Friday, September 02, 2005

What Fools These Mortals Be...

When two or more population groups, each with its own special, narrow and unadaptable culture and usually with a distinctive language has been, by the scale of change in human affairs jammed together, a sort of social dementia ensues. In the absence of a common idea of community, civilised motives will give way to hostilities. These 'hostilities' are not a 'maybe' or a 'perhaps'. They will happen. Historically such 'hostilities' have happened before, not once but many times in many different parts of the world. They have happened in Turkey, in England, in Ireland, in the Balkans, in Russia – in practically every country in the world. They have happened from conflicts of religion, or ideologies, or races, and more recently again with religion. Wouldn't you think people would have learned from history not to try doing it yet again?

The politicians and bureaucrats who advocated more or less free for all Muslim immigration absolutely cannot admit they were wrong in such advocacy, as such an admission would make them targets for both sides - that is to say - from the native population and from the immigrants. It is more to their advantage to introduce legislation to ban public discussion on the issue and to keep insisting there is no problem, or that the problem lies with the host population. If there is a change of government and a corresponding hardening attitude towards immigration and appeasement, these same politicians and bureaucrats will keep insisting (while out of office) that they had no problem but that the new government has introduced the problems. If there is not a change of government, these people will continue to do what they have been doing until the whole system collapses, whereupon they will follow the time honoured tradition of fleeing the country. Be sure this is what they will do. Every one of them will have an escape route already planned with perhaps an established home (at present called a 'holiday home') and plenty of taxpayers' money in the bank. An even worse case scenario is that hostilities will begin while these people are still in office, at which they will be able to declare a state of emergency and remain to complete their mischief – the imposition of a socialist dictatorship perhaps? For the good of the people, perhaps? Apart from looking after their own skins, do they know what they are doing?

Would integration of Muslim immigrants have been more successful if the freeloading mullahs and imams were not preaching war against the western world? Once again, foolish leadership is a problem. The mullahs and imams, like western politicians and bureaucrats, do not really have the good of the population in their hearts. They want money and power. Conversely, the populations of the world want peace, and the ability to raise their children to be well educated, healthy, and prosperous adults. I believe this.

Islam, like Catholicism, interferes too much in women's sexual lives. Women do not want to have uninterrupted childbearing. Most women would like to have between one and four children. Some women choose to have none. As women do the childbearing and rearing, I think it should be left to them to make the decision on family size. That the rich get richer and the poor get children is a truism. Families of eight and ten children deprive mostly the children but this, along with maternal health, child rearing ability and the financial situation of a family is not taken into account at all by these religious men. Part of their power is the control of cannon fodder. Thus, the more children the better. They also do not encourage people to think for themselves, citing religious tracts from whatever religious book they say they represent. They claim to be in touch with a Higher Diety, but they can't tell you if it will rain tomorrow. Ha! What would Jesus say if He came suddenly came back? Who do you think He would commend, and who would He condemn?

1 comment:

erp said...

I don't have much truck with religious leaders. I put myself somewhere between agnostic and atheist and the notion that they have God's ear is anathema. I spent eight years in grammar school with the sisters and although they were wonderful to me, a non-Catholic in their midst, the whole mumbo jumbo of mass and chanting turned me off very young, not to mention blaming women because their drunken husbands beat them.

A cousin of mine who was a brilliant student, majored in Byzantine Art at Princeton and interned at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC while still in college, and had a fabulous career in front of him, opted to become an Orthodox priest, not only that but by the time he made that decision, he was already married so while he could still be a priest, he couldn't move into the hierarchy. I was stunned. The first Christmas after his taking holy orders, he sent us a Christmas card signed Father Arthur!!! He was jerk then and thirty years later, he's still a jerk.

Anyhoo. I guess "Elmer Gantry" is the sum total of my knowledge of evangelists. Billy Graham is no less a huckster as far I could tell, but many people were moved by his message, so perhaps it's I who am to blame for not having faith.