Category Archives: History

“We Want Our Safety Back”

Women protest their insane government in Cologne.

As I noted on Twitter yesterday, this was the biggest mass rape of German women since the Soviets invaded.

[Update Saturday afternoon]

This seems related somehow: Swedish women request segregated jacuzzis, due to being groped. It seems to be a recent problem, for some reason that just has me scratching my head.

[Sunday-morning update]

Another report of hundreds of “Arabic” men attacking women on New Years Eve.

Nope, nothing coordinated about this at all.

[Update Sunday afternoon]

Why we can’t remain silent about the Cologne assaults:

Street sexual violence is also—obviously—not exclusive to Arab and Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, among the worst offenders is Papua New Guinea, where two-thirds of women are subjected to some kind of physical or sexual violence, and rapists from “raskol” gangs are happy to pose for photos after their latest rape.

Having said that, what is infuriating and totally counterproductive is to deny that a specifically cultural problem around immigration patterns and European sexual norms has been steadily rising across the continent. To pretend this is not the case only further stigmatizes us brown Muslim men. That the problem requires attention is clear.

German police unions and women’s right groups have recently accused authorities of underplaying cases of rape at refugee shelters. “There is a lot of glossing over going on. But this doesn’t represent reality,” police union chief Rainer Wendt told Reuters. Henry Ove Berg, who was a police chief during Norway’s recent spike in rape cases, said, “people from some parts of the world have never seen a girl in a miniskirt, only in a burqa… when they get to Norway, something happens in their heads.” He added that “there was a link but not a very clear link” between the rape cases in Norway and immigrants. Hanne Kristin Rohde, former head of the violent crime section of the Oslo Police Department, was criticized in 2011 when she went public with data suggesting that immigrants committed a hugely disproportionate number of rapes. “This was a big problem… but it was difficult to talk about,” she remarked. There was “a clear statistical connection between sexual violence and male migrants.”

Any solution to this emerging issue must simultaneously seek to deny the far right the ammunition it desires while preserving Europe’s hard-earned progressive social values.
This is all controversial, but it must be said. Anecdotal attitudes point to the same conclusion. Abdu Osman Kelifa, an Eritrean asylum seeker to Norway, recently told The New York Times that in his home country, “if someone wants a lady, he can just take her and he will not be punished.” He confessed that it was still hard for him to accept that a woman could accuse her husband of rape.

Between denying the problem and using it to fuel bigoted far-right rhetoric, an approach grounded in data and a level head is vital. Any solution to this emerging issue must simultaneously seek to deny the far right the ammunition it desires while preserving—not reneging on—Europe’s hard-earned progressive social values.

I hope it’s not too late.

[Update a few minutes later]

The Western Spring:

The tension between the forces of political correctness and the pent-up forces of repressed cultural traditions is now bursting like a spring wound up beyond containment. Things may start slowly at first but ramp up rapidly, mirroring Cornelius Ryan’s famous description of the Berlin Philharmonic’s last performance as the Red Army stood at the gates of Berlin.

…Seventy years later, the question facing people caught in the middle is where to run. There is nowhere obvious. In Europe, Ross Douthat argues, all exits are temporarily blocked. The left has destroyed the middle, leaving only a choice of extremes. “Just last week Merkel rejected a proposal to cap refugee admissions (which topped one million last year) at 200,000 in 2016.”

…Everywhere one looks the matches are being lit. The sudden outburst of resistance comes the end of what Jonah Goldberg called “a bad day” for the Narrative. A bad sequence of decades since 2001, more like it.

These will be the worst days for Europe in seventy years, I’m afraid. As he notes, the Constitution may save us, but it doesn’t help that the left has trampled all over it for a century, and continue to do so.

[Update a while later]

Sex crimes across Germany. The cover up unravels.

#SciTech2016

I’ve been at the SciTech2016 conference in San Diego (drove down from LA this morning ahead of most of the rain). Posting will probably remain light until tomorrow afternoon or Thursday, when I get back to the office.

I should say, though, that Bill Anders was very politically incorrect in the plenary session this morning. He was basically singing from my hymnal, about the obsession with safety, and Apollo not being about space, and he had unkind words to say about Orion, with a poor young woman from the program sitting on the dais with him (it was pretty funny when Ann Sulkosky and another Lockmart guy came up to him afterwards to gently remonstrate with him). It was particularly hilarious, because they’re the primary sponsor of the conference; there was a big Lockmart logo above them.

I introduced myself, and gave him a copy of the book. He said he’d read it (future tense), and I hope he does. It’s nice to run into an Apollo astronaut who’s thinking in 21st-century terms. He said Elon was on his poop list (he used a different word) because he was one of the few Apollo guys who had stood up for him against Cunningham and Cernan, but Elon had stood him up for lunch. I don’t think Apollo astronauts are used to being stood up for lunch.

Why Leftist Men Treat Women Worse

It’s because they let them get away with it.

But then, the misogyny of the Left goes back decades.

[Update a while later]

I will not stop talking about this. Good for you, Kat.

I’d never actually seen such a complete list of the women that Bill (and Hillary) Clinton abused.

[Update a few minutes later]

Sex, lies, Clinton and Trump:

times have changed and morality with it. I don’t think Bill, and certainly Hillary, would want Juanita Broaddrick brought up at a time when, on our campuses, even an unwanted kiss is legally considered rape, thanks to Title IX. Can you imagine how many instances of what is called “unwanted touching” could come out of the woodwork now if Bill started to pick a fight with Trump? It’s hard to imagine Clinton making it through Georgetown or Yale Law under today’s rules, or even through his freshman year.

And he got away with raping that young woman at Oxford.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mark Steyn: A tale of two Bills.”

“Jesus Didn’t Come To Do TED Talks”

A very interesting essay on the nature of Christ, and (among other things) the difference between the virgin birth and the Immaculate Conception:

Christianity like many world religions has often been less than fair in its treatment of women. But at the heart of historic Christianity there has always been the idea that one young single woman’s faithful choice gave God the opening he used to save the whole human race. Christmas is a feminist holiday, a feast that celebrates the free choice of an autonomous woman. As Christianity has risen to become the largest and most widespread religion in the world, women are coming into their own. It cannot be otherwise; Christianity of all the world’s great religions owes its origin to the choice of a woman to cooperate with God.

That’s a new take to me.

Will There Always Be An England?

David Frum reviews a new history.

And this seems related: The rejection of the West:

As the great 15th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun observed, societies that get rich also tend to get soft, both in the physical sense and in the head. Over the past two centuries, Western societies, propelled by the twin forces of technology and capitalist “animal spirits,” have created a diffusion of wealth unprecedented in world history. A massive middle class emerged, and the working class received valuable protections, not only in Europe and America, but throughout parts of the world, notably East Asia, which adopted at least some of the Western ethos.

The current massive movement of people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia to Western countries suggests the enduring appeal of this model. After all, people from developing countries aren’t risking their lives to move to North Korea, Russia or China. The West remains a powerful beacon in the “clash of civilizations.”

Yet a portion of these newcomers ultimately reject our culture and, in some cases, seek to liquidate it. They do this in countries where multiculturalism urges immigrants to register as “victims,” and not indulge in Western culture, as did most previous immigrant waves. After all, why assimilate into a culture that much of the cultural elite believes to be evil?

Perhaps the biggest disconnect may involve young immigrants and their offspring, particularly students. Rather than be integrated in some ways into society, they are able, and even encouraged, not to learn about “Western civilization,” which is all but gone from campuses, with barely 2 percent retaining this requirement.

The dominant ideology on college campus – “cultural relativism” – leaves little room for anything other than a nasty take on Western history and culture. Many students, whether of immigrant parentage or descendants of the Mayflower, have only vague appreciation or knowledge of Western civilization, making them highly vulnerable to such pleading. They often go through college now with only the vaguest notion of our history, the writings of the American founders, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, our vast cultural heritage or the fundamental principles of Christianity or, if you will, Judeo-Christianity.

This will not end well.

[Update a while later]

First link was wrong, fixed now. Sorry!

George W. Bush And Christmas

Why he never left the White House until the day after:

After a few years, curiosity finally got to the former Washington Times reporter and he asked a low-level administration official why.

“I still remember what she said,” Curl wrote. “’So all of us can be with our families on Christmas.’”

“Who was ‘us’? Hundreds and hundreds of people, that’s who. Sure, the reporters who covered the president, but also dozens and dozens on his staff, 100 Secret Service agents, maybe more, and all of those city cops required whenever the president’s on the move in D.C.,” Curl added in his column.

However, things seemingly changed when Obama took office.

“[T]his president would never delay his trip to his island getaway. He’s off every year well before Christmas. Hundreds and hundreds head off with him, leaving family behind,” Curl wrote.

Some people have class, others are narcissists and leaches on the wealth of the taxpayer.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Barack Obama’s top ten violations of the Constitution this year. Note that this implies that there were many more.

Avi Davis

RIP:

Avi Davis, president and founder of the American Freedom Alliance, passed away peacefully early Monday morning at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was surrounded by friends and loved ones.

Davis suffered a heart attack 11 days ago while cycling. He was placed in an induced coma as doctors ran a series of tests to determine his brain function, but ultimately he was unable to recover. He leaves behind two sons, Mati and Amiad, both his parents, Betty and Jack, a sister Yvette, and brothers Yoni and Shimmi. He was just 57 years old.

Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon said: “Avi Davis was a good man. A fighter, a patriot, a man who understood the conservative movement first needs to win in the marketplace of ideas. The country lost a leader, Breitbart News lost a friend.”

Sad news. I met him last summer at the Magna Carta event he put together in Westwood. Sobering, because he’s younger than me.

Islam

Americans don’t like it. Not even Democrats. And with good reason.

There are many good people who are Muslims, but Islam is a problem. We are not at war with Muslims, but Islam is at war with us, and has been since it was founded, thirteen-hundred years ago.

[Update a few minutes later]

After the latest mass murder, CAIR’s push for sharia rolls on.

[Update a few more minuts later]

More from Andy McCarthy: Is Islam a religion?

I’d say no. It’s a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion. Which may be one reason that, unlike other religions, the Left seems to have an affinity toward it.

[Friday-afternoon update]

The hidden reason Americans dislike Islam. They know military people who have first-hand experience with it:

Yes, they were in the middle of a war — but speaking from my own experience — the war was conducted from within a culture that was shockingly broken. I expected the jihadists to be evil, but even I couldn’t fathom the depths of their depravity. And it was all occurring against the backdrop of a brutally violent and intolerant culture. Women were beaten almost as an afterthought, there was a near-total lack of empathy for even friends and neighbors, lying was endemic, and sexual abuse was rampant. Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became. I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community. I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he’d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said — in perfect Army English — “Sir, this s**t is f**ked up.”

Yup. There are millions of good Muslims, but Islam is a big problem, and has been for over a millennium.