Birthright Citizenship (A.K.A. Anchor Babies)

In a recent CNN editorial, representative Mike Honda made the case for birthright citizenship, i.e. he supported the premise that simply by virtue of being born in America, a child is automatically considered an American citizen.

The very title of this article is typical of the tactics of the left.  Not enough to state the premise that Babies born in the U.S. are Citizens – a premise that was very weakly supported by the article itself – no, the title has to preface itself with “Constitution 101.”  As if to imply that if you don’t accept this premise, then your knowledge of the constitution is obviously sub-par.  This sort of debate tactic detracts from the dialog by being dismissive of the point of view of anyone who has the audacity to disagree with the left.  In such a climate, no meaningful dialog can take place.

The opening statement asserts that this issue clouds the debate.  No, congressman, it does not cloud the debate, it’s one of the central issues to be debated. 

At the risk of being redundant, the text of the 14^th amendment states, "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

The congressman then accuses the Republicans of redefining the clause, and assembles a nice straw man argument about what the Republicans propose.  The rest of the editorial is devoted to demolishing this straw man, and is therefore mostly irrelevant, except for one statement that bears discussion: “Any deportation plan of America's undocumented immigrants would cost our country's gross domestic product $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years. . .  if we embrace comprehensive immigration reform, we add $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product over the next 10 years.”

Notwithstanding that the esteemed congressman is pretty much pulling fuzzy numbers out of thin air with the support of a single academic, he makes an assumption that is often central to the left’s position regarding immigration reform:  How on earth will we deport these people?  How will we do it humanely?  And how would we pay for such an operation that would eclipse the Nazi deportation of Jews from German occupied Europe?  (nice imagery, suggesting that deporting illegals from the US is akin to sending them to concentration camps, gas chambers and ovens.  How inhumane!).

This is a non-issue.  People come to this country illegally for a reason.  Remove those reasons, and you don’t have to round them up and deport them.  They will self-deport, at no cost to the US taxpayer.  Make it illegal to provide public services to illegal aliens – this includes welfare, food stamps, child care services, education, free medical services, driver’s licenses.  Attempts to procure these services should result in a phone call to the INS.  Emergency medical care should be provided, but if the patient cannot prove their immigration status upon request, the INS should be notified.  Employers need to be held accountable for ensuring they do not hire undocumented workers, and fined a minimum of $100,000 per worker per year if they are caught employing illegal aliens.  This will remove the financial incentive to exploit a pool of cheap labor.  Landlords should be similarly fined for providing housing to illegals.

With no place to live, no work, and no freebies, the desire to be in America will disappear, and the advantages of working within the legal immigration system will become attractive. 

The left will argue that it’s an unnecessary burden to require people to carry proof of citizenship at all times.  This is hogwash.  I am the child of an immigrant, and I know for a fact that persons visiting this country are required by law to carry proof of their immigration status with them at all times.  My mother was never far from her green card.  Neither was my wife before she became a citizen.  No one, except possibly our esteemed Commander-in-Chief, should have a problem acquiring a copy of their birth certificate.  This is required to obtain a passport, or to enlist in the US military.  This argument also assumes that people in a position to question a person’s immigration status are complete morons and can’t tell when someone’s accent, dress or customs scream “foreigner!”

I would also like to point out that one of the conditions for obtaining a visa to this country is that the petitioner have a sponsor who is obligated to support and provide for the visa holder if necessary so that they do not become a burden on society during their stay here.

Congressman Honda correctly states that the 14th Amendment was part of a set that ended slavery, guaranteed equal protection, and provided all Americans with the right to vote.  Therein we need to examine original intent and understand what the words say.  The intent of this clause was to codify the citizenship status of freed black slaves in the USA.  Born here, but not recognized as American citizens, they obviously knew no other country, and owed no allegiance to any other flag.  This amendment quite properly defined them as citizens by virtue of their birth.  But the key phrase is “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

How is one subject to the jurisdiction of the United States when they have sneaked into the country in violation of that country’s laws, and are living “off the grid?”  Their actions themselves show an express desire to avoid the jurisdiction of the United States.  Further, as citizens of another country, they have at their avail the consular services of their mother country, and certain limited diplomatic protections afforded to visitors to this country.  This implies that they’re subject to the jurisdiction of their mother country, as well as the laws of the country they happen to be in at the moment.  These are not stateless persons who require constitutional protection to guarantee their citizenship.  They are expressly citizens of their home countries, and therefore fall outside of the intended category of stateless persons that the 14^th amendment addressed.  For this reason, the whole idea of American Citizens being born to non-citizens who have flaunted the immigration laws of the U.S. should be a null issue.

Of course, the Democratic party champions the rights of illegal immigrants.  Illegal immigrants typically come from the lowest income levels of society, in their home country and here in the U.S.  They are the ones most likely to avail themselves of public assistance, and do not have a moral or ethical reservation about feeding from the public trough, as more conservative citizens do.  By virtue of their nebulous immigration status, they harbor no aspirations to succeed in business and realize the American dream of self-sufficiency and independence.  Their motivation seems to be to get as much as they can while the getting is good, and send as much as possible to help support their families in their mother country.  In this regard, they are the penultimate liberal democrat voting demographic.  Indeed, one could say that illegal aliens are undocumented Democrats.  Of course Congressman Honda is going to be an advocate for them.  They’re his base.

But they’re not Americans.

Respected Journal Publishes ESP results

Daryl J. Bem, an emeritus professor at Cornell, has published a paper on ESP in the The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that’s causing a lot of controversy.  See the NY Times article.

Now, from the article alone, I can’t conclusively identify possible sources of error in his experiments, but I do have questions about the results.  The human mind is a strange thing, and operates on patterns that might lead one to think that something extraordinary its going on.

Before I get into my own experience, I want to discuss how patterns of thought manifest themselves in human endeavor.  I'm sure we've all sat in those interminable literature classes, and listened to the teacher wax philosophical about the hidden meanings and allegories  inside the stories we've been forced to read, how the author strove to insert symbolism and metaphor into the story elements that lent themselves to microcosms of the greater story.

As an aspiring author myself, I'm here to tell you it's all a load of crap.  The author likely never gave these things a single thought, and most certainly would be surprised to hear how the teacher carries on about the hidden meanings and symbology.  He or she was just trying to spin a good yarn.  The fact that all of these metaphors crept into the storyline just illustrates how the human mind works and thinks in patterns. In one of my stories that's being developed I have a perfectly innocent object that's manipulated by a couple of the main characters, and a reader saw it as a metaphor for how the one character is manipulating the very soul of the other.  Well, shucks, I sure never meant that, but by golly you're right!  Cool!

My point is that you have to discount seeming coincidences when patterns of thought are at play if you're trying to analyze results of human behavior.  Back to my ESP story:

I once did an experiment in ESP that convinced me that there was something to it.  I’m not submitting it for peer review, because there was no objective oversight, and too many ways that a critic could say that the results were compromised, and I have no objective evidence to refute such criticism.  All I can say is that the test was designed to be double-blind, we did our best to make it a clean test, and any source of contamination of the results was thrown out.  In fact, in one run of the test, the result was compromised, and I discarded that data as useless.  But we did have one good run that made me a believer that there was something to this.

This was in the mid to late seventies.  I had a clock radio, which I typically left on at night, playing very softly, almost inaudibly, on the local pop station.  Our experiment was designed like this:

On a set night, I would go to bed a little early, and try to be asleep by a set time.  Sometime after that time, my friend, some miles away, would concentrate on trying to contact me telepathically, and insert a telepathic suggestion that I would come awake when I heard a particular song on the radio.  The actual song was not agreed upon in advance, I would have no idea what it would be, except that it would be one that was currently popular, so as to be sure that it would be played sometime in the night.  If I awakened in the night, I would write down the name of whatever song was playing at the time, and present that to my partner, who would also have written down the song he selected.

We only did three or four runs of the trial.  One time the result was contaminated because my partner didn’t understand the protocol and told me what song he would use.  The other times, there were issues of when the receiving subject actually went to bed, etc that made the results garbage.  Other subjects weren’t comfortable with sleeping with music playing in the room, as I was.  What made me a believer was the experience I had on the one successful run we had of this trial.  I was the receiving subject and was in bed and asleep at the appointed time.  The radio was playing softly across the room, almost inaudible to me.  I had no idea what song was to be my “trigger”.

At about 3:20 am, I was dreaming, when suddenly the opening fanfare of the theme from Star Wars crashed through my dream like a mac truck.  It sounded loud, like it was being played at full volume, and it cut through my sleep and jerked me instantly awake, fully and alertly awake, not a groggy, fuzzy awake.  I was a fan of Star Wars, even owned the album so it wasn’t unpleasant.  I sat up in bed and looked at the clock, noting the time, and realized that I could barely hear the music, it was nowhere as loud as in my dream, certainly not loud enough to wake me the way it had.  And I had come instantly awake from the very first note, from what had felt like a deep, dream-filled sleep. By all rights, there was no reason I shouldn’t have just slept through it.

The next day we exchanged double-blind notes of what song had been selected, and they matched up.  He had sent me a message to wake when I heard the Star Wars theme.  Could I have simply wakened because I heard a song I liked?  Possibly, but unlikely.  Remember, I habitually slept with the radio on, and the Star Wars theme was quite popular, yet it had never wakened me before or since (I no longer have this habit, of course).  It was the clarity of the event, the sharp transition - almost urgency - from sleep to wakefulness that impressed me.

Recently I read a philosophical postulate that suggested that reality is a hologram that’s formed by the collective consciousness of everyone, and that time is just a point of observation within that hologram that keeps shifting.  If you accept this model, then the hologram exists in all temporal states simultaneously, and is in fact dependent on the data of other states to inform the given state you have to be observing at the moment.  This model suggests that precognition, ESP, etc is just learning to game the hologram and either be aware of other vantage points in the matrix, or actually alter the data that makes up the hologram.  But that’s a subject for another discussion.

Now, take the blue pill and return to your regularly scheduled hallucination.

Just say NO to the TSA!

New Transportation Safety Agency rules require all passengers to be scanned with the full body scanner (known by the operators as the “dick-measuring device”) prior to boarding a commercial airplane.  The alternative to doing so is an intrusive manual pat-down which will not exempt your private parts. 

This violation of your personal privacy is a direct assault on the Fourth Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Let’s review that. . . “The right of the people to be secure in their persons. . .  against unreasonable searches. . .  shall not be violated.

This is an unreasonable search.  This intrusion of privacy would result in criminal charges if any citizen engaged in such behavior.  The government has no special exemption with regards to civil or criminal behavior.  In performing this search, the government does not have probable cause – boarding a commercial aircraft does not constitute probable cause.  TSA does not have a blanket search warrant to engage in such searches – such a warrant would be unconstitutional because of a lack of specificity.

The only reason the TSA gets away with this is because people let them.  The next time you book a flight, tell your boss that you may not make the flight if TSA interferes.  Stand up for your rights, and deny the TSA their unconstitutional search.  Demand that the airline reimburse you if you miss your flight.  Do your best to cost the airline as much money as possible over this.  Tell your friends to do the same.  Go through your TEA party connections if you have them and tell all freedom loving Americans that we’ve had enough!  I would feel much safer on an airplane if they issued every able-bodied male a snub nose .38 with a load of rubber bullets and dispensed with all this useless hand-waving over screening passengers. 

If even 50% of people flatly refused to submit to such a search and stood their ground against government bullies, this nonsense would stop in a New York Minute.

I will be traveling on business in late January.  Are there any lawyers that want to represent me when I collide with the TSA, assuming they’re still pulling this BS?

Response from the TEA Party - We've Been Angry for Awhile.

There's a piece of liberal dreck making the rounds in the leftist blogs called Message to the TEA Party, what took you so long to get Mad? Maybe it's my penchant for tilting at windmills, but I can't let this pass silently.  Below, I respond point by point to this nonsense.

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.  
No, I didn't, because I recognized that we couldn't keep counting votes for four years or until the Democrat won.  The fact is that NO recount ever showed a win for Gore.  The Supreme Court merely stepped in and acted a s a responsible adult.  The outcome wouldn't have changed, so what's your point?  I did get mad when Military absentee ballots weren't counted and polling places were closed early in the Republican panhandle area. 

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq .
As I recall, the resolution to invade Iraq was a Bipartisan vote.  Even John Kerry voted for it.  Go figure.  I wasn't sure that it was a great idea at the time.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
Valerie Plame was not an active operative, and "outing" her had a net result of zero.  This whole thing was much ado about nothing - this coming from a group of people who see nothing wrong with the actions of Daniel Ellsberg, which amounted to high treason, giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war.  People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
No, I got disgusted.  Still am.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.   You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war. 
There was nothing illegal about it, it was authorized by the United States congress in a bipartisan vote.  The Saddam Hussein regime was a well known supporter of international terrorism, and posed a clear and present danger to the international community in general, and to his on citizens in particular.  Those are the facts, and all the revisionist history you heap on it doesn't change a thing.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
Yes, I did, and I got furious when Barack Obama borrowed more money than the previous 43 presidents combined!

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.  
Yes, I did, and I got furious when 750 billion dollars just disappeared in the good old US of A in the name of hope and change.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.   
No, I didn't, not in the least, because I don't equate pranks that amount to a college hazing and making some barbarian think he might drown as equal to maiming people, pulling out teeth and fingernails, amputation of digits, and beheading - all of which are practiced by our enemy.  Aggressive interrogation does not equal torture, you idiot.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.
That's a pretty general statement.  Which policies, specifically?  Would that be the policies that support the labor unions which ensure that the American worker cannot compete on the basis of cost?  The punitive corporate tax laws that make the USA one of the most expensive countries in the world to manufacture in? Or the protectionist policies that ultimately limit our ability to export?  Get real, companies are going to go where it's economical to manufacture.  Soon enough investment will raise the standard of living in these other countries, and the jobs will return here, because it will make no sense to build there.  In the meantime, we're building a bigger customer base.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.   
I wasn't wiretapped.  Were you?  Wiretaps were placed on calls which were going outside the country - generally to locations know to be rife with our enemies.  This is called gathering intelligence.  The average American was not being tapped on calls that originated and terminated in the US.  Get over it, whiner.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.
Yes, I did and I still am.  Didn't your messiah promise to make this a priority?

You didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.  
That's a made up number and we both know it.  Obama makes Bush look like a model of fiscal responsibility.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed. 
Yeah, I did.  Has Obama fixed that?  I hadn't noticed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans drown. 
The president could do nothing until the Democratic governor of Louisiana asked for federal Assistance - which he did not do until way too late.  Like you could have stopped Katrina and prevented the flooding anyway. 

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in taxbreaks. You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades. 
As I recall, everyone got a tax break.  What is to you if a rich person gets a break?  It's not your money, and you don't have to make up the deficit.  You don't get poorer because that person is rich.  And you don't employ anyone.  The rich person does.  A "rich" person probably employs you.  And the rich bear the brunt of the tax burden in this country anyway.  So, no, I didn't get mad.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance. 
No, they lost their lives because they were sick. Our hospitals are clogged with illegal aliens receiving health care and not paying for it.  As long as illegals can get health care for free, your boo-hooing about people lacking health insurance doesn't impress me.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.   
The Bush administration and Senator John McCain both warned of the dangers of the housing bubble and runaway credit extensions that were unsupported by any real wealth, and they were shouted down in the democrat controlled congress.  The banking fiasco originated in a Democrat community reinvestment act, and was overseen by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.  Top campaign contributions from Fanny Mae went to Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Barack Obama. See my earlier discussion of this mess.

No.....You finally got mad

When a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
No, I got mad when a bearded, self-professed socialist who flatly stated that he wants to take my wealth and "spread it around" was elected to the highest seat in the nation.  I got mad that when this man was asked to present his bonafides for eligibility, he not only refused to do so, but spent millions of dollars to block any attempt to independently verify same.  I got mad when the uneducated plebes of this nation discovered that they could vote themselves health care from the public treasury, and did so without regard to the sustainability or wisdom of doing so, in spite of more than two centuries of evidence that the government is incapable of doing anything within budget.

Anonymous author, the TEA Party members have been angry for awhile - we've watched ove rthe last eighty years as the constitution was relegated to irrelevancy bit by bit.  But unlike your lefty colleagues, the TEA party is mostly working class stiffs who don't have the luxury of ditching class to demonstrate against a perceived injustice.  We're the folks who make America work, who are usually too tired at the end of the day to even turn on the TV.  We don't do telethons, we just give quietly at church every Sunday.  We're typically not loudmouths or rabble-rousers, and don't subscribe to whatever "cause" is chic at the moment.  We've been uneasy for years over what you have been doing to the foundation of this country, but we've had faith that the country could take it, as long as you at least paid lip service to the constitution.  But this latest power grab over a huge part of the US economy, potentially interfering with one of the best medical industries in the world, with congress "deeming" that a bill has passed without even bringing it to a floor vote, is not the sort of thing we're ready to sit still for.  The government is out of control, printing and spending money that it doesn't have, indebting our grandchildren with a ruinous debt, and devaluing the dollar to the point that even the Chinese are thinking twice about buying more of our debt.  This is more a democrat problem than a republican one, but both parties are complicit, and it's time for the government to recognize that THE GOVERNMENT WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE.


We'll do it at the ballot box, hopefully.  If that doesn't work, keep making us mad, we'll do it with guns eventually.

Open letter to the Christian contemplating converting to Islam

It appears to me that you were not taught about your Christian faith very well, and that you have not examined Islam very thoroughly.  Islam denies the death of Christ on the cross and his resurrection (Quran 4:157).  Without the crucifixion and resurrection, then Jesus becomes nothing more than one of many itinerant preachers claiming to be the messiah.

The key to breaking Satan's power in the world is through Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Satan's only hope of recovery is to deny and to  convince people that the crucifixion never happened.

Islam will tell you that the Christian view of God is weak because he allowed his son to die an ignominious death.  This is because Islam is a religion that deals only with immediate outward appearances, and has no depth.  The student of Jewish religious history would recognize the symbolism of Jesus’ death.  The Jewish people of that time offered blood sacrifices as sin offerings.  The animals were selected and ritually slaughtered to expiate the sins of the believers.  This traces back to Abrahamic times when livestock was the source and measure of wealth, and a sacrifice was a penance offering to atone for sin against God.  Much of the original significance had been lost, and the sacrificial lamb had been understood to accept the sins of the believer and provide atonement.  Jesus was proclaimed to be the Lamb of God, and his sacrificial death atoned for the sins of the whole human race; past, extant, and future.

The death and resurrection also indicate the closing of the circle on the Abrahamic covenant.  God ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, which he was willing to do.  God stayed his hand and proclaimed his covenant.  A covenant is a contract, and a contract is meaningless if one side has no recourse against the other for failure to perform.  How can man have recourse against God if God does not fulfill the covenant?  God’s demonstration was to show that God is as fully committed to the covenant as Abraham was:  He HAD to sacrifice his son.  It would have been meaningless to have stayed his hand at the last second as he allowed Abraham to do, for it would have looked like an empty gesture. 

Islam is blind to the symbolism and deep meanings of the death and resurrection of Christ.  Allah is not a personal deity, he is remote, distant, and seems to have no sympathy for mankind, unless mankind bows down to him and acts like slaves to him.  The God of Abraham has demonstrated time and again that he does not want slaves, he wants free men who are willing and capable of thinking and acting on their own.  To follow God freely is the ultimate goal.  If such is the case, then why does Islam place a death sentence for apostasy?

If you read the quran and hadith objectively, you can easily recognize all the trappings of a cult. Islam is by, for and about Muhammad.  Anything else Islam has to offer takes second place to the benefit of Muhammad.

There seem to be many attractive things about Islam, but there is also much that is evil.  Muslims revere Muhammad, but Muhammad routinely had his critics assassinated, practiced and advocated rape and called it marriage, presided over the cold blooded massacre of hundreds of Jews, advocated polytheism when it seemed advantageous to him, financed his entire existence through banditry and looting, ordered followers to divorce their wives so he could marry them, and invented capricious legal precedent to suit his whims.  He elevated himself to be second only to Allah, who could only be accessed through Muhammad.  Since the Quran is supposed to be the literal word of Allah, straight from Allah lips, there can be no misunderstandings or refutation of validity. 

If I bake you a cake, and told you it was mostly good and wholesome, that I only used a tablespoon of dog feces in it, would you eat it?

You should study Islam very hard, and also study Christianity, and make a clear, objective decision as to whether you have really chosen the true path, or whether you have accepted a lie.

Muhammad: A Brief Biography

Most westerners are abysmally ignorant of the life of Muhammad.  They therefore accept everything that Muslims say at face value, for they have no other choice.  Here is a thumbnail sketch of the life of Muhammad.  It’s by no means complete, just sort of a skeleton for the curious reader to use as a springboard for his or her own exploration into the most successful cult in world history.

Everything We know about Islam and the life of Muhammad comes from Islamic sources.  There are simply no other sources that say a word about Muhammad during his lifetime.  The first mentions of Islam from western sources is Theophanes, who only wrote about the Islamic conquests starting in the invasion of Syria in 634.

My take, in a nutshell, is that Muhammad was a deeply troubled person, with a history of abuse as a child, and some deep mental problems, including, but not limited to epilepsy, paranoid schizophrenia and acromegaly.  This is the general consensus of psycho pathologists who have studied the physical descriptions of Muhammad, his seizures and his general behavior.  He set himself up as the voice of Allah shortly after he started experiencing auditory hallucinations, which were frequently associated with painful epileptic seizures.  He gathered a cult following of a dozen or so from the usual fringe elements of society who seem to be attracted to that sort of thing.  In this way he was no different from David Koresh, Jim Jones, Charles Manson. . . etc etc.  The local townsfolk in Mecca tolerated his eccentricities because he had a couple of powerful patrons in his wife and his uncle.  Still, he was something of a laughingstock in the town and the butt of considerable low grade abuse, sometimes physically.  When this happened, he would call down the fires of hell with Allah’s authority on them, which just increased the abuse he received.  The townsfolk of Mecca were understandably concerned about their relatives who had subscribed to his cult, just like any parent or family member would be today.  After the death of his first wife, Muhammad incensed the community by taking multiple wives, particularly his favorite Aisha, who by her own account was betrothed to him at the age of 6 and deflowered at the age of 9 (He was 53).

The basis of Muhammad’s prophecy was half-remembered scripture and apocryphal writings that Muhammad had heard when he was a caravan manager to Syria.  He was intensely spiritual, and hung on every word he could get about Judaism and Christianity.  Unfortunately, he was illiterate, and had no way of discerning canon from apocrypha, and never received a foundation in scriptural history or theology, so his understanding of the stories he heard lacked context and meaning.  In his “revelation” he freely mixed Judeo-Christian beliefs with pagan Arab legends and beliefs.

All of the passages from the Quran you commonly hear today from Muslim apologists concerning the rights of women, tolerance towards other religions, etc came from this period in Mecca.  Muhammad was a very nice man who only wanted you to believe him, and the only tool he had at hand was persuasion.  Unfortunately, what they don’t tell you is that once he gained temporal power, Allah rescinded most of those nice passages, and replaced them with harsher, totalitarian teachings.  The Quran directly contradicts itself on most all of these issues, and Islamic tradition holds that the later revelations supersede and abrogate the earlier ones.  He was even asked about this, and Allah responded that he could replace his teachings at will.  This is a real problem for Islam, since all Islamic teaching derives from the point source of Muhammad over a very short period of time.

When his wife and uncle passed away, so did his protected status, and a lynch mob was organized.  Muhammad saw it coming and evacuated Mecca for Medina, where he had been invited by the Jewish tribes there who were curious about this prophet who seemed to be prophesying according to their own tradition (His fascination with Judeo-Christianity manifested itself with long recitals of half-baked stories mashed together from the Judeo-Christian scriptures).

Muhammad had a short-lived period as a rock star in Medina, and was accepted by the underclass Ansari Arab tribe because he seemed a political lever to increase their status among the higher class Jewish tribes that lived there and worked the date orchards.  The Jews quickly rejected him as a prophet, because his ramblings didn’t correlate with their written scripture.  They began to demand payment on the loans they had extended him (Leading to the Quranic injunction against usury).

It was at this time that Muhammad started resorting to assassination to silence his detractors. 

Muhammad put together a ragtag raiding band and sought to raid the yearly caravan returning from Syria to Mecca to supply the Hajj during Ramadan (The Hajj and Ramadan were polytheistic Arab traditions that long predated Muhammad, and they were the principle source of income for the very poor community of Mecca).  Mecca got wind and sent an interdiction force to intercept him.  Muhammad missed the caravan, but engage the Meccan militia in his first military engagement and defeated them, taking prisoners.  This military success emboldened him, and he and his Ansari marauders began a full-time pastime of raiding surrounding Arab settlements for plunder.  Word got around, and his legend grew, and attracted followers because the credulous Arabs felt that his successes spoke for his legitimacy.  There’s a number of Hadith that suggest that bribery was a common way for him to ensure faithfulness.

The Jews of Medina fared poorly, and he one by one picked off the tribes of Medina, appropriating their land and industries, and either forcing the Jews to leave, or selling them into slavery.  Had the Jews banded together and stood firm, this never would have happened, but they remained balkanized by tribal ties, and were divided and conquered by Muhammad.  The largest tribe lasted the longest, but the Banu Qarayza were eventually exterminated, their men and boys slaughtered in an all day orgy of beheading, and their women and children sold into slavery.

Long story short, Muhammad gathered together an army of 10,000 Bedouins as a result of his successful campaigns of Banditry, and marched on Mecca, which surrendered without a fight.  Muhammad moved in with a list of public enemies, who he had executed.  The remaining years of his life were spent consolidating the rest of the Arabian peninsula and enhancing his power and prestige (remember, he got a cut of 20% or all booty, most of which then went to bribing his followers for their loyalty).

When he died, Islam splintered and most of his followers left.  His closest followers fought over who would succeed him.  Abu Bakr won the title of Caliph and waged a civil war across Arabia to return the apostates to the fold by force.  Shortly after that he invaded Persia and Syria.  The Sassanid and Byzantine empires were exhausted from a war they had just fought over Syria in 627, and were in no shape financially or militarily to repel an invasion of horse and camel mounted barbarians.  Islam spread through offering three choices:  Accept Islam, Pay the infidel’s Jizhya tax, or die.

Muhammad’s teaching were incoherent and often situational.  His child bride Aisha observed that Allah seemed to bend over backwards to accommodate Muhammad. Allah commanded that Muhammad’s adopted son divorce his wife, because she was very beautiful and Muhammad wanted to marry her.  Muhammad endorsed and practiced codified rape among his female captives, in some cases raping his new wives before the bodies of their fathers and husbands were even cold.  Islamic tradition has it that these women enjoyed this very much.  The requirement of needed four witnesses to convict a rape comes from his favorite Aisha having been found in a compromising situation and Muhammad didn’t want to condemn her by his own laws, so Allah required there be four witnesses (there were only three).  This condemned untold future generations of women to suffer rapes without justice, because of an impossibly high standard needed to convict.

Muhammad was a thief, a liar, a murderer, a torturer, an adulterer, a pedophile and a megalomaniac.  A thoroughly dangerous and despicable man.  I’ve touched on the high points in his career, whole volumes are filled with his petty cruelty, his sick sense of humor, and the literal atrocities that he commanded and endorsed.  From a Christian’s perspective, many of the Islamic teachings are Satanic, and the well-read Christian will have no problem identifying Allah as the Prince of Lies from the Bible. I was once told that it was in bad taste to compare Muhammad to Hitler.  I tend  to agree, it’s an injustice to Hitler.

Exceeding the Challenge of the Quran

The Quran is a compilation of many of the revelations of Allah To Muhammad during his life.  It has no particular order – the surahs are arranged in the order of the longest to the shortest.  It was not compiled in a chronological order.  This causes a problem for the scholar, since it’s self-contradictory, and by Islamic tradition, the later revelations supercede the earlier ones.  To the rational mind this begs the question of why the omnipotent Allah changed his mind and redacted what he wrote – a problem even more perplexing when you consider that Allah is supposed to have penned the Quran before he created the universe.  Much of the Quran derives from Judeo-Christian writings, including scripture, apocryphal stories, and the midrash.  It makes no distinction between, or even acknowledges the source materials.  The derivation lacks scholarship – it is more like a recital by someone who half remembers something he was taught but never understood.

The Quran was originally delivered in a rhythmic, poetic style unlike anything ever encountered in Arabic culture to that time.  It was delivered in a time when the Arabs were first experimenting with writing, and the Arab language had not been codified into a written language.  The Quran was intended to be memorized by the faithful.  The earliest written Qurans, commissioned during the Uthman caliphate, were written in a primitive Arabic form that lacked vowels and diacritical marks, rendering the text very difficult to decipher even for the native speaker.

Muhammad was quite proud of his creation, and though he specifically denied being able to perform a single miracle, Muslims claim that the Quran is a miracle.  This reminds me of some people I know who, after having read one book in their life, proclaim that book to be the greatest book ever written. 

More people in the west have been studying the Quran in the last decade, and it has consequently come under fire like never before in its history.  The Muslims response to criticism is that we do not understand it because it must be recited in the original Arabic to be appreciated.  This makes no sense at all.  Am I to believe that Allah is the Architect of the Universe, and that the Quran is the ultimate and final revelation by the deity who designed and created Everything, and he couldn’t get his point across in any way except one of the most complex and difficult languages to ever grace the planet?  Is Allah really that incompetent, that his words, his will cannot bear translation?

In the Quran, Allah commanded Muhammad to challenge all of creation to create a book of the stature of the Quran:
“Say: ‘If all mankind and the jinn would come together to produce the like of this Quran, they could not produce its like even though they exerted all and their strength in aiding one another.’” (Quran 17:88)

Next, Allah made the challenge ostensibly easier by asking those who denied its divine origin to imitate even ten chapters of the Quran:
“Or do they say that he has invented it? Say (to them), ‘Bring ten invented chapters like it, and call (for help) on whomever you can besides Allah, if you are truthful.” (Quran 11:13)

This final challenge was to produce even a single chapter to match what is in the Quran, whose shortest chapter, al-Kawthar, consists of only three verses:
“And if you all are in doubt about what I have revealed to My servant, bring a single chapter like it, and call your witnesses besides Allah if you are truthful.” (Quran 2:23)

I’ll answer that challenge.  To start:

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven–
    A time to give birth and a time to die;
         A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
    A time to kill and a time to heal;
         A time to tear down and a time to build up.
    A time to weep and a time to laugh;
         A time to mourn and a time to dance.
    A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
         A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
    A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
         A time to keep and a time to throw away.
    A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
         A time to be silent and a time to speak.
    A time to love and a time to hate;
         A time for war and a time for peace.- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

And then:

 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

 - 1 Corinthians 13

Muhammad was a deeply paranoid man, from all accounts.  He reflected the love his sycophantic followers bestowed on him, and condemned all others to hell-fire – a condemnation he frequently backed up through execution and assassination.  Muhammad’s love amounted to lust for material things – wealth and sex.  Indeed, by the account of St. Paul, Muhammad was a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.  St. Paul also chides Muhammad 500 years in advance in this passage by pointing out that Judeo-Christianity was mature, had grown out of the harsh fire and brimstone early days of the Torah, yet Muhammad sought to take monotheism back 2000 years and recreate a barbaric time when whole populations were to be exterminated to make room for new Gods.

 When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him.
He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are  the  gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are  those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
“Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden;
nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.
“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
“For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
“Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

-The Gospel of Matthew 5:1-19

There you have but three examples among the myriad that far exceed the Quran.  I challenge any Muslims scholar to demonstrate any place in the Quran which has such prose; inciteful, meaningful, philosophical.  The Bible is intended to make the reader think, to examine his own soul and seek to mold himself according to the tenets God lays down.  The Bible challenges us to be bigger than we are, to embrace God’s creation with love.  It does so in a simple, expressive prose, using imagery that’s easy to understand, and words that transcend language.  No matter what language these passages are translated to, their meaning remains clear, the poetry is in the tapestry of ideas that the words create, not in the rhythmic rhyme of a preschooler’s chant.

The Quranic challenge had been met and far surpassed long before Muhammad ever started hearing voices.  This is why the bible is a forbidden book in most Sharia compliant societies today, because the true Word of God puts the mindless, incoherent ramblings of Allah to shame.

My challenge to all Muslims is to put aside your prejudice, and examine the scripture God prepared for you long before Muhammad spoke, and decide for yourself which is the word of God.

The Census Race

Later this month, you will be getting a census form in the mail.
The original mandate for the government to perform a census stems from the US Constitution, Article 1, clause 2:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

The 3/5’s clause was a direct nod to slaves being held, and was subsequently amended by the 14th Amendment, which removed the 3/5 clause:

“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”

The government is already spending a tremendous amount of money on advertising for this census effort.  I’m sure you’ve heard the commercials.  You should be as outraged as I am that government money – that’s your money and mine folks – is being spent on these advertisements which are deliberately misleading.

One commercial talks about how a small town has a couple of traffic lights.  But the town grows and traffic gets worse, and Oh My God how will we know that you need more traffic lights if you don’t answer the census?

Stupid.  Duh, “Hey traffic is getting worse, maybe we should put up some more lights?”  This is a local issue which should be handled on a local level.  The implication of this commercial is that traffic lights flow from the federal government.

Or how about this one: The school has an optimum number of students, but the community grows and there are more students and Oh My God how will we know we need more classrooms and more teachers if you don’t answer the census?

Stupid.  Duh, how about the fact that your classrooms are bulging.  This is an issue that should be resolved at the level of the local school board, not on the basis of some directive from the federal government.  The implication here is that the federal government is best suited to determine the needs of your local school.

Let’s take a look at this census form.  You can check it out at http://2010.census.gov/2010census/how/interactive-form.php.
Okay, how many people live here, how many people are temporarily there, who are they, what are their ages, does anyone sometimes live somewhere else.  I don’t have a problem with that.  What are their sexes?  I guess that’s a legitimate question – goes to estimating expected growth potential, although why the government needs to know that escapes me for the moment.  My phone number?  You don’t need my stinkin’ phone number.  No phone.  Or give them the number to the local pizzeria.

Then I run into the wall on questions 8 and 9.

8. Is person X of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?
9. What is person X’s Race?

What??!!  Why on earth does the federal government need to know this?  Well, let’s see what they say:

“Asked since 1790.”  Ah yes, 1790, when racism was entrenched in the very fabric of society, a time when the color of your skin dictated whether you could even live as a free man or as a slave.  Yeah, that’s relevant to 2010.  I see now. 

“Race is key to implementing many federal laws and is needed to monitor compliance with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.”  This sounds good at first blush, but stop and think about what it’s saying:  1. We implement  laws based on your race.  In effect, we need to know what race you are so we can pass special laws for you.  It seems the laws of the white people aren’t good enough for the colored people.  Or maybe the laws of the white people are too good for the colored people?  If you buy this argument, then you directly support segregation and Jim Crowe laws.  If the Government doesn’t know what race you are, how can they possibly make laws that are discriminatory or preferential based on the color of your skin?  2. We need to monitor compliance with the voting rights act and civil rights act.  Can someone possibly tell me how the census accomplishes this?   What does the government actually, effectively do to make sure this legislation is complied with?  This is not the government’s job.  There are plenty of civil rights organizations which will blow the whistle loud and long if a person is denied their rights on the basis of race.  These are far more effective than the impotent statistic shuffling of some bureaucrat in the bowels of some building in Washington DC.

“State governments use the data to determine congressional, state and local voting districts.”  WHAT!!??  Are you telling me that the government endorses gerrymandering districts on the basis of skin color?  This is segregation in the rawest political sense.  It’s elitist and separationist. Colored folk aren’t good enough to vote in a white man’s district, so we’ll give them their own district.  Now, I know I’m going to hear a lot of arguments about this being the only that the colored community can get representation in government, and to this I say baloney.  We have a black president, and he didn’t get put there exclusively by the minority colored population.  People, by gerrymandering districts so that the members of a district are likely to vote as a single bock, you’re short-circuiting the whole point of districting, which is to ensure that the individual has the greatest amount of power with their vote.  By districting along racial lines, the government is effectively throwing the colored community a poison bone, allowing them to feel empowered by electing their own representative, who will always be an outvoted minority in the halls of Congress, and in return the colored people won’t be allowed to mess with the proper white man’s elections by voting for the wrong person.  Don’t you see?  Wake up!  This is not a good thing for the colored community!  The majority of congress has no reason to consider you when passing legislation, because the districts have been drawn so that they don’t have to answer to you!  For more on the actual math of why such districting robs you of your voting power, seeMath Against Tyranny.

“Race data are also used to assess fairness of employment practices, to monitor racial disparities in characteristics such as health and education. . .”   Nowhere on the census form does it ask whether you are employed, or how much you make.  Nowhere on the IRS form 1040 does it ask you what race you are.  Isn’t it wonderful how colorblind the government becomes when it just wants your money?  Knowing that colored people are at higher risk for certain health conditions or vice versa is a function of the health care provider, not the Federal Government.  The Government is not our health care provider – yet.  God help us if it ever does take on that role.  You want to know who the best person to monitor the potential of education disparities is?  The parents.  Parents can petition locally elected school boards, or even sit on those boards, and institute standards of excellence at a local level.  You don’t need the federal government for this.  In fact, by abdicating this local responsibility to the federal government, parents give their children over to an education bureaucracy that cares nothing for educational excellence, only for perpetuating it’s own existence.

Fairness of employment is ensured by the marketplace.  Today’s employment marketplace is such that job candidates are free to shop their skills to the highest bidder in the market.  An employer who deliberately overlooks a qualified job applicant on the basis of the color of his skin is putting himself at a disadvantage in the marketplace, and will be out-competed by his competitor who hires the most qualified people without regard to skin color.  Discriminatory hiring practices have not been confined to just colored candidates, and have always been impermanent, as the market punishes those who do not seek excellence wherever it’s found.

“Race data are used. . . .to plan and obtain funds for public services.”  So public services are apportioned on the basis of skin color?  Colored populations need more public services?  Why?  Because they’re poorer?  Why are they poor?  Maybe the fact that the government knows what color certain communities are and doesn’t provide an equal level of education for those communities?  Have you thought of that?  Does anyone in reading distance of my words make the contention that colored people are unable to provide for themselves as well as whites, and therefore need special consideration?  This is tantamount to saying that a colored man is not equivalent to the white man.  I say this is a ridiculous proposition, and should be dispensed with.

Our history has conditioned us to think that “race” is somehow significant.  But how do you define race?  Skin color?  Hair color?  I can donate blood to be used by another person if their blood type is the same as mine, and skin color has nothing to do with it.  It would be just as logical to separate populations by hair color, eye color, left- or right-handedness, or the ability to roll your tongue.  The idea that someone’s skin color should define their living or voting patterns is specious at best.  But the government and unscrupulous leaders have played on the fears of the group and  convinced too many people that they themselves must be racist and support racist policies and racist legislation in self-defense.  Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have turned the practice of demagoguery into big business, and they’re paid quite well to keep fomenting racial tensions.

This is not what America is about.  This is not my America.  The idea of race is idiotic.  We are all one race:  the Human race.  The sooner the government quits asking stupid questions like what color your skin is, the sooner people will quit thinking that this is important, and the sooner we can put it behind us.  So when you get your census forms this year, I encourage you when you’re filling it out, for question 9, mark “Other” and write in “Human”.  Imagine the consternation of the government bureaucrats when it discovers that it’s ruling over a nation of Human-Americans!

The ONLY way that the government can govern impartially for all is if it’s color-blind.  And the only way you can make it color-blind is to not tell it what color you are.

I’m not the only one who’s offended by this. . . I’m in good company, see Michelle Malkin’s article!