Is there a Muslim in the House?

A few days ago, a friend (we’ll call her “Mary Jane Doe”), sent me the text of a speech ( you can read it here: http://jihadwatch.org/archives/o22867.php). , and a series of emails ensued, which I have decided to put together, here. The text was prefaced by this (I don’t know who wrote it; I doubt it was Mary, because of the grammatical and structural errors):

This is of critical importance for all Americans to read.... and to integrate. It is... essentially a call to arms... irrespective of age or religious preference. We are at war beyond Iraq and Afghanistan ... and Pakistan to be complete and throw in Indonesia if you will. Ignoring it can only lead to a blood bath that will dwarf what is happening to our ever-dear economy... not the same as life and threats against existence.

My first response was:

Knowing nothing about it, I looked up the Hudson Institute. It is a conservative think tank, founded in 1961 by a futurist, military strategist named Kahn. They seem to be somewhat xenophobic and care more for the concentration of money and power than the welfare of human beings. I think this speech is A )preaching to the choir of conservatives, and B) alarmist and probably a little paranoid and reactionary. It may be the pot calling the kettle Jewish, but I'm not sure. If you have a few grains of salt, it might be good to use them in reading this. Thanks.

Mary wrote back:

I wouldn't take the article so seriously if I hadn't met a middle age doctor several months ago who left a very successful practice in France as a prominent ultrasound doctor, dragged his wife and teenage twins to the U.S. so he can start over, becoming a medical resident again, because he feared for his family's safety in France because they are Jewish. He had a good life, was well respected, was a prominent physician in his area of specialty, having authored books on his specialty. If the article had not reiterated his story I would not have taken it so seriously.
I have spent all of my life bending over backwards being politically correct even before it was the popular thing to do. I think it's been a diservice to myself and is a diservice for my country to do likewise. It violates the basic principle that each of us needs to live by: to thine own self be true.
I am becoming a bleeding heart conservative, I guess.--


Not being inclined to let this issue rest, I got up in the middle of the night and wrote back, as follows:

Interesting story that could well be true. If it is, that's a shame, and I wish him and his family the best. But you should get your terminology straight: Bleeding hearts are, by tradition and defintion, liberals. True conservatives have no heart, therefore they cannot bleed. You can't have your cake and drink plasma, too.

It is possible, however, for you to be a sympathizer. Both liberals and conservatives can do that without fear of losing any blood, at all. On the other hand, people who have sympatized in the past, with communists, African Americans, the disabled, war vets, the poor, the oppressed and the disenfranchised have been jailed, harrassed and spit upon. Many of them have become "community organizers", and the McCain/Palin campaign has gone to great lengths to make sure we know what awful people (like Obama) they are. In Mississippi and Alabama we just shoot them and leave their bodies by the side of the road. In Russia, they get sent to Siberia along with the Jews. In other parts of the world, symapthizers get hung or have burning tires hung around their necks. No matter where it is, as long as it is called genocide or ethnic cleansing, and the non-liberals wind up with most of the money and the tanks, conservatives have no problem with it. Their non-hearts lose no blood. But you can sympathize if you like.

Many sympathizers tend to be young, liberal or Democrat or all three. They are dealt with (and those with whom they sympatize) by making it hard for them to vote, throwing out their votes, rigging their voting machines and under-funding or eliminating the programs they represent or count on. The heartless, bloodless conservatives wish they all lived in Ohio, where it appears they are easiest to control. That particular movement is called 'compassionate conservatism" and we all know how well that has worked out. A team of medical experts are, as we speak, researching the improbablity that someone can be compassionate and have no heart, all at the same time. I hear their funding has been cut again.

Also, however, Mr. Kahn and the other founders of the Institute (who mostly came from the Rand group) was at least sympathetic to Jewish ideas and both radical Jews and radical Islamists have a knack for speaking in especially vile and foreboding terms about one another. The Hudson group (you can read this stuff on Google or Wiki) is admittedly a "think tank", where they worry about concentrations of money and power and do what they call "future think". I.E., they contemplate whose views will get to dominate those of others in the future. They like to make big decisions for people they consider little. It is the neo-con version of the rapture or getting to have sex with 70 virgins in heaven. "Think tanks" by the way, as I heard them described recently, are places where people learn to "think tanks". They are visionary only insofar as they look foward to and plan for a future when it will be (they think) necessary to blow up or dominate the next deserving segment of the world's population. There are certain places in the US where your Dr. friend could have moved and felt just as fearful as he was in France, for instance, anywhere there are Southern Baptists or members of the religious right who refer to Jews as "Jesus killers". Or there is always Argentina, where he could have the chance to work in a hospital alongside Dr. Mengala.

Come to think of it, radical Islamists and Nazis have much in common, but the radical Muslims are moving to Europe and the European Nazis are moving to Latin America. Then the latinos move to the U.S. and buy from the Arabs who run the 7-11 stores. It all works out except for middle class Amrican whites, who lose their jobs because the Husdon and Rand groups, and the bankers, have helped move their jobs to Asia, where they can build tanks more cheaply. (You probably didn't know I had this figured out, did you?) WWIII will be fought on the ground with guns and tanks made in China, the airplanes will come from Brazil or Argentina, but the sophisticated missiles will come from GE (but made in Indonesia), whose advisors are the Hudson and Rand groups. And the Paulsonites and Bernankes and other neo-cons. And before you ask, neo-cons do not have neo-hearts.

Most non-Jews, in America at least, have no problem with Islamists: Latinos know that they run every 7-11 in the US, at which they and the disenfranchised blacks do business at prices approachin usury (see above). I (we) do have a problem with radical Islamists, everywhere. But it is the same problem I (we) have with right-wing, fundmentalist, bible-beating, snake handling evangelicals who think it is quite all right to murder doctors and nurses who do abortions. Radical right-wing anybodies (anti-bodies?) are dangerous and belong locked up together in a colony on an island somewhere. They are harmful to children and other living things, sort of like (but worse) than Sarah Palin. And far right-leaning Jews can be just as anti-social and militaristic and can maintain as high a disregard for life as anyone else: the hawkish side of the government of Israel, aided by "thinkers" from places like the Hudson Institute, are all hunkered down and ready to use their US made weapons to blow up Iran, and nobody really understands why. Some in Iran would be happy to visit Israel the same destruction, but GE, the Hudson group and the neo-cons won't sell them the firepower. There are skunks in every kind of woodpile. Literal "scriptural" believers of any ilk or faith and are equally dangerous. They just wear different garb. I'm guessing St. Paul would approve across the board, as long as no women can have a say in what happens (see below).

Speaking of scripture, while we are at it, as a scholar of said stuff myself, the next time you ponder sending me a biblical quote or reference involving the "apostle" Paul, you should know that history has proven quite convincingly that Paul was a right-minded political fund raiser for the early Catholic church, who was a complete chauvinist pig who thought strongly that all women should stay home, barefoot and pregnant and kiss their husband's asses. It is quite posible that Karl Rove is his direct descendant. Somehow, I don't see yo travelling with this crowd.

You are my friend, and I care about you deeply, but your latest emails have me concerned about how your thinking has changed. Lord knows I don't want you to be politically correct, but if you are going to let your heart bleed, donate the blood to the right (not THAT right) causes.

And I got out of bed to say this? Sheesh.

I went back to bed but awoke still troubled and questioning. After some more research ( and yielding ot the urge to release of at least small amounts of skeptical indignation), I sent this to Mary:

Addendum to Thoughts about Wilder’s Speech, the Hudson Institute and the Spread of Radical Islam.

Still not being able to sleep or leave this conversation alone, I went back to Google and Wikipedia and searched out Gert Wilders. I am sending this along, because after I railed at you the last time, after you told me about your French doctor friend, I thought I owed it to you to make sure I had my facts and suspicions straight.

Gert is a Dutch parliamentarian, born in 1963. As it said in the preface to the speech you sent me, he was speaking as the Chairman of the “Party for Freedom”, and as a member of the “Alliance of Patriots”, prior to speaking at the “Facing Jihad Conference”, which was held in Jerusalem.

Right off the bat, I’m hearing Donald Rumsfeld, a torture approving, Lazarus-like, neo-con conservative Republican, presenting the virtues of the Patriot Act to a group of Pentagon military advisors, who are preparing to invade Iraq (and any place else where they think they can use tanks and guided missiles to create chaos and cause death and destruction. George W Bush is seated in the front row, and Dick Cheney is watching electronically, from an undisclosed location.

Gert, bless all of his flowing white hair, is a rabid anti-Islamist and ethnic bigot, having made countless speeches on the subject, attempted to push through legislation in the Netherlands that would impose great restrictions on any Muslim and ban the Quran. He has made a very controversial film (it is on YouTube), written extensively on the subject and has had numerous threats made on his life, and they were not all by Islamists. His "Freinds" list on MySpace is apparently very short.

Wikipedia says he could be genberally described as a Dutch version of an American Libertarian: smaller government, lower taxes, reductions in welfare and conservative economics. As the speech states it, his main premise is that “our political correctness is costing us our freedom and our future”. He is very single-minded in his view of the world, clearly xenophobic and protectionist and prone to over-statement and at least some exaggeration. I think there are many specific sectarian groups in America who would welcome him. I don’t happen to belong to one of them, and I don’t think you do, either.

In this country, he has been publicly interviewed only by Glenn Beck of CNN (who is being welcomed with open arms to Fox Noise, very soon). Other than speeches to groups like the Husdon Institute, he has not been welcomed in many other places in the US.

When I first responded to you about the speech, I recommended taking it with a grain or two of salt. This morning I am changing that recommendation to a large box of Morton’s Course Kosher Salt that you can get at the HEB. See ya.


I am not altogether certain what all of this means, but I do know that an election is coming up, everyone’s extreme urges and desires to believe anything that makes them feel both smart and empowered are running high and this is not the time for anyone to be sidetracked or high-jacked by over-the-top rhetoric about anything from anybody. If that is too subtle, let me put it this way: urge nervous white people not to vote white just because the McCain campaign has played the race/ethnic/9-11 fear card.

My thanks to Mary Jane Doe for pouring (kosher) salt in a wound I didn’t know I had.

Life goes on in Texas.