secular progressives have advanced far beyond traditional dignity.

Posted by: neill at November 11, 2006 06:52 AM | Permalink to this comment

Yes I have to agree even if the glow of victory I interpreted it as "please don't end my political career" begging to the public. But that's par for the course, the speeches themselves were pretty good and definitely decent and well done Santorum's more so than Allen's at least in delivery (the tree thing made me throw up a 'WTF' look).

But yeah, on the left I've heard positive comments on the speech from Atrios and Drum and Marshall and some others as well.

Posted by: MNPundit at November 11, 2006 07:09 AM | Permalink to this comment

it's not "begging". it's commonly referred to as "leadership".

though as the following illustrates, S/P's may not be ready for this kind of leadership:

"Webb started off by mentioning that "tomorrow is an extremely important day for America," and the crowd went wild, thinking he was talking about taking power. But of course, he launched into his praise of the Marine Corps, and the crowd cheered a little less loudly. Then he thanked all the brave veterans and brave men still fighting, and the crowd cheered a little less loudly again. Then he mentioned that he received a call from Sen. Allen, and the crowd went nuts again. Then he mentioned how pleasant and dignified Allen was, and the crowd grew quiet. Then he said he was having lunch next week with Allen — and the crowd was dead silent. Finally he told the audience that they should all thank Sen./Gov. Allen for his many years of dedicated service to the people of Virginia — and you could almost hear the people gathered looking at each other asking, "What the $#@! did we just do?" It was priceless."

Posted by: neill at November 11, 2006 07:16 AM | Permalink to this comment

Point taken, but I prefer Dan Savage's assessment of Santorum:

"Because sometimes mocking of politically powerful, bigoted, sex-obsessed, deranged national figures is the only weapon we have at our disposal... Mockery is a potent political weapon, one that Republicans are only too happy to use. Remember those Band-Aids with purple hearts on them that the party faithful wore at the GOP convention in 2004 to mock John Kerry? But, oh, Republicans sure are pussies. Give them a taste of their own fucking medicine and listen to them whine and whine... Where was this graciousness and respect for political differences while Rick Santorum was in the U.S. Senate? And where was this graciousness during the actual campaign? Santorum stopped just short of accusing Bob Casey of flying off to Pakistan twice a week to rim Osama bin Laden. If Santorum had spent the last 12 years in the Senate being the person he was for 12 minutes during his concession speech, well, he might not have made so many enemies in Pennsylvania and all over the country.
But to anyone out there who is feeling bad for Santorum today... I would direct your attention to this video clip. In an interview with CNN during the final days of the campaign, Santorum came out against - no shit - the pursuit of happiness."

The proudly gay Mr. Savage probably has more reason than most to despise Santorum, but the fact is, the Republican Party has spent the last 20 years (at least) calling everybody who disagreed with them all kinds of names and now that's it's stopped working for them, they think we can all play nice now and understand that it's just politics and not take it seriously and bygones. Not quite. It's gonna be pretty hard to forget the many, many, many times some Republican figure has said that anyone who disagrees with Bush loves terrorists (they're still doing that, actually), anyone who doesn't oppose gay marriage is destroying families and anyone who votes Democrat will vote us all into the poorhouse from the crushing burden of the taxes the Democrats just can't wait to make into law. The Republican politicians are gonna have to summon up a whole lot more graciousness than I've seen in the last 3 days before I'm able to see them as anything other than a bunch of corrupt, narrow-minded assholes. Yeah, there are plenty of Democrats/supporters who are assholes, too. But they haven't been running the govt for the last 12 years. No matter how nutso Rosie O'Donnell is, she can't monitor my Internet usage or pass a law to keep me from getting birth control pills. If Santorum had been a decent human being as a senator, he might still be a senator today.

Posted by: LL at November 11, 2006 07:59 AM | Permalink to this comment

quite dignified, indeed.

al quaeda in Iraq head al-Masri:

"The al-Qaida army has 12,000 fighters in Iraq, and they have vowed to die for God's sake... We haven't had enough of your blood yet... We will not rest from our Jihad until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have blown up the filthiest house — which is called the White House... The American people have put their feet on the right path by ... realizing their president's betrayal in supporting Israel... So they voted for something reasonable in the last elections... I say to... the ruler of believers (Abu Omar Baghdadi, the leader of the Mujahideen Shura) I vow allegiance to you... I put under your command 12,000 fighters who are the army of the al Qaeda... The victory day has come faster than we expected... Here is the Islamic nation in Iraq victorious against the tyrant. The enemy is incapable of fighting on and has no choice but to run away. We have to be unified by the sword, even though disagreements exist between us [between al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgent groups]... Go where God has ordered you to go and know that we are with you. We are your soldiers and your men."

and doesn't each '''gay" marriage produce exactly zero children? What a progressively "forward-looking" family!

Seen the comparative birth-rates between european muslims and non-muslims recently? It's like 3 to 1, rendering Europe a non-ally in 5-15 years.

So if government promotes gay marrige, and by official acknowledgement we are promoting it, we look forward to......Amerislam?

Posted by: neill at November 11, 2006 08:23 AM | Permalink to this comment

Well, it is easy for some to turn on the "graciousness" after ubridled nastiness did not do the trick for them. Afterall, they have hanger ons who wish to see them salvage a career -- hell, maybe they can still run for president. But character is not something that can be turned on and off -- it is who you are. Besides, maybe Allen is a better drunk than a dry drunk - which seems to make him nasty and mean. Didn't you catch him slurring his words during the concession? I know I am not the only one.

Posted by: DCExile at November 11, 2006 08:36 AM | Permalink to this comment

Yes, it was a good speech and I welcome a return to a more civil tone in political discourse. But when he inevitably returns to exert his influence on policy, we can't let a gracious concession (after an overwhelming defeat) obscure his deeply flawed governing ideology and practices in leadership.

As for neill, let's quit the fearmongering with the Al Qaeda p.r., please.

Posted by: Tim at November 11, 2006 08:50 AM | Permalink to this comment

al quaeda "p.r." is the singular weapon they are winning the war with, against our open-media democracy.

This is our Achilles Heel, and they know it, and this is their strategy for victory

as was the case with North Vietnamese "p.r."

We haven't wised up yet. Nor will we, thanks to y'all.

Posted by: neill at November 11, 2006 09:02 AM | Permalink to this comment

Some people just can't seem to let go. Too bad.

Peggy Noonan's piece yesterday is an eloquent echo of your post.

"We have divided government. Good, and for many reasons. One: It confuses our enemies. "Who do we hate now?" they ask in their caves, "the evil woman from San Francisco or the old infidel from Texas? Which do we hate more? And if we hate them both does that...unite them?"

"We are in a 30-year war. It is no good for it to be led by, identified with, one party. It is no good for half the nation to feel estranged from its government's decisions. It's no good for us to be broken up more than a nation normally would be. And straight down the middle is a bad break, the kind that snaps."

I can't remember when I last heard any reference to a "loyal opposition." I, for one, am ready for an end to carping.

Posted by: Hootsbuddy at November 11, 2006 12:30 PM | Permalink to this comment

They picked speechwriters who wrote them nice speeches. Good.

But the GOP has been trying for 6 years to destroy democracy in the USA and to destroy the Democratic Party. I don't so much care whether the Democratic Partyi survives, but I very much care whether the GOP survives.

The decision that Lieberman gets to keep his seniority is a good precedent. I want no Republican politician to win unless he wins running as an independent or a libertarian.

There is a long-term war going on between the GOP and the USA. I want the USA to win.

Posted by: J Thomas at November 11, 2006 01:38 PM | Permalink to this comment

Some people just can't seem to let go. Too bad.

After 5 years of being called a traitor and a terrorist-lover, it will take more than one concilatory speech for me to make kissy face.

And especially after four very dirty elections, where all kinds of dishonest nastiness--some barely legal and some completely illegal--were used to suppress Democratic votes, I am especially not inclined to let down my guard.

My advice to the new Congressional majorities is to make the Republicans prove that they are worth working with. As Reagan said, "Trust but verify."

Posted by: RWB at November 11, 2006 01:48 PM | Permalink to this comment

Wait a minute, neill. "Secular progressives"? I believe the technical term you're looking for is "moonbats."

Posted by: vg at November 11, 2006 03:01 PM | Permalink to this comment

"So if government promotes gay marrige, and by official acknowledgement we are promoting it, we look forward to......Amerislam?"

Since when does gay marraige have anything to do with terrorism? And since when has gay marriage ever threatened ANYBODY? Let's get a life, okay? Let's just think about this rationally for sane one minute. If one is truly secure about one's sexuality, one has nothing to fear from another who has a different sexual oriantation.

I realize, after six years of suspension of disbelief and critical thinking, that it's difficult to not conflate all of one's enemies, whether real or imagined, into one big amorphous mass...but the fact is that these are very different things. (BTW - Islamofascists are no friends of gays)

Posted by: sekaijin at November 11, 2006 04:29 PM | Permalink to this comment

Selcaijin, you missied this guy's point. I have to admit it's very easy to miss.

First, he assumes that arabs/muslims are sort of our genetic enemies. Not like they might move here and watch their children listen to jazz and marry hspanics and all that.

So he assumes that arab/muslim children will grow up into fanatical islamist world-conquerors. And he assumes that to keep them from taking over the world we have to produce children at the same rate they do.

So to keep from being overrrun by arabs/muslims/etc, just like we used to be about to be overrun by irish and blacks and latinos, we have to maximise our birthrate. That means getting as many teenage girls pregnant as possible, and making sure they don't get abortions.

And we need to get as many homosexuals as possible to marry those girls -- homosexuals who just wander around having fun instead of raising families are not doing their part for the war effort. If the arabs/muslims are having children as fast as the possibly can then we need to have children as fast as we possible can too, otherwise they win.

He doesn't mention the alternative -- we might do better to sterilise a whole lot of arab/muslim women to cut their birthrate down to ours.

Now that you see his reasoning, it probably looks real real stupid. But he really did have a point even though it was a stupid point, and you missed it.

Posted by: J Thomas at November 11, 2006 06:50 PM | Permalink to this comment

really not so, ahem, stupid as you put it, J Dodge.

Look at the very real growth in political power of the hispanic community in America over the past 2 decades. Due to what? A growing proportion of Hispanics due both to immigration and high relative birth rates.

Sound familiar? Hispanics in America and muslims in Europe are very much headed for more political power. And high birth rates, relative to other groups, is a big reason why.

The difference in social temperament between hispanics and european muslims is, of course, huge. For instance, what would be our response if hispanic youths were torching hundreds of vehicles each night, like muslim youths are in France.

So when I propose that government advocacy of groups with zero birth rates may not be in the best long-term interest of society as a whole, this is my line of thinking.

Posted by: neill at November 11, 2006 08:55 PM | Permalink to this comment

Actually, it turns out in France it wasn't in general "muslim youths torching cars" in most cases. Plain old garden variety punks, several of which happened to be muslim.

Neill, if it comes down to which group of idiot know-nothings outbreeds another group of idiot know-nothings, count me out of that. That's not civilization--it's being a rabbit.

It will also end with the same result: a) two bunches of hysterical religious idiots having a war with each other, or b) collapse of a country's economy as less and less education (aside from religious indoctrination) is done and the moderates feel less and less welcome....and emigrate.

Do you really WANT to see the US turn into a Christian version of Saudi Arabia? And the only reason S.A.'s economy keeps going on is that loverly loverly oil--which is running out. After it dries up, I predict the country is going to collapse back into being a bunch of camel-drivers and date gatherers. What is the economy going to run on? It has no other economic base, doesn't seem to have any science and technology base (aside from maybe petroleum engineering), and shuts out half of its population from productive contribution.

Posted by: grumpy realist at November 11, 2006 09:16 PM | Permalink to this comment

Neill, if it comes down to which group of idiot know-nothings outbreeds another group of idiot know-nothings, count me out of that. That's not civilization--it's being a rabbit.

Seconded. The last Western political movement that put forth an ideology and implementation strategy of outbreeding the other guys were the National Socialists. Not coincidentally, I'm sure that they would have stomped radical Islam flat by now.

And that's how the terrorists will win, by exerting sufficient political pressure on us as to morph us into an autocratic state, whose inefficiency at things other than slaughtering third world societies will then allow us to be surpassed by other nations, or whose poor decision-making will ultimately lead to a) nuclear war, b) global economic breakdown and anarchy, or c) who knows, maybe even that Amerislam you're so happily bantering about.

Posted by: glasnost at November 12, 2006 12:01 AM | Permalink to this comment

I think J Thomas correctly interpreted Neill's calls for outbreeding the infidels. The Nazis saw the same problem -- nasty semites causing trouble, and not enough Germans having babies to keep the whites in power. The Romans saw the same problem -- Octavian passed laws punishing Romans with fewer than three children. Neill sees the same problem -- the whites (esp. the reactionary racist whites) are in danger of falling into a minority, so he wants them to breed more, and of course, he wants to kill as many brown people as possible, because that is basic arithmetic -- if you kill off a lot of brown people, you don't have to get the white people to reproduce as fast. It is just math :)

Posted by: icefrost at November 12, 2006 02:09 AM | Permalink to this comment

J Thomas - I can see where you're headed. Yes. Neill does have a point - and I can see where he's headed. And where he's headed is a conflation of everything he doesn't like. "Muslims," "gays," "al-Qaeda," all converging into one grand Enemy of the State (ours, natch).

Please do remember that the Nazis not only put Jews on the trains to Auschwitz, Belsen, etc., but also gays, Romanese, and the mentally retarded. A Jew whose spirit was thoroughly broken was referred to as a "muslimized" Jew - when one was muslimized, one was ripe for the gas chamber. And as for all those 'gypsies' and 'retards' - they had nothing to do with Hitler's antagonism per se; they were just undesireable beings who somehow tangentially got in the way and needed to be eliminated (I suppose Rosenberg and some of the other historicistic gymnasts worked them in to become enemies of the state along the way, in the same way they worked up Japanese to be honorary Aryans). If I'm reading what you've said correctly, what Neill advocates is not that gays be eliminated, but be used for their biological capacity to reproduce, even if it goes against their gender orientation. I hope I got that.

But all of this as a piece is is less important for what you can parse out of it for what someone said or didn't say, rather than for its hideousness. Since when did we start theorizing about a biological angle to our enemies, as though we could parse out of that that what they all have in common is the same religion and same skin color? Since when did a martial culture start looking good - especially when it's at someone else's expense (i.e., someone else being martialled)?

Terrorism might only seem hydra-headed. Don't you think that it might be a lot more complicated than that? This is what led us to Iraq - 'freedom good, terrorism bad, if you're not with us you're against us, blah blah,' forgetting that anymore so much terrorism is directed more against other Muslims rather than us lily-whites. It also is what has led us to these reductionist binary moral oppositions - that we are completely in the right and that anything we do is immaculately justified, forgetting there that our meddling in the Middle East, our overdependence on oil and our willingness to look the other way when it comes to the dictatorial regimes of that region, and the blatantly idiotic double standards only we could get ourselves into there (our refusal to talk to Iran and Syria and the outlaw status we've put on them, but our cozying up to SA and Pakistan).

The point I tried to make in passing above (and that was the problem - it was in passing) was how is it that gays are a factor in this - whether as an 'enemy' or as some sort of special bio-political weapon. So I'll ask it again - what do they have to do with terrorism, whether fighting it or somehow being a 'part' of it? Lots of straight couples don't have kids - why aren't they part of Neill's target? Why specifically gays?

Posted by: sekaijin at November 12, 2006 02:56 AM | Permalink to this comment

Wow, quite bit of demagoguery out there over what I wrote. I'd be surprised if someone soon doesn't start calling me Dr. Mengele.

I'm not concerned about birth rates here in America currently, which are high compared to non-muslin Europe. And my rhetorical comment about Amerislam was excessive and premature.

What I am concerned about is what is happening demographically and politically in Europe, a trend which I adamently don't want replicated here -- but which many here seem hell-bent toward.

The birth rate of muslims to non-muslims generally is as I recall between 2 and 3 to 1 (I'll have hard numbers shortly), meaning for example that France in a few years will be about 30% muslim, and growing. Do you have any idea what the political consequences of that will be? Any alliance with America could well be out of the question. And France has nukes. As well as getting nearly all of its power from nuclear plants.

At their current rate of procreation, the French of France, as opposed to the non-French, will not be able to sustain their current anemic growth rate of 1 or 2 percent, or was it zero. So import more muslim workers?

In Holland, native Dutch are leaving the country in significant numbers, a first, because of instability fostered by Islamists -- the murder of Theo Van Gogh being just one example, and the inability of the authorities to cope with the instability.

These societies are both now almost completely secular societies, which have laws allowing gay marriage, and both as well have extremely generous, and expensive, social welfare safety nets. Yet marriage and birth rates decline and their economies struggle.

And both have burgeoning muslim populations that due to endemic prejudice are shut out of mainstream society. Assuming these populations want to assimilate into what they see as decadent and corrupt societies. And these muslim populations have significant extremist elements, many who are young, who would like nothing better than to create chaos.

I disagree that the current epidemic of hundreds of vehicle torchings per night in France (including the bus that was set ablaze, trapping a woman rider and burning most of her body) is just thugs "including a few muslims". The instigation for the current epidemic was the anniversary of the LAST epidemic of rioting muslim youths. Thugs want something. Nihilists, inclusing muslim ones, want nothing more than chaos and destruction. Much of the French media is just saying it's "hooligans" because of politically correct avoidance of a very uncomfortable issue. I've read reports that some muslim areas in Paris and other cities are actually "no go zones" where police fear to tread.

So when I consider should our government advocate, without precedent, "marriage" for gays that produce no children, forgive me if I pause for a moment. I have no problem with civil unions, though not with incentives equal to marriage.

The heart of "marriage" in my mind is producing, sustaining and raising healthy families, which are bedrock of a healthy society. Marriage ought to be encouraged. Which even a liberal state like Wisconsin agrees with.

Posted by: neill at November 12, 2006 07:45 AM | Permalink to this comment

So it's those Evil Scary Muslims as opposed to "hooligans", but we don't have any evidence because the French Media is carrying out "political avoidance"?

Why does this sound suspiciously like like the flip side of "it's the evil liberal media not talking about all the wonderful things that are going on in Iraq!"

The fact that YOU might think "producing, sustaining and raising healthy families" is the "heart of marriage" doesn't mean that all of us do. Quite a lot of us have different opinions.

Do you assume that gays are suddenly going to turn hetrosexual if they're barred from officially having loving relationships? Because that's the only logic I can see to all these silly "Defense of Marriage" laws. Either that, or you think a sizable number of people in marriages having kids are actually closeted gays, and allowing gay marriages would provide an incentive for them to come out of the closet, get divorced, and get married to someone they actually love.

When you "Defense of Marriage" types get around to banning hetrosexual divorce, then I'll start to think you're putting your money where your mouth is. And if it's "marriage for production of children", then why can unfertile (hetrosexual) people get married? Sheesh.

Posted by: grumpy realist at November 12, 2006 05:38 PM | Permalink to this comment

from JihadWatch:

Rioting "youths" burn hundreds of cars in France

(Oddly enough, this AP story actually mentions "Muslims." Perhaps the censor had gone to retrieve his liverwurst sandwich, and this one slipped through. "Rioting youths burn hundreds of cars in France: Authorities upbeat despite violence marking anniversary of ’05 unrest," from AP, with thanks to Andrea:)

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France - Marauding youths torched hundreds of vehicles overnight and on Saturday in renewed violence coinciding with the first anniversary of riots that exposed a deep schism between poor North African immigrants and mainstream France.

A group of teenagers set one bus on fire Saturday in the southern French port city of Marseille, seriously wounding a passenger. Three others suffered from smoke inhalation, police said. Two other public buses and 277 vehicles around the country were burned overnight, police said.

Six police were injured and 47 people were arrested, ministry officials said. Still the Interior Ministry described the night as “relative calm,” noting that up to 100 cars are torched by youths in troubled neighborhoods on an average night.

Police had braced for a bigger replay of violence in the poor suburbs predominantly made up of Muslims from former French colonies in Africa. Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the deaths of two teens that ignited three weeks of riots in 2005.

The rioting was fueled by anger at France’s failure to offer equal opportunities to many minorities — especially Arabs and blacks — and France’s 5 million-strong Muslim population.

France’s trouble integrating minorities and the suburban unrest are becoming hot political issues in the campaign for next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. The government passed an equal opportunities law this spring and has poured funds into “sensitive” areas, but disenchantment is still pervasive....

(Hmm. You mean they've given the rioters money and favorable treatment, and that still hasn't solved the problem? Do you think maybe it springs from the ideology of Islamic supremacism, and not from poverty at all?)

“Four guys attacked Bus 346,” said witness Thierry Ange, 19. “They made everyone get off, then they hit a woman and dragged out the bus driver by his tie,” then torched the bus with a gasoline bomb in a bottle, he said.

The blackened remains of another bus burned earlier stood across town. Two armed men had forced passengers off the bus, police said.

Youths also tried to burn a bus in Reims in eastern France, and attackers hurled metal balls at an empty bus in Trappes, west of Paris, the Interior Ministry said.

Scores of police, wielding shields and backed by a helicopter shining its searchlight, swept into a tough housing project in Montfermeil, a town near Clichy-sous-Bois, and several youths responded by throwing stones.

Paris’ transport authority responded to the violence by curtailing bus services in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of the capital, which is home to thousands of immigrants and their French-born children.

And thus Paris slides toward Third World conditions.

Posted by: neill at November 13, 2006 12:03 AM | Permalink to this comment

Absent re-population through the family unit, what contributions does the institution of marriage make to the long-term health and sustainability of a society?

Posted by: neill at November 13, 2006 12:46 AM | Permalink to this comment

Anyone?

It's not that tough of a question.

Then again.....maybe it IS.

Posted by: neill at November 13, 2006 05:15 AM | Permalink to this comment

Neill - since you seem to be riffing on this marriage-reproduction theme, how about throwing in an extra chord or chart into the sound? The following may sound like I'm making fun of you - but I'm not. Seriously. Hear this out.

Biological reproduction is NOT the only way for couples to have children. How about a massive program of adoption, both of unwanted children within our own society, and of unwanted children from developing countries? Furthermore, make it a lot easier than it has been for this to take place - get rid of age discrimination against older couples, prohibitions against gay couples, etc., and have the only criteria be that a couple prove that they can provide a loving and stable home for said children. If that sounds like pie-in-the-sky, the fact is that the standard one-man-one-woman template as a guarantor of stability and protection for children can never be proven. What is more, there are literally millions of children, maybe tens of millions, at any one time that need homes.

I don't buy the notion that love, stability, social glue, whatever you want to call it is only the province of a certain gender orientation, or ethnicity, or religious valuation or socio-economic class. If you want to promote the kinds of values that are emblematic of a proactive, informed society, then give everyone a stake in them. And if, on a larger stage, such values can aid or even feed directly into the fightr against the things we don't believe in, then it behooves all of us to get as many people involved, and circulate such values in a way that includes as many people as possible in them. This is something that would unite gays and straights, and reasonable conservatives and reasonable liberals.

As for what's been going on in France - my take on what has happened in Western Europe as a whole with the Muslim migrant populations is that they've never been truly given a stake in the societies they've been in - in the case of Germany, for example, citizenship and naturalization laws have been blatantly exclusionary along ethnic lines up until only recently. I do not deny that there are elements within the Muslim communities that have allowed the bigots within them to come to the fore - what goes around comes around, and they are complicit in this. But it's my suspicion that once you peel away the religious claptrap and jihadist rhetoric, a lot of what really is grinding away at those communities is economic injustice and a social separation reinforced by the larger, mainstream society. The religious talk is a shill that I'll bet doesn't really address why those people (especially the young) feel the rage they do. What's happened in France the last two years smells to me more like the Watts riots of '65, or any of the urban unrest in the black inner cities of the late '60s - at bottom, racial injustice and economic marginalization.

Posted by: sekaijin at November 13, 2006 11:45 AM | Permalink to this comment

As I look over my previous post, I have a couple of amendments to it - I want to make it clear that I do NOT rationalize/justify the killing or injuring of any innocents caught up in the French riots, so I can second the concerns Neill has in his citation of the most odious of happenings in the unrest. And I do not rationalize/justify the self-appointed bigots-as-leaders in many of these Muslim communities. Theo van Gogh was murdered, in no small measure, because he wanted to expose to full glare some pretty odious injustices perpetuated by some Muslim men on their women, injustices endorsed by some of the old guard amongst these communities' leaders; the women who agreed to be in his film participated with no small measure of courage at their own peril.

But it's still my strong sense that the French riots weren't being driven by men protesting for their right to cloister women and fling acid in their faces for going unveiled and wanting a part-time job somewhere. It's clear to me that the dilemmas plaguing the Muslim communities in Europe are more multifarious, but at bottom, are rooted in economics and discrimination; not all Muslims spend their time rioting, throwing acid, and issuing fatwas against everybody and everything they don't like. Perhaps one of the big problems in their communities are the squads of bigots who have captured the microphones first, drowning out the more reasonable voices (sounds more than just a little like our political discourse over the last six years or so, awot?).

Posted by: sekaijin at November 14, 2006 02:54 AM | Permalink to this comment

"make it a lot easier than it has been for this to take place - get rid of age discrimination against older couples, prohibitions against gay couples, etc., and have the only criteria be that a couple prove that they can provide a loving and stable home for said children."

If a gay couple pledges, and follows through, with the raising of adopted children, they should be entitled to exactly the same benefits as a "married" couple.

That doesn't include the institution of "marriage", which should and will remain the union of one man and one woman, the engine of civilization.

"Theo van Gogh was murdered, in no small measure, because he wanted to expose to full glare some pretty odious injustices perpetuated by some Muslim men on their women, injustices endorsed by some of the old guard amongst these communities' leaders".

There is no 'old guard' within Islam.

Islam never experienced the Reformation, as did the West, never experienced the Enlightenment, as did the West. Both of which birthed multitudinous shadings in Christinianity.

There are two basic shadings within Islam. Shi'ite and Sunni. Which, despite their vicious differences, are now allied against the West (Iran is now supplying advanced weapons to the salafist Islamic Courts Union in Somlia, a white-hot area of islamist conflict). And muslims in the West have various degrees of piety -- for now.

But the "tipping point" was pointed to by Osama long ago: muslims worldwide will follow the "strong horse" en masse.

Think that's the newly-minted Democratic Congress?

Posted by: neill at November 14, 2006 06:41 AM | Permalink to this comment

and a huge distinction between "religion" and "government" has emerged over the past few centuries in the West.

No such distinction is recognized in the Islamic world, excepting possibly Turkey, which for most of the 20th century was the exception, but recently voted in an Islamist majority.

Islam means "submission", to the will of Allah.

Period.

Posted by: neill at November 14, 2006 06:59 AM | Permalink to this comment

which isn't necessarily a bad thing...

Posted by: neill at November 14, 2006 07:08 AM | Permalink to this comment

"As I look over my previous post, I have a couple of amendments to it - I want to make it clear that I do NOT rationalize/justify the killing or injuring of any innocents caught up in the French riots, so I can second the concerns Neill has in his citation of the most odious of happenings in the unrest. And I do not rationalize/justify the self-appointed bigots-as-leaders in many of these Muslim communities. Theo van Gogh was murdered, in no small measure, because he wanted to expose to full glare some pretty odious injustices perpetuated by some Muslim men on their women, injustices endorsed by some of the old guard amongst these communities' leaders; the women who agreed to be in his film participated with no small measure of courage at their own peril.

But it's still my strong sense that the French riots weren't being driven by men protesting for their right to cloister women and fling acid in their faces for going unveiled and wanting a part-time job somewhere. It's clear to me that the dilemmas plaguing the Muslim communities in Europe are more multifarious, but at bottom, are rooted in economics and discrimination; not all Muslims spend their time rioting, throwing acid, and issuing fatwas against everybody and everything they don't like. Perhaps one of the big problems in their communities are the squads of bigots who have captured the microphones first, drowning out the more reasonable voices (sounds more than just a little like our political discourse over the last six years or so, awot?). "

As I look over Sekaijin's previous post, I find one over-riding, or under-riding. theme:

Hope.

Against all hope.

Thank God you guys are in charge now.

Posted by: neill at November 14, 2006 07:17 AM | Permalink to this comment