.” — end of quote.
From the original six, the European Union’s member states expanded to 27 nations today. Nations as diverse as Finland and Portugal, Ireland and Bulgaria, with their entirely different languages, cultures, traditions, habits and mentalities, were forced by their political leaders to adopt the same economic, fiscal, social, security, and foreign policies.
These policies are drawn up by the enormous, ever expanding bureaucracy of the so-called European Commission in Brussels. It issues laws — so-called “directives” — that the member-states are forced to implement in their national legislation.
As a national legislator in the Netherlands I daily experience how little we still have to say about our own fate. We are expected to rubber stamp legislation made behind closed doors in Brussels.
Both the EU Council of Ministers and the European Commission negotiate in secret and then emerge to announce their agreement and present it. That is how the system works. And we are not allowed to ask questions.
Those who dare think differently are labeled enemies of European integration. They are the so-called Europhobes.
The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky calls the EU the EUSSR, because of its striking similarities to the former Soviet Union. He compares the European Commission to the former Soviet Politburo and Brussels to Moscow before the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Two weeks ago, I went to Prague and met with Vaclav Klaus, the former President of the Czech Republic. President Klaus speaks of Europeanism as one of the new and dangerous ideologies that have supplanted Socialism.
During his ten years in office, President Klaus refused to fly the EU flag over the Czech presidential palace. He points out that the EU is — I quote — “based on big and patronizing government, extensive regulating of human behavior and large-scale income redistribution. It shifts government upwards, which means to the level where there is no democratic accountability and where the decisions are made by bureaucrats appointed by politicians, not elected by citizens in free elections.” — end of quote. Mr. Klaus.
The EU supranationalism has brought the once prosperous, sovereign and free nations of Europe economic misery, a loss of national identity, the demise of freedom and independence.
17 of the 27 EU member states have even been so foolish as to dump their national currency. By adopting the euro, the common EU currency, they joined the so-called eurozone.
Strong and solid currencies that were the pride of their nations, such as the Dutch Guilder and the German Deutschmark, were sacrificed on the altar of European unification. The then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl sold this project to his people as — I quote — “a matter of war or peace.” — end of quote. The euro was presented as — I quote again — “an angel of peace.”
But what did this angel do to us?
All the countries that joined the euro lost the power to adjust their currency to their own economic needs. They have destroyed their economies and have doomed their people to rising poverty and unemployment.
They all suffered as a consequence. They all have to share the burden of other countries, even if the latter are suffering from self-inflicted policies, corruption or fraud, like in Greece.
Last year, my party, the Dutch Party for Freedom, commissioned a study by the renowned independent British bureau, Lombard Street Research, into the cost for the Netherlands of the euro so far.
The study found that, since the Dutch introduced the euro, the growth of consumption spending no longer matches the growth of GDP, as it did before we joined the euro and as it still does in all the countries that kept out of the eurozone. The cost was a huge loss in consumer spending.
The study showed that continuing to uphold the euro would cost the Netherlands billions of euros. The Eurozone is a huge transfer zone, whereby taxpayers in our country are forced to subsidize other countries. The rising taxes have pushed our country, the Netherlands, into economic recession. Unemployment has grown to over 8% — the highest in decades.
And the countries that receive our taxes have no chance of recovery. They have no chance of economic growth within a monetary union where the currency is too strong for them. Millions of people are losing their jobs as a consequence. Countries such as Spain are doomed with unemployment figures reaching almost up to 30% today.
EU countries have also lost sovereignty over their own national budgets. The European Commission — not our national government — decides how big their deficits and national debts are allowed to be. It imposes austerity measures. But at the same time it demands ever larger sums to be transferred to Brussels or to so-called rescue operations for the euro and to bail out countries, like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus.
Last month, the EU decided to raise its budget. My country and the Dutch government opposed this decision, but we were simply overruled. We have no veto right. Now we are forced to pay even more to Brussels. While government expenditure cannot be slashed by cutting the sums demanded by the EU, the Dutch government has raised taxes dramatically. The impact has been devastating. Higher taxes have resulted in less government income and have led to a contraction of the economy and a rise in unemployment.
The same phenomenon can be seen all over Europe. The growth of expenses and taxes, the inability to create a competitive environment, the over regulation of the economy, the stifling bureaucratization — all this is leading straight to economic collapse.
But there is worse. EU member-states no longer control their own borders.
Immigration policies are decided by the European Commission and the cultural relativists who are in charge there. The current European Commissioner overseeing immigration policy is Cecilia Malmström, formerly a left-wing kind of hippy politician from Sweden. Third-World immigration has turned Sweden into a nightmare, with immigrants frequently rioting in major Swedish cities such as Stockholm and Malmö.
Mrs. Malmström is forcing all EU member states to follow the Swedish example.
Last year, I wrote her a letter. “Not one single Dutchman has voted for you,” I told her. “We do not know who you are. We do not want to know who you are, but you force your ideas on our people. We are suffering from your absurd refusal to allow us even the slightest restriction to our immigration policy. You do not even want to limit the number of partners that one is allowed to bring into the Netherlands! We urge you to cease your activities and give us our sovereignty back,” I wrote.
Needless to say that I am still waiting for an answer from her, despite the fact that I am an elected politician, accountable to the voters, while she is not. That is why she can afford not to answer a parliamentarian.
Millions of non-Western immigrants are flooding into Europe, predominantly people from Islamic countries. The Pew Research Center estimated the number of Muslims in Western European countries at 18.2 million in 2010. It expects that this number will rise to almost 30 million by 2030. The Netherlands will see its Islamic population grow from 5.5 to almost 8%, Britain from 5 to 8%, Sweden will even see it double from 5 to 10%, and France will see a rise from over 7 to over 10%.
A demographic catastrophe is about to happen.
During the past three decades, so many people rooted in a culture entirely different from Europe’s own Judeo-Christian and humanist tradition have entered Europe that its heritage, its freedoms, its prosperity, and its culture are in danger.
The signs are there for all to see.
Look at the names people give to their children. Mohammed is today the most popular name among newborn boys in many French, Belgian and Dutch cities. Mohammed is even the most popular name among all newborns in England and Wales.
Look at Europe’s inner cities. Visit Europe and you will see that they have come to resemble Northern Africa and the Middle East. They have become areas ruled by Islamic Sharia law. Only last month, a Dutch newspaper reported that a neighborhood barely two miles from our parliament building in The Hague is now a Sharia zone.
Islamic areas also border the EU headquarters in Brussels. And less than 10 miles from Westminster, the mother of all parliaments, a British soldier’s throat was slit by Islamic murderers.
Paris, the capital of France, is surrounded by largely Islamic suburbs. And so are other cities. The French authorities have even drawn up a list of 751 so-called “sensible urban areas,” where it is dangerous to go, especially for native Frenchmen. These are the lost territories of the French Republic, even though a staggering 5 million people, or 8 percent of the total French population, live in them.
Even soldiers are no longer safe in Europe’s streets, as the recent horrible events in Britain and France have shown. But neither are Jews. Anti-Semitism has risen, and keeps rising the more Islamic immigration we get.
Indeed, my friends, after Nazism and Communism, another totalitarian ideology is threatening Europe: the evil ideology called Islam.
In Europe, we are experiencing that the more Islamic a society becomes — even when the majority of Muslims are moderates — the less free and tolerant it will be.
Atrocities, similar to the recent bombing in Boston, where Islamic immigrants massacred innocent onlookers at the marathon, occur in Europe as well. In my own country a few years ago, Theo van Gogh, a film maker critical of Islam, was butchered in the streets of Amsterdam.
Today, hundreds of young Islamic inhabitants of our countries have flocked to Syria to wage jihad there. They will return as experienced jihadists, trained in urban guerrilla warfare. But while you in America are still able to do something about it, while you can control and close your borders, while Congress can vote legislation to protect American citizens, we in Europe have been robbed of this possibility by the European Union.
And there is not only the threat of terrorism or violence; there is also the phenomenon of non-violent jihad. The rise of Islam means the rise of Islamic sharia law in our judicial systems. In Europe, we have sharia wills, sharia schools, sharia banks. In Britain, they even have official sharia courts.
Europe is gradually Islamizing. People who criticize Islam, such as myself, are threatened by Al Qaeda and dragged to court by Islamic and leftist groups. There is not just me, there is the journalist Lars Hedegaard, the author Salman Rushdie, the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, and many others.
We criticize Islam and we will keep on doing so, because it is a dangerous ideology. It is intolerant, it is violent. And, worst of all, it cannot be reformed. It cannot because it believes that the Koran is a book written directly by Allah himself. And it cannot because it calls on Muslims to follow Muhammad as the role model for their personal life. There could not be a worse model than this man, who was a warlord, a terrorist, and a pedophile.
While most Muslims are moderate people, those who think that they have to follow Muhammad’s example are not. That is exactly the reason why the more Islamic a country becomes, the more unfree and violent it will be.
Europe needs to be protected against this new totalitarian threat.
That is why I say: No more immigrants from the Islamic world! My party wants to close our borders to immigration from Islamic countries.
And ever more people support us.
A poll, which we commissioned ten days ago, shows that 77% of the Dutch do not see Islam as an enrichment for our country, 68% say there is more than enough Islam in the Netherlands already. A majority of the voters of all the major parties in my country — even the voters from leftist parties — agree with these two principles.
The poll also showed that 55% of the Dutch want a stop on immigration from Islamic countries, 63% want no more mosques, 72% see a relationship between Islam and the recent terror attacks in Boston, London and Paris, 72% want a constitutional ban on Islamic Sharia law.
Ordinary people in Europe want three things.
One — They want their politicians to tackle the problem of Islamization and mass immigration. They want to control their own borders.
Two — They want to restore their national sovereignty. They do not want their countries to become provinces of a pan-European superstate.
Three — They do not want their money to be used to pay for mistakes made elsewhere. They do not want a transfer union where they have to pay higher taxes to bail out other countries, whose leaders were either corrupt or incompetent.
Poll after poll show that ordinary Europeans do not want their democracy to be subverted. Last April, a pan-European poll showed that a clear majority of the population in the major EU member states no longer trust the EU as an institution. Even in Germany the number has reached almost 60%.
This week a Gallup poll showed that for the first time in history in the Netherlands as many people want to leave the EU as stay in. A few years ago, this was unthinkable.
The strength of Europe is its diversity. Europe is not a nation; it is a cluster of nations, bound by a common Judeo-Christian and humanist culture, but with different national identities.
Last January, British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech in which he said that the EU needed to change.
He spoke about “the lack of democratic accountability,” “the excessive regulation,” and everything that is wrong in the EU. And there are many things I agree with, but I do not share his belief that the EU’s nature can be changed. Mr. Cameron believes that the EU can be transformed into — I quote — “a more flexible, adaptable and open European Union.” — end of quote. I do not believe this. If an organization has as its explicit goal that it strives for “an ever closer union,” it simply cannot start moving in the opposite direction and relinquish the powers it has already acquired.
We can see how the mechanism works in the way in which the EU deals with the eurozone crisis. Rather than turning away from the destructive path that has so far been followed, Brussels is using this crisis to enforce an even tighter control over the member states.
The European Union simply cannot be democratized because the whole structure is built on a negation of democracy. As President Klaus pointed out, there can be no European democracy because there is no European demos — no European people. There can only be various European democracies — plural! — in the various European nations. What the EU does is destroy these various democracies.
And, hence, my party’s position is very clear. We opt for an exit from the European Union. We want the Netherlands not just out of the Eurozone, but out of the EU altogether — including the so-called Schengen area, the group of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and immigration controls at their common borders. We reserve the right to reinstall random border controls.
We want to retain our independence. We want home rule! We want to be the masters in our own house! We want to be the masters over our own borders. We want to be the masters of our own money. The Party for Freedom wants the Netherlands to leave the EU and join the European Free Trade Association EFTA.
But here is the good news, my friends. As I have already indicated, public support for the EU is growing thin by the day.
For months now, my party has been the biggest in the polls.
And we are not the only one.
In Britain, UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, which wants to lead Britain out of the EU, has come second in many by-elections and local and county elections during the past two years. It is polling an average of a quarter of the votes. And it is growing.
In France last year, Marine Le Pen scored 18% in the presidential elections. She has now overtaken President François Hollande. She opposes the EU. And her popularity is growing.
In Germany, it is still considered far too politically-incorrect to reject the EU. Nevertheless a new party, the Alternative for Germany, wants to take the country out of the eurozone. And its appeal is growing.
In Italy, both the country’s largest party, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, and the Lega Nord, the largest party in the North, want a referendum on a return to the Lira, while the Lega Nord has called the EU a failed project.
In Portugal a book advocating quitting the euro has become an instant bestseller. A proposal that was taboo until recently is now discussed openly, with the country’s Chief Justice personally coming out in support of eurozone exit.
All over Europe, anti-EU feelings are growing. All over Europe there are patriot parties that reflect the resurgence of national pride in their countries, whether it be the Netherlands, Britain, France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Flanders, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the other nations currently trapped in the European Union.
As I said, here is the good news.
Europe might be on the verge of a fundamental change for the better. We seem to be on the eve of a major and truly historic event. In Europe, the time is ripe for a glorious democratic and non-violent revolution to preserve our national freedoms and restore our sovereignty.
Exactly one year from now, the 27 member states of the European Union will be holding elections for the European Parliament.
People are finally ready all over Europe to rebel in the ballot box.
They reject the transfer union. They no longer want to pay for corrupt states.
They reject the supranational experiment of the European Union.
They are ready to cast their votes for a restoration of national sovereignty.
They are ready to defend their own cultural identity.
All they need is decent political leadership able to lead their nations out of the EU and towards a better future.
America’s first president George Washington has shown that when courageous and democratic politicians are available to lead their country, they can lay the groundwork for a lasting democratic framework that guarantees freedom and prosperity for centuries to come.
My friends, my party in the Netherlands and several other parties in other European countries are preparing themselves for next year’s electoral landslide.
We can feel the heartbeat of the New Patriotism in Europe.
Winter is over.
Spring is coming.
The European Spring is upon us.
And we are getting ready for it.
We are aware of our historic task.
That is why I am especially happy to be here in California today. Because the great inspirer of our upcoming democratic revolution, is one of yours. Your hero, my hero, Ronald Reagan! — who in his presidential Farewell Address said that the achievement he was most proud of in his entire presidency was “the resurgence of national pride.” “The New Patriotism,” as he called it.
Next year’s European elections offer a unique opportunity to liberate the nations of Europe.
Next Spring’s European elections offer a unique chance to correct the fatal error made by previous politicians who sold away their taxpayers’ money and their national sovereignty to Brussels and delivered their countries to the evils of mass immigration and Islamization.
As a European politician, I am fully aware of my duty to grab this chance. The European elections next May must deal a blow to the parties that sold us out to the EU. Not just in the Netherlands. But everywhere in Europe.
That is why I do what is in my power to forge an alliance of democratic parties standing for the restoration of the sovereignty and freedom of their nation. I want to bring these parties together in a common endeavor to defend our identity and our values. I do not know whether I will succeed, but I am trying. It is my conviction that we have to work together. Because we are all in the same boat.
My friends, it is easy to despair. Time is running out for Britain, for France, for Germany, for the Netherlands, for all the other great nations of Europe. The present situation in Europe is bleak. If we do nothing, it will become even bleaker. If we do nothing we will be swept away by economic and demographic disaster.
But it is wrong to despair. The present is bleak, but the future looks bright. Because the future depends on our actions. We are the actors on the stage of history. That, too, is a lesson from Ronald Reagan, who said: “We need to act today, to preserve tomorrow”.
I went to Paris recently to talk to Marine Le Pen and see for myself who she is and what she stands for. She is not her father. She is not anti-Semitic. She cares about France, its identity and its sovereignty.
I went to Prague to talk to President Klaus.
In the coming weeks and months, I will try to see as many patriot leaders in Europe as possible. And I always ask them for their views on Israel. Because Israel is the litmus proof.
The Jewish people did exactly the opposite of what the Europeans did after the Second World War. They drew the right conclusion. They realized that without a nation-state of their own there could be no safety for their people.
Without a nation-state, without self-governance, without self-determination there can be no security for a people nor preservation of its identity. This was the insight that led the Zionists to strive for the re-establishment of the state of Israel. Theodore Herzl said that there had to be a Jewish state in order to ensure — I quote — “a new blossoming of the Jewish spirit.” — end of quote.
Indeed, a soul needs a body. The spirit of a people cannot flourish outside the body of the nation-state. The nation-state is the political body in which we live. We must preserve and cherish it. So that we can pass on to our children our national identity, our democracy, our liberty.
My friends, what we need today is Zionism for the nations of Europe. The Europeans need to follow the example of the Jewish people and re-establish their nation-state.
And that, my dear friends, is why every patriot, apart from being a democrat, by definition also has to be a true friend of Israel. A patriot cannot be anti-Semitic.
My friends, the great Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky said about the Jewish people: “We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. We do not have to account to anybody. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.” — end of quote.
And so it is. For all the peoples. We do not have to apologize for being good to ourselves. We do not have to change if we do not want to change.
The peoples of Europe resent the permanent alienation of power from their nation-states. They care about their nations because they care about democracy and freedom and the well being of their children. They see their democratic rights and their ancient liberties symbolized in their national flags. They are proud of their flag. And as long as their pride lasts, they will have a future.
Let us emphasize this commitment to the resurgence of our national pride with a symbolic gesture. Let us do so by endorsing the Jewish nation-state and move the embassies of our countries from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Let us fly the flags of all the free and proud nations of the world over embassies in Jerusalem, the only true capital of Israel and the cradle of our Judeo-Christian civilization.
Israel deserves our support. Not only because it is the frontline against the totalitarian threat of Islam, but also because it shows how important it is for a people to have its own homeland.
My friends,
Today, a new threat is confronting us. But history shows that we can withstand it if we stand together.
We need an alliance, not only of patriots in Europe, but also an alliance between America and Europe.
We need the help and support of American patriots such as you. Such an alliance brings out the best in us, and allows us to beat the totalitarian menace.
This was proven by the alliance between Roosevelt and Churchill in the 1940s.
It defeated Nazism.
It was proven by the alliance between Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s.
It defeated Communism.
Today, Islam is a threat to all of us, to Israel, to Europe, to America. But together we can withstand it.
And we have to stand together or we will be defeated. We have no other choice.
As the great Margaret Thatcher said:
“Defeat — I do not recognize the meaning of the word.”
And neither should we!
Thank you.
Below is the text of the speech given by Geert Wilders in Los Angeles today.
Los Angeles, June 9, 2013
Dear friends, thank you for inviting me to Los Angeles. I always like coming to the United States. There are many things that I admire Americans for. One of them is that they are unashamedly patriotic.
The American Freedom Association has asked me to speak to you about the future of Europe.
Europe is in a terrible state. Bit by bit, European countries are losing their national sovereignty. The economy is in shambles. Islamic immigrants riot and terrorize the many locals. And when people’s throats are slit in the streets, while the murderers shout “Allahu Akbar,” the authorities appease the killers and declare that Islam has nothing to do with it.
Europeans feel that the gap between them en those who rule them is growing. Many no longer feel represented by their politicians. There is a complete disconnect between the people that truly rule Europe and the people that live in it.
The blame lies to a large extent with the European Union and the weak leadership within the European countries which have signed away their national sovereignty. The EU cannot be compared to the United States. Europe is a continent of many different nations with their own identities, traditions and languages. The EU is a supranational organization, but its leaders aim to turn it into a state. To this end they are destroying the wealth, identity and freedoms of the existing nation-states of Europe.
Before I elaborate, let us take a closer look at the terrible mistake that Europe made.
Following the Second World War, Europe’s leaders mistakenly thought that patriotism was the cause of the war.
All over Europe, not just in Germany, but everywhere, they equated the defense of national identity with extremism.
Politicians told the electorate that the nation state was dangerous.
On the rooftops of Europe’s parliaments and official buildings, they flew the EU flag next to the national flag, as if the nation is nothing but a province of a Pan-European empire.
On the number plates of European cars, they put the EU flag instead of the national flag, thereby forcing people to drive around with the symbol of their subjection.
They signed away their national interests for the goal of so-called Europeanization.
Such policies could never have been possible if the ruling elite had not fallen for the ideology of cultural and moral relativism. Patriotism, which is a virtue, came to be seen as a vice.
Today, the citizens of Europe are reaping the bitter harvest of this arrogance, this refusal to stand by the ancient nations of Europe, the mothers of modern democracy, the guardians of our liberty.
- The EU stands for everything that is wrong in Europe.
- It is a gigantic undemocratic transnational monster.
- It issues legislation permeated with cultural relativism.
- It meddles in the everyday lives of millions of people.
- It has opened Europe’s borders to uncontrolled mass immigration, mostly from Islamic countries.
- And it has deprived Europe’s parliaments of a huge amount of their legislative powers.
The European Union has brought one-size-fits-none policies that have resulted in economic disaster. It has led to growing tensions between the nations of Europe. It has led to the loss of democracy and liberty. Because the premise on which it was built, was false.
Robert Schuman, one of the EU’s founding fathers, said that the EU’s aim was — I quote — “to make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.” — end of quote. But the idea that Germany, France, Britain and other nations in the past went to war because they were sovereign nations is simply ridiculous.
As I tell my audience whenever and wherever I speak in Germany, it was not German patriotism that started the Second World War; it was Hitler’s vicious totalitarian ideology of Nazism.
It was not German patriotism that caused the holocaust. German patriots, such as Count Stauffenberg, fought Hitler. “Let the world see that not all Germans are like Hitler; that not all Germans are Nazis,” he wrote in his diary the evening before Hitler’s hounds executed him.
Likewise, it was not Russian patriotism that sent people to the Gulag; it was the Soviets’ vicious totalitarian ideology of Communism. Russian patriots, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, stood up against the Soviets.
Nevertheless, the proponents of the EU keep pretending that without the EU, the Germans, the French, the British, the Dutch and the other nations of Europe would go to war again. The European Union has even been given the Nobel Peace Prize for the achievement of preserving peace in Europe — an achievement that is according to me NATO’s rather than the EU’s.
My friends, no-one knows this better than American patriots such as you: True patriots are always democrats. Because true patriots love their people and their country. You do not want your nation to be invaded by other countries. But neither do you want a totalitarian ideology, such as Communism or Nazism or Islam, to rob you of your own identity and enslave you.
Patriots want their country to be free. But people only care about the freedom of their country if they love it first. That is why one of my heroes Ronald Reagan said in his Farewell Address that we have to teach our children what our country is, what it stands for, what it represents in the long history of the world. Reagan said that Americans need — I quote — “a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.” — end of quote.
Patriotism is not a totalitarian ideology aiming for world control; it is love of one’s own country and identity — and as such it is the strongest force against totalitarian ideologies aiming for world domination.
Love your country, appreciate its national institutions. As long as you do this, your country will remain the land of the free. But if you fail to do so, you will lose your freedoms. That is the lesson that we, Europeans, have learned the hard way after the past six decades of experimenting with EU transnationalism.
And the worst thing, my friends, the worst thing is that we could and should have known better.
In her last book, Statecraft, Margaret Thatcher wrote — I quote: “That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked on will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.” — end of quote.
My friends, let me tell you about the terrible consequences of this folly.
The Europeans set out to build a political tower of Babel.
In 1957, six European nations, including my own, the Netherlands, signed the Rome Treaty. They committed themselves to the formation of — I quote from the Treaty’s preamble — “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.” — end of quote.
From the original six, the European Union’s member states expanded to 27 nations today. Nations as diverse as Finland and Portugal, Ireland and Bulgaria, with their entirely different languages, cultures, traditions, habits and mentalities, were forced by their political leaders to adopt the same economic, fiscal, social, security, and foreign policies.
These policies are drawn up by the enormous, ever expanding bureaucracy of the so-called European Commission in Brussels. It issues laws — so-called “directives” — that the member-states are forced to implement in their national legislation.
As a national legislator in the Netherlands I daily experience how little we still have to say about our own fate. We are expected to rubber stamp legislation made behind closed doors in Brussels.
Both the EU Council of Ministers and the European Commission negotiate in secret and then emerge to announce their agreement and present it. That is how the system works. And we are not allowed to ask questions.
Those who dare think differently are labeled enemies of European integration. They are the so-called Europhobes.
The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky calls the EU the EUSSR, because of its striking similarities to the former Soviet Union. He compares the European Commission to the former Soviet Politburo and Brussels to Moscow before the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Two weeks ago, I went to Prague and met with Vaclav Klaus, the former President of the Czech Republic. President Klaus speaks of Europeanism as one of the new and dangerous ideologies that have supplanted Socialism.
During his ten years in office, President Klaus refused to fly the EU flag over the Czech presidential palace. He points out that the EU is — I quote — “based on big and patronizing government, extensive regulating of human behavior and large-scale income redistribution. It shifts government upwards, which means to the level where there is no democratic accountability and where the decisions are made by bureaucrats appointed by politicians, not elected by citizens in free elections.” — end of quote. Mr. Klaus.
The EU supranationalism has brought the once prosperous, sovereign and free nations of Europe economic misery, a loss of national identity, the demise of freedom and independence.
17 of the 27 EU member states have even been so foolish as to dump their national currency. By adopting the euro, the common EU currency, they joined the so-called eurozone.
Strong and solid currencies that were the pride of their nations, such as the Dutch Guilder and the German Deutschmark, were sacrificed on the altar of European unification. The then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl sold this project to his people as — I quote — “a matter of war or peace.” — end of quote. The euro was presented as — I quote again — “an angel of peace.”
But what did this angel do to us?
All the countries that joined the euro lost the power to adjust their currency to their own economic needs. They have destroyed their economies and have doomed their people to rising poverty and unemployment.
They all suffered as a consequence. They all have to share the burden of other countries, even if the latter are suffering from self-inflicted policies, corruption or fraud, like in Greece.
Last year, my party, the Dutch Party for Freedom, commissioned a study by the renowned independent British bureau, Lombard Street Research, into the cost for the Netherlands of the euro so far.
The study found that, since the Dutch introduced the euro, the growth of consumption spending no longer matches the growth of GDP, as it did before we joined the euro and as it still does in all the countries that kept out of the eurozone. The cost was a huge loss in consumer spending.
The study showed that continuing to uphold the euro would cost the Netherlands billions of euros. The Eurozone is a huge transfer zone, whereby taxpayers in our country are forced to subsidize other countries. The rising taxes have pushed our country, the Netherlands, into economic recession. Unemployment has grown to over 8% — the highest in decades.
And the countries that receive our taxes have no chance of recovery. They have no chance of economic growth within a monetary union where the currency is too strong for them. Millions of people are losing their jobs as a consequence. Countries such as Spain are doomed with unemployment figures reaching almost up to 30% today.
EU countries have also lost sovereignty over their own national budgets. The European Commission — not our national government — decides how big their deficits and national debts are allowed to be. It imposes austerity measures. But at the same time it demands ever larger sums to be transferred to Brussels or to so-called rescue operations for the euro and to bail out countries, like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus.
Last month, the EU decided to raise its budget. My country and the Dutch government opposed this decision, but we were simply overruled. We have no veto right. Now we are forced to pay even more to Brussels. While government expenditure cannot be slashed by cutting the sums demanded by the EU, the Dutch government has raised taxes dramatically. The impact has been devastating. Higher taxes have resulted in less government income and have led to a contraction of the economy and a rise in unemployment.
The same phenomenon can be seen all over Europe. The growth of expenses and taxes, the inability to create a competitive environment, the over regulation of the economy, the stifling bureaucratization — all this is leading straight to economic collapse.
But there is worse. EU member-states no longer control their own borders.
Immigration policies are decided by the European Commission and the cultural relativists who are in charge there. The current European Commissioner overseeing immigration policy is Cecilia Malmström, formerly a left-wing kind of hippy politician from Sweden. Third-World immigration has turned Sweden into a nightmare, with immigrants frequently rioting in major Swedish cities such as Stockholm and Malmö.
Mrs. Malmström is forcing all EU member states to follow the Swedish example.
Last year, I wrote her a letter. “Not one single Dutchman has voted for you,” I told her. “We do not know who you are. We do not want to know who you are, but you force your ideas on our people. We are suffering from your absurd refusal to allow us even the slightest restriction to our immigration policy. You do not even want to limit the number of partners that one is allowed to bring into the Netherlands! We urge you to cease your activities and give us our sovereignty back,” I wrote.
Needless to say that I am still waiting for an answer from her, despite the fact that I am an elected politician, accountable to the voters, while she is not. That is why she can afford not to answer a parliamentarian.
Millions of non-Western immigrants are flooding into Europe, predominantly people from Islamic countries. The Pew Research Center estimated the number of Muslims in Western European countries at 18.2 million in 2010. It expects that this number will rise to almost 30 million by 2030. The Netherlands will see its Islamic population grow from 5.5 to almost 8%, Britain from 5 to 8%, Sweden will even see it double from 5 to 10%, and France will see a rise from over 7 to over 10%.
A demographic catastrophe is about to happen.
During the past three decades, so many people rooted in a culture entirely different from Europe’s own Judeo-Christian and humanist tradition have entered Europe that its heritage, its freedoms, its prosperity, and its culture are in danger.
The signs are there for all to see.
Look at the names people give to their children. Mohammed is today the most popular name among newborn boys in many French, Belgian and Dutch cities. Mohammed is even the most popular name among all newborns in England and Wales.
Look at Europe’s inner cities. Visit Europe and you will see that they have come to resemble Northern Africa and the Middle East. They have become areas ruled by Islamic Sharia law. Only last month, a Dutch newspaper reported that a neighborhood barely two miles from our parliament building in The Hague is now a Sharia zone.
Islamic areas also border the EU headquarters in Brussels. And less than 10 miles from Westminster, the mother of all parliaments, a British soldier’s throat was slit by Islamic murderers.
Paris, the capital of France, is surrounded by largely Islamic suburbs. And so are other cities. The French authorities have even drawn up a list of 751 so-called “sensible urban areas,” where it is dangerous to go, especially for native Frenchmen. These are the lost territories of the French Republic, even though a staggering 5 million people, or 8 percent of the total French population, live in them.
Even soldiers are no longer safe in Europe’s streets, as the recent horrible events in Britain and France have shown. But neither are Jews. Anti-Semitism has risen, and keeps rising the more Islamic immigration we get.
Indeed, my friends, after Nazism and Communism, another totalitarian ideology is threatening Europe: the evil ideology called Islam.
In Europe, we are experiencing that the more Islamic a society becomes — even when the majority of Muslims are moderates — the less free and tolerant it will be.
Atrocities, similar to the recent bombing in Boston, where Islamic immigrants massacred innocent onlookers at the marathon, occur in Europe as well. In my own country a few years ago, Theo van Gogh, a film maker critical of Islam, was butchered in the streets of Amsterdam.
Today, hundreds of young Islamic inhabitants of our countries have flocked to Syria to wage jihad there. They will return as experienced jihadists, trained in urban guerrilla warfare. But while you in America are still able to do something about it, while you can control and close your borders, while Congress can vote legislation to protect American citizens, we in Europe have been robbed of this possibility by the European Union.
And there is not only the threat of terrorism or violence; there is also the phenomenon of non-violent jihad. The rise of Islam means the rise of Islamic sharia law in our judicial systems. In Europe, we have sharia wills, sharia schools, sharia banks. In Britain, they even have official sharia courts.
Europe is gradually Islamizing. People who criticize Islam, such as myself, are threatened by Al Qaeda and dragged to court by Islamic and leftist groups. There is not just me, there is the journalist Lars Hedegaard, the author Salman Rushdie, the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, and many others.
We criticize Islam and we will keep on doing so, because it is a dangerous ideology. It is intolerant, it is violent. And, worst of all, it cannot be reformed. It cannot because it believes that the Koran is a book written directly by Allah himself. And it cannot because it calls on Muslims to follow Muhammad as the role model for their personal life. There could not be a worse model than this man, who was a warlord, a terrorist, and a pedophile.
While most Muslims are moderate people, those who think that they have to follow Muhammad’s example are not. That is exactly the reason why the more Islamic a country becomes, the more unfree and violent it will be.
Europe needs to be protected against this new totalitarian threat.
That is why I say: No more immigrants from the Islamic world! My party wants to close our borders to immigration from Islamic countries.
And ever more people support us.
A poll, which we commissioned ten days ago, shows that 77% of the Dutch do not see Islam as an enrichment for our country, 68% say there is more than enough Islam in the Netherlands already. A majority of the voters of all the major parties in my country — even the voters from leftist parties — agree with these two principles.
The poll also showed that 55% of the Dutch want a stop on immigration from Islamic countries, 63% want no more mosques, 72% see a relationship between Islam and the recent terror attacks in Boston, London and Paris, 72% want a constitutional ban on Islamic Sharia law.
Ordinary people in Europe want three things.
One — They want their politicians to tackle the problem of Islamization and mass immigration. They want to control their own borders.
Two — They want to restore their national sovereignty. They do not want their countries to become provinces of a pan-European superstate.
Three — They do not want their money to be used to pay for mistakes made elsewhere. They do not want a transfer union where they have to pay higher taxes to bail out other countries, whose leaders were either corrupt or incompetent.
Poll after poll show that ordinary Europeans do not want their democracy to be subverted. Last April, a pan-European poll showed that a clear majority of the population in the major EU member states no longer trust the EU as an institution. Even in Germany the number has reached almost 60%.
This week a Gallup poll showed that for the first time in history in the Netherlands as many people want to leave the EU as stay in. A few years ago, this was unthinkable.
The strength of Europe is its diversity. Europe is not a nation; it is a cluster of nations, bound by a common Judeo-Christian and humanist culture, but with different national identities.
Last January, British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech in which he said that the EU needed to change.
He spoke about “the lack of democratic accountability,” “the excessive regulation,” and everything that is wrong in the EU. And there are many things I agree with, but I do not share his belief that the EU’s nature can be changed. Mr. Cameron believes that the EU can be transformed into — I quote — “a more flexible, adaptable and open European Union.” — end of quote. I do not believe this. If an organization has as its explicit goal that it strives for “an ever closer union,” it simply cannot start moving in the opposite direction and relinquish the powers it has already acquired.
We can see how the mechanism works in the way in which the EU deals with the eurozone crisis. Rather than turning away from the destructive path that has so far been followed, Brussels is using this crisis to enforce an even tighter control over the member states.
The European Union simply cannot be democratized because the whole structure is built on a negation of democracy. As President Klaus pointed out, there can be no European democracy because there is no European demos — no European people. There can only be various European democracies — plural! — in the various European nations. What the EU does is destroy these various democracies.
And, hence, my party’s position is very clear. We opt for an exit from the European Union. We want the Netherlands not just out of the Eurozone, but out of the EU altogether — including the so-called Schengen area, the group of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and immigration controls at their common borders. We reserve the right to reinstall random border controls.
We want to retain our independence. We want home rule! We want to be the masters in our own house! We want to be the masters over our own borders. We want to be the masters of our own money. The Party for Freedom wants the Netherlands to leave the EU and join the European Free Trade Association EFTA.
But here is the good news, my friends. As I have already indicated, public support for the EU is growing thin by the day.
For months now, my party has been the biggest in the polls.
And we are not the only one.
In Britain, UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, which wants to lead Britain out of the EU, has come second in many by-elections and local and county elections during the past two years. It is polling an average of a quarter of the votes. And it is growing.
In France last year, Marine Le Pen scored 18% in the presidential elections. She has now overtaken President François Hollande. She opposes the EU. And her popularity is growing.
In Germany, it is still considered far too politically-incorrect to reject the EU. Nevertheless a new party, the Alternative for Germany, wants to take the country out of the eurozone. And its appeal is growing.
In Italy, both the country’s largest party, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, and the Lega Nord, the largest party in the North, want a referendum on a return to the Lira, while the Lega Nord has called the EU a failed project.
In Portugal a book advocating quitting the euro has become an instant bestseller. A proposal that was taboo until recently is now discussed openly, with the country’s Chief Justice personally coming out in support of eurozone exit.
All over Europe, anti-EU feelings are growing. All over Europe there are patriot parties that reflect the resurgence of national pride in their countries, whether it be the Netherlands, Britain, France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Flanders, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the other nations currently trapped in the European Union.
As I said, here is the good news.
Europe might be on the verge of a fundamental change for the better. We seem to be on the eve of a major and truly historic event. In Europe, the time is ripe for a glorious democratic and non-violent revolution to preserve our national freedoms and restore our sovereignty.
Exactly one year from now, the 27 member states of the European Union will be holding elections for the European Parliament.
People are finally ready all over Europe to rebel in the ballot box.
They reject the transfer union. They no longer want to pay for corrupt states.
They reject the supranational experiment of the European Union.
They are ready to cast their votes for a restoration of national sovereignty.
They are ready to defend their own cultural identity.
All they need is decent political leadership able to lead their nations out of the EU and towards a better future.
America’s first president George Washington has shown that when courageous and democratic politicians are available to lead their country, they can lay the groundwork for a lasting democratic framework that guarantees freedom and prosperity for centuries to come.
My friends, my party in the Netherlands and several other parties in other European countries are preparing themselves for next year’s electoral landslide.
We can feel the heartbeat of the New Patriotism in Europe.
Winter is over.
Spring is coming.
The European Spring is upon us.
And we are getting ready for it.
We are aware of our historic task.
That is why I am especially happy to be here in California today. Because the great inspirer of our upcoming democratic revolution, is one of yours. Your hero, my hero, Ronald Reagan! — who in his presidential Farewell Address said that the achievement he was most proud of in his entire presidency was “the resurgence of national pride.” “The New Patriotism,” as he called it.
Next year’s European elections offer a unique opportunity to liberate the nations of Europe.
Next Spring’s European elections offer a unique chance to correct the fatal error made by previous politicians who sold away their taxpayers’ money and their national sovereignty to Brussels and delivered their countries to the evils of mass immigration and Islamization.
As a European politician, I am fully aware of my duty to grab this chance. The European elections next May must deal a blow to the parties that sold us out to the EU. Not just in the Netherlands. But everywhere in Europe.
That is why I do what is in my power to forge an alliance of democratic parties standing for the restoration of the sovereignty and freedom of their nation. I want to bring these parties together in a common endeavor to defend our identity and our values. I do not know whether I will succeed, but I am trying. It is my conviction that we have to work together. Because we are all in the same boat.
My friends, it is easy to despair. Time is running out for Britain, for France, for Germany, for the Netherlands, for all the other great nations of Europe. The present situation in Europe is bleak. If we do nothing, it will become even bleaker. If we do nothing we will be swept away by economic and demographic disaster.
But it is wrong to despair. The present is bleak, but the future looks bright. Because the future depends on our actions. We are the actors on the stage of history. That, too, is a lesson from Ronald Reagan, who said: “We need to act today, to preserve tomorrow”.
I went to Paris recently to talk to Marine Le Pen and see for myself who she is and what she stands for. She is not her father. She is not anti-Semitic. She cares about France, its identity and its sovereignty.
I went to Prague to talk to President Klaus.
In the coming weeks and months, I will try to see as many patriot leaders in Europe as possible. And I always ask them for their views on Israel. Because Israel is the litmus proof.
The Jewish people did exactly the opposite of what the Europeans did after the Second World War. They drew the right conclusion. They realized that without a nation-state of their own there could be no safety for their people.
Without a nation-state, without self-governance, without self-determination there can be no security for a people nor preservation of its identity. This was the insight that led the Zionists to strive for the re-establishment of the state of Israel. Theodore Herzl said that there had to be a Jewish state in order to ensure — I quote — “a new blossoming of the Jewish spirit.” — end of quote.
Indeed, a soul needs a body. The spirit of a people cannot flourish outside the body of the nation-state. The nation-state is the political body in which we live. We must preserve and cherish it. So that we can pass on to our children our national identity, our democracy, our liberty.
My friends, what we need today is Zionism for the nations of Europe. The Europeans need to follow the example of the Jewish people and re-establish their nation-state.
And that, my dear friends, is why every patriot, apart from being a democrat, by definition also has to be a true friend of Israel. A patriot cannot be anti-Semitic.
My friends, the great Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky said about the Jewish people: “We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. We do not have to account to anybody. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.” — end of quote.
And so it is. For all the peoples. We do not have to apologize for being good to ourselves. We do not have to change if we do not want to change.
The peoples of Europe resent the permanent alienation of power from their nation-states. They care about their nations because they care about democracy and freedom and the well being of their children. They see their democratic rights and their ancient liberties symbolized in their national flags. They are proud of their flag. And as long as their pride lasts, they will have a future.
Let us emphasize this commitment to the resurgence of our national pride with a symbolic gesture. Let us do so by endorsing the Jewish nation-state and move the embassies of our countries from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Let us fly the flags of all the free and proud nations of the world over embassies in Jerusalem, the only true capital of Israel and the cradle of our Judeo-Christian civilization.
Israel deserves our support. Not only because it is the frontline against the totalitarian threat of Islam, but also because it shows how important it is for a people to have its own homeland.
My friends,
Today, a new threat is confronting us. But history shows that we can withstand it if we stand together.
We need an alliance, not only of patriots in Europe, but also an alliance between America and Europe.
We need the help and support of American patriots such as you. Such an alliance brings out the best in us, and allows us to beat the totalitarian menace.
This was proven by the alliance between Roosevelt and Churchill in the 1940s.
It defeated Nazism.
It was proven by the alliance between Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s.
It defeated Communism.
Today, Islam is a threat to all of us, to Israel, to Europe, to America. But together we can withstand it.
And we have to stand together or we will be defeated. We have no other choice.
As the great Margaret Thatcher said:
“Defeat — I do not recognize the meaning of the word.”
And neither should we!
Thank you.
Virtuous Men Hesitating ... J. D. Longstreet
Virtuous Men Hesitating
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*********************
You think "Prism" is a big intrusion into your life? Well, just you wait until Obamacare is up and running! As Al Jolson once famously sang: "You ain't seen nothing yet!"
Look. We warned this was happening, more than once, in our scribblings long before The Guardian officially broke the story last week. It was just a "gut feeling." We had no evidence of it. Whislteblowers hardly ever speak to me, because they need to speak to someone who has enough "umph" to protect their behinds when the defecation hits the rotary oscillator. I don't.
But, as is usual these days, nobody much paid any attention. Not paying attention today, as quickly as events move in our cyber society, can culminate in disastrous consequences.
In our case, it was more a gut feeling than anything else. Add that to the so-called "natural progression" of things and it seemed to me, the government monitoring our telephones and computers was no giant leap, only a small one and one which "smart" people would assume was a reality and act -- or react -- accordingly.
Look. the words "National Security" covers a host of sins. Things that a normal citizen (person) would never, in his wildest dreams, consider doing are done, quite frequently, in his name under the cover of "national security."
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S. government communications and information systems, which involves information security and cryptanalysis/cryptography. SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
The National Security Agency has been around, in one form or another , since the late 1940's. Its "official" predecessor was the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), created on May 20, 1949.
If you are only just hearing about the NSA don't beat yourself up over it. It was SUPPOSED to be a secretive agency. In fact, it was SO secret for a while that it was jokingly said that its initials -- NSA -- actually stood for: "No Such Agency."
Here's another point that seems to have been missed by the media coverage. "By law, NSA's intelligence gathering is limited to foreign communications, (Emphasis mine) although domestic incidents such as the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy have occurred." SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
The President made an unintentional "funny" recently when he said: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.” SOURCE: http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/06/obama-if-you-cant-trust-government-were-going-to-have-some-problems-video-2676640.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=beforeitsnews
Seems to me that is EXACTLY the POINT! We DON'T trust the government ... not any more! How can we? And yes, we have some problems. The President is guilty of blatantly stating the glaringly obvious.
Over the centuries there have been instances after instances in which great empires have been brought down by over reaching, (or over grasping, as this instance presents itself).
This could be the straw that put the camel in traction -- or -- this could be that one bridge too far. But, frankly, I doubt it. In fact, I'll go so far as to predict this is only the beginning of woes for the US.
No. Americans will let this slide. Too many of us have become submissive and too servile to be roused from our stupor to ward off our government's illegal and unconstitutional incursions into what USED to be our private lives. No. Too many Americans will remain undisturbed if the government will just send them their check every month and they'll just roll over and go back to sleep until they are needed on Election Day.
Look. This is not a new problem. In fact, it is a problem man has had ever since he decided to climb down from the trees and live in huts and build walls or palisades around his cluster of huts to ward off danger. A man tends to forget that when he erects walls to keep the enemy out, those same walls keep him in. Every security measure must be weighed and considered carefully against freedom.
Even though we had no National Security Agency, this very same discussion was on-going in the early days of our republic: “Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.” (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 8.)
I submit to you that THAT is exactly what America has done.
One of America's revolutionaries I much admire was Samuel Adams, cousin to Founding Father John Adams. Sam was a pamphleteer (among other things). He was a rabble rouser, at least in the eyes of the British. He constantly fanned the flames of revolution with his pen.
Sam Adams was a freedom lover. He said this: “It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it [would be] in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights; the principal of which…are life, liberty, and property. If men through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.” (Samuel Adams, Life of Samuel Adams, 1:504.)
If Sam was right, and I believe he was, freedom is a gift from God and to even TRY to give it up, as Americans are doing today, or to even ATTEMPT to take it away -- as America's government is trying to do today -- IS NOTHING SHORT OF BLASPHEMY! Sam rightly points out -- it is the duty of government to PROTECT those rights -- NOT To Take Them Away.
I would like to be able to add some words of encouragement -- that this will soon be over and we can roll back these restraints on freedom. But that would be untruthful. I don't think it is over by a long shot. I think it is only going to get worse-- much worse. As we stated at the beginning of this piece, when Obamacare comes fully into its own I believe Americans will be in a state of stunned disbelief at the freedom they/we will have given up.
I am happy to say that I cannot see far enough into the future to say how this will end. It is enough that I believe it will end badly for everyone. I can, however, say how it would end if our first president, George Washington were still in charge.
During the Revolution, after the battles of Lexington and Concord, Washington made his opinion on the matter perfectly clear. He said it would be better for America to be drenched in blood than for Americans to become slaves to their own government. Here are his exact words: “Unhappy it is though to reflect, that a Brother's Sword has been sheathed in a Brother's breast, and that, the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?” (George Washington, 1776)
Are we virtuous men, today? Then why are we hesitating in making our choice?
Like modern day Athenians, we Americans have traded our freedom for "promised" security -- and we shall never be free again.
© J. D. Longstreet
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
*********************
You think "Prism" is a big intrusion into your life? Well, just you wait until Obamacare is up and running! As Al Jolson once famously sang: "You ain't seen nothing yet!"
Look. We warned this was happening, more than once, in our scribblings long before The Guardian officially broke the story last week. It was just a "gut feeling." We had no evidence of it. Whislteblowers hardly ever speak to me, because they need to speak to someone who has enough "umph" to protect their behinds when the defecation hits the rotary oscillator. I don't.
But, as is usual these days, nobody much paid any attention. Not paying attention today, as quickly as events move in our cyber society, can culminate in disastrous consequences.
In our case, it was more a gut feeling than anything else. Add that to the so-called "natural progression" of things and it seemed to me, the government monitoring our telephones and computers was no giant leap, only a small one and one which "smart" people would assume was a reality and act -- or react -- accordingly.
Look. the words "National Security" covers a host of sins. Things that a normal citizen (person) would never, in his wildest dreams, consider doing are done, quite frequently, in his name under the cover of "national security."
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S. government communications and information systems, which involves information security and cryptanalysis/cryptography. SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
The National Security Agency has been around, in one form or another , since the late 1940's. Its "official" predecessor was the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), created on May 20, 1949.
If you are only just hearing about the NSA don't beat yourself up over it. It was SUPPOSED to be a secretive agency. In fact, it was SO secret for a while that it was jokingly said that its initials -- NSA -- actually stood for: "No Such Agency."
Here's another point that seems to have been missed by the media coverage. "By law, NSA's intelligence gathering is limited to foreign communications, (Emphasis mine) although domestic incidents such as the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy have occurred." SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
The President made an unintentional "funny" recently when he said: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.” SOURCE: http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/06/obama-if-you-cant-trust-government-were-going-to-have-some-problems-video-2676640.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=beforeitsnews
Seems to me that is EXACTLY the POINT! We DON'T trust the government ... not any more! How can we? And yes, we have some problems. The President is guilty of blatantly stating the glaringly obvious.
Over the centuries there have been instances after instances in which great empires have been brought down by over reaching, (or over grasping, as this instance presents itself).
This could be the straw that put the camel in traction -- or -- this could be that one bridge too far. But, frankly, I doubt it. In fact, I'll go so far as to predict this is only the beginning of woes for the US.
No. Americans will let this slide. Too many of us have become submissive and too servile to be roused from our stupor to ward off our government's illegal and unconstitutional incursions into what USED to be our private lives. No. Too many Americans will remain undisturbed if the government will just send them their check every month and they'll just roll over and go back to sleep until they are needed on Election Day.
Look. This is not a new problem. In fact, it is a problem man has had ever since he decided to climb down from the trees and live in huts and build walls or palisades around his cluster of huts to ward off danger. A man tends to forget that when he erects walls to keep the enemy out, those same walls keep him in. Every security measure must be weighed and considered carefully against freedom.
Even though we had no National Security Agency, this very same discussion was on-going in the early days of our republic: “Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.” (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 8.)
I submit to you that THAT is exactly what America has done.
One of America's revolutionaries I much admire was Samuel Adams, cousin to Founding Father John Adams. Sam was a pamphleteer (among other things). He was a rabble rouser, at least in the eyes of the British. He constantly fanned the flames of revolution with his pen.
Sam Adams was a freedom lover. He said this: “It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it [would be] in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights; the principal of which…are life, liberty, and property. If men through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.” (Samuel Adams, Life of Samuel Adams, 1:504.)
If Sam was right, and I believe he was, freedom is a gift from God and to even TRY to give it up, as Americans are doing today, or to even ATTEMPT to take it away -- as America's government is trying to do today -- IS NOTHING SHORT OF BLASPHEMY! Sam rightly points out -- it is the duty of government to PROTECT those rights -- NOT To Take Them Away.
I would like to be able to add some words of encouragement -- that this will soon be over and we can roll back these restraints on freedom. But that would be untruthful. I don't think it is over by a long shot. I think it is only going to get worse-- much worse. As we stated at the beginning of this piece, when Obamacare comes fully into its own I believe Americans will be in a state of stunned disbelief at the freedom they/we will have given up.
I am happy to say that I cannot see far enough into the future to say how this will end. It is enough that I believe it will end badly for everyone. I can, however, say how it would end if our first president, George Washington were still in charge.
During the Revolution, after the battles of Lexington and Concord, Washington made his opinion on the matter perfectly clear. He said it would be better for America to be drenched in blood than for Americans to become slaves to their own government. Here are his exact words: “Unhappy it is though to reflect, that a Brother's Sword has been sheathed in a Brother's breast, and that, the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?” (George Washington, 1776)
Are we virtuous men, today? Then why are we hesitating in making our choice?
Like modern day Athenians, we Americans have traded our freedom for "promised" security -- and we shall never be free again.
© J. D. Longstreet
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