Friday, February 19, 2016

The Council Has Spoken!! Our Watcher's Council Results

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The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"The more dominant the Islamic culture in The Netherlands will be, the more distant we will become from anything that has to do with freedom, tolerance and equality. Because the Islam – in contrast with other religions – will not accept anything else but the Islam. " - Geert Wilders, Dutch politician, filmmaker and author.

"Those who believe, and adopt exile, and fight for the Faith, in the cause of Allah as well as those who give (them) asylum and aid,- these are (all) in very truth the Believers: for them is the forgiveness of sins and a provision most generous." - Qu'ran, Surah Al-Anfal, 74

“Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense.”
 - Orianna Falacci

"The universal Caliphate, for which Europe provided a stepping-stone at the UN, stands before us, bringing together political and religious power. It has set itself up as the protector of the Muslim immigrant masses in the world and requires that they remain firmly anchored in the Islamic traditions of the Koran and Sunna, following the Sharia laws while the Europeans are called upon to abandon their historic values and even their identity condemned as Islamophobia.” - Andrew Bostom

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This week's winning essay,Bookworm Room's Europe's dystopia present and why, because I'm helpless to stop it, Schadenfreude overwhelms me is her very astute and scintillating treatment of a theme I've written on a few times myself in a far more limited and less erudite way...the Islamist conquest of Europe being carried out with hardly the need to fire a shot and the reasons behind it. Here's a slice:

Beginning on September 11, 2001, and with increasing speed since January 2009, I’ve had a very strong sense that the world — not just America, but the whole world — is unraveling. At home, venerable and often cherished institutions and ideas are falling into disrepair or being perverted beyond all recognition. Abroad, the Pax America that stabilized the world for so many years, with America acting not as a conqueror but as ballast, has broken down. I’m afraid of the world into which I’m launching my children. The dystopian future that become a stable of countless young adult novels seems to have become the dystopian present.

In many ways, the worst thing about watching the passing spectacle is that I’m helpless to do anything. Sure, I blog, but I recognize (and I don’t mean this with any disrespect, dear readers) that I’m mostly preaching to the choir. I’d be delighted if my words changed one mind, swaying one person from unthinking Progressivism to thoughtful conservatism, but I’m pretty sure that the best I can do is offer comfort and comradeship to people who share my values and my concerns. There’s nothing wrong with binding people together, but I don’t see what I’m doing as effecting any real change.

I’ve also tried to help my children understand that the Leftist political pieties forced upon them in their schools and through their media are false. Mostly, I’ve been successful — my children, when they’re willing to think at all about politics, seem to have absorbed my conservative world view, one that fears big government, believes in strong borders and self-defense, and is fanatic about a free market and the virtue for able-bodied people of self-reliance. I don’t know, though, if I’ve done them any favors. Their values clash with the world they’re entering and put them at odds with their generation. Maybe they could face their socialized, possibly Islamic, future with some equanimity if they didn’t believe in the alternative.

On my Facebook page, I politely tweak my Leftist friends by subtly inserting conservative ideas into their Feeds, but I’m not kidding myself. Even the most open-minded of them are open-minded only to the extent that they don’t “un-friend” me or get nasty. I can practically feel the pity radiating across the feed as they think “She was smart once. What the heck happened? Early dementia perhaps?” None think, “She has always been a really smart, well-informed person. Maybe she’s on to something.” Sigh.

Faced with a domestic scene that saddens me and an international scene that frightens me, I’ve come to a necessary conclusion if I’m to continue functioning — and I must continue functioning. After all, even as things come down around my ears, I still have meals to prepare, laundry to wash, bills to pay, and people (and dogs) dependent upon me for their care. I can’t allow existential anxiety to make me useless.

So here’s my philosophy: To the extent I can bring about change, I’ll fuss and try to come up with solutions that make a difference. However, when there’s nothing I do or say to make a damn bit of difference, I’m going to sit back and get whatever pleasure I can out of the show. I’ll only make myself crazy if I continuously bang my head against walls to no effect.

My lemonade-out-of-lemons philosophy applies strongly to Europe. If there were any way I could save it from its present existential collapse, I actually believe I would. However, because there is absolutely nothing I can do, I’m opting for the pleasures of Schadenfreude as I watch Europe’s passing parade.

I should say that I’m of European stock (both my parents were born and raised in the chaos of Europe’s Depression and WWII), and that I therefore have a lot of strong European values, including cynicism, a tendency to be nasty and condescending (which I periodically fight), and a palate that likes European food. I’ve lived and traveled abroad extensively, and have met good people and bad on those trips. Heck, I even met nice French people.

I have a solid knowledge of European history (especially British), art, and architecture, as well as a surprisingly good understanding of European-style Christianity in the pre-modern era. Europe was once a shining light in world history. I don’t think that anymore.

Twice in the 20th century, Europe did its best to commit suicide. Both times, America saved it. After the second saving, Europe changed dramatically in some ways and fossilized in others. It embraced an anodyne socialism, one leached of the twin scourges of nationalism and the urge to conquer. Its post-war structure echoed Mussolini’s ideal, which was “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” It didn’t go full-communist however. While it regulated private business so tightly that Europe essentially placed large parts of its economy under government control, it managed to refrain from nationalizing most of it. For a while, flush with America’s post-war cash transfers, this new model seemed to work economically, allowing people to work short weeks, take long vacations, and retire early, all without saving a penny.

At the same time that it socialized its economy, Europe also managed to fossilize itself. Both to recover from the damage wrought by war and to attract American tourist dollars, Europe began to invest as much in its past (and what a glorious past it was) as in its present and future. The end result is that Europe is a wonderful living museum. Of course, that gives it the same dynamism as a museum, which is to say not too much.

The net effect of a fundamentally stagnant economy (the stagnancy of which became apparent when the American flow of Cold War dollars ceased) and self-immolation on the altar of its own history is that Europe is a revenant, a kind of classy zombie. No wonder its citizens stopped reproducing. There’s no future in a country chained to its past, with a government firmly stifling initiative to ensure that everyone is treated fairly.

You’d think that I, a lifelong Europhile, would weep copious tears over Europe’s pathetic economy, frozen mien, and struggles with the same Muslim hoards that sought to destroy it in past centuries. In fact, though, I weep no tears. Because there’s one other piece of European history I want to discuss, and it’s why, given that I can’t save Europe, I’m able to sit back and watch Europe’s struggles as I would a TV show or a passing parade.

First, a little back story. I don’t think it’s a secret that Europe has always fervently supported the Palestinians, and has used the UN (and, most particularly the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, aka UNRWA) as the engine of that support. The following are some of the myriad reasons why it turned its back on Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, and instead threw its support behind adherents of a totalitarian, misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic, anti-Christian theocracy.

Many (including me) believe that Europe never forgave the Jews for Auschwitz. It was in its maddened fury to rid itself of the Jewish outsider that Europe revealed the most loathsome side of itself. It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out that Europe wants to erase that stain by saying that the Jews, through their proxy nation of Israel, are just as bad as the Europeans were, thereby relieving the Europeans of their unique genocidal burden. The reality that the facts don’t support the Europeans (fact number one being the soaring population growth amongst Palestinians) is meaningless to a group that’s found a lie that allows it to walk away from its sins.

Much more at the link, and a great read awaits you.

In our non-Council category, the winner was the great Michael Totten with a piece worthy of his usual high standard, Hezbollah devours Lebanon submitted by The Watcher. Yes, Lebanon is now officially, to all intents and purposes, Hezbollahstan. In fact it's been Hezbollahstan for some time. It's just more openly recognized.

Even worse is the fact that the Obama Administration is actually sending them millions in American military aid, arming, training and equipping an officially designated terrorist group that until 9/11 held the record for murdering the most Americans. You couldn't make this stuff up.


Here are this week’s full results. Puma by Design was unable to vote this week, and another member submitted a partial vote of first choices in each category:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners


See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

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