Islam in a nutshell. Since it cannot give it’s people a reason to live, it gives them a reason to die. We all ignore Islam at our own peril.

High and fancy ideas amount to nothing without real sacrifice.

The thing is, Obama will demand sacrifices of everyone except himself or his little band of corrupt brothers.

“Thomass – I think the moral certitude of progressives goes back further too. The Social Gospel is one such example. The Abolitionist movement another.

Progressives were right about some things like civil rights and labor reforms”

I’m not sure it’s a straight line between here and the Abolitionist moment. It always seemed like a classical liberal issue from my POV.. Up until Stalin made the Negro Condition a propaganda meme; progressives were (in general) as racist as anyone else in the US (re: racist). What’s worse, due to their belief in a strong state and a right to play with people’s lives; they did more harm than the average racist/s. To blacks in order to weed them out to improve the population (to make it easier to have a large social safety net)… to Mexicans with forced deportations to help Union labor… Now they look back and say those progressives had some unfortunate conservative tendencies… ahhh, double think…

PS
The point of support for the civil rights reforms were strengthening the central state (a recurring theme for the progressives)… It was a convenient issue. Just like the financial crisis is today.

“I insisted Benazir [Bhutto] accept [painting of several Pakistani leaders watching a rocket roar across the sky] as a gift,” Aman told me.

“Tens of thousands of people are dying in Kashmir, and the only superpower says nothing,” Aman said. “America has sided with India because it has interests there.” He told me he was willing to see his children be killed. He repeated that they didn’t have any future–his children or any other children.

In Krushchev’s memoirs he says that Mao was quite willing to have one, telling him that there were so many Chinese that there’d be plenty left afterwards. This scared the beejezus out of Krushchev. Today nukes are the only demographics Russia has a chance of winning. I wouldn’t scap them either. Even a responsible democracy like India is worrisome. When they successfully exploded their first bomb, a very high member of the government wanted to issue commemorative bottles containing soil from the test site. It had to be explained to him what radioactive meant.

Then go down the foodchain to the nuthouse places, where life is cheap. They’re drooling for nukes, and will get them. The only deterrent their dear leaders understand is the certainty of their own deaths if ever they fire one off.

My only hope for the miserable decision the American electorate made in November is that he is an instinctive babbler and con artist and never speaks his mind.

It did work that way and the nuclear stand-off of the Cold War allowed Europe to heal from WWI and WWII in a way that would have been impossible otherwise.

However, there were close calls, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. If a full, horrific nuclear exchange had occurred, no one reading the history later would have been surprised.

Progressives were right about some things like civil rights and labor reforms, but they came to believe the rest of their agenda with the same uncompromising moral fervor.

Interesting tidbit: I looked up Wiki’s page on the Social Gospel movement and discovered that the question “What would Jesus do?” which we currently associate with conservative Christians, was originated by Charles Sheldon who was committed to Christian Socialism.

Socialism wants everyone to give up, except for those who would rule the rest. The way I see it, those who are socialist are so pissed at the haves that they are willing to have nothing, just so no one else does either. The journey of life becomes quite dull, almost meaningless to me, if the route one is to take is known at the onset. No one to cheer for, nothing to aspire to. What I find so humorous about hope and change is those who hold those views. If you mean gimme, then say it.

I remember Mark Twain saying something about truth; that it should be dressed in tights, not a bulky over coat.