RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/06/igniting-civil-war/

Government sponsorship of violence against opponents or complacency in the face of incitement to violence is a powerful tool of political repression. Regimes such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, China, and other tyrannies have used such tactics to great effect. When mobs attack anti-government demonstrators, for example, the police either disappear or stand by watching. In American cities run by Democrats and on the U.S. college and university campuses, the authorities increasingly have been standing by as radicals do the dirty work of beating up or silencing conservatives.

In societies riven by mutual hate, the people who control the police and public communications make all the difference. When they maintain impartiality, as did Germany’s Weimar government while the Nazis and Communists struggled for primacy, partisan warfare tends to be resolved politically—though the results are harsh. When societal hatred or the partiality of authorities results in deaths, long-smoldering cold civil war can blaze into holocaust.

We Americans are now facing the danger of a civil war thus ignited. We do not think of civil war this way because our Civil War from 1861 to 1865 was less a conflict within society than it was a highly organized war between states. That war notwithstanding, personal friendships and mutual esteem persisted on both sides, such as that between Ulysses S. Grant and prominent Confederate General James Longstreet.

What we face now is worse.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274549/el-paso-fort-hood-lloyd-billingsley

Last weekend, Patrick Crusius shot down 22 victims in El Paso, Texas. Ten years earlier in Fort Hood, Texas, some 500 miles to the east, U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan was planning a deadly attack, similar in some ways but decidedly different in response from the media and political establishments. Unlike the El Paso shooter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, then headed by Robert Mueller, was on to Hasan from the start.

On May 31, 2009, the Muslim army psychiatrist, a self-described “soldier of Allah,” contacted  terrorist mastermind Anwar al-Awliki, probing whether it was okay to kill American soldiers by suicide bombings and such in order to help fellow Muslim combatants. “This logic seems to make sense to me,” Hasan replied. These and other emails between the two were in the hands of the FBI at that time.

In June of 2009, the FBI’s Washington field office responded “WFO does not currently assess Hasan to be involved in terrorist activities.” The FBI promptly dropped the case until November 5, when field agents said: “You know who that is. That’s our boy.”

As it emerged in the 2012 congressional hearings on Lessons from Fort Hood: Improving our Ability to Connect the Dots, their boy Nidal Hasan, “walked into the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood, Texas, and shouted the classic jihadist term ‘Allahu Akbar’ and opened fire on unarmed soldiers and civilians. He killed 13 and wounded 42 others. This was the most horrific terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.” That was accurate, but did not capture the details. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/karen_armstrong_and_the_islamists.html

What do the Dalai Lama, a former nun, and a group accused of supporting terrorism have in common? All of them are connected to a multinational initiative to “help people adjust creatively to our globally interdependent world,” known as the Charter of Compassion.

The former nun is prominent author and academic Karen Armstrong.  In 2009, after receiving the prestigious $100,000 TED Prize, she, along with other members of the founding council, drafted the Charter for Compassion, advocating that those of all religions bind together to create a “global community.” The list of signatories of the charter reads like a “Who’s Who” of global superstars, including New Age guru Deepak Chopra, South African Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu, filmmaker David Lynch, actress Goldie Hawn, Oxford scholar Tariq Ramadan, the Dalai Lama, and singer Peter Gabriel, to name a few.  

Even though the Charter for Compassion bills itself as a document to bind all of the religions of the world together around the concept of compassion, the charter seems far more interested in Islamic jurisprudence than true ecumenicalism.

For example, a section of the official website deals exclusively with Islamophobia and links to resources by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

CAIR has long been accused of promoting an Islamist ideology, and even U.S. Federal prosecutors have shown the group’s close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. CAIR itself has been designated as a terror group by the United Arab Emirates.

In its “Islamophobia Guidebook” section, Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid advises Charter supporters, in an article entitled “Fourteen Ways You Can Fight Islamophobia”, to “Remember the Prophet” who “remained steadfast, patient and tolerant in the face of Islamophobia.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/flagging-future-killers-11565132691

The Dayton and El Paso shootings have spurred familiar calls for more gun control, and by all means let’s have a debate. But the focus should be on denying weapons to the potential killers rather than on gun laws that may be politically satisfying but won’t make much difference.

Start with the calls for more “background checks,” which implies none now exist. Yet nearly all gun purchasers today have their backgrounds checked on the spot via the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Most mass shooters obtained their guns through licensed dealers after checks, or from family members. The Dayton and El Paso killers, and the Gilroy, Calif., shooter of late July obtained their firearms legally.

Democrats want to expand background checks to person-to-person sales, though policing that would be a challenge as most such sales could be done off the books. They also want to extend to 10 days from three the amount of time dealers must wait to get a response from the background check system before proceeding with a sale. Senators Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) want background checks to cover unlicensed sales at gun shows and online, but exempt sales between friends and family.

Congress should have that debate, but no one should think they would reduce the number of mass shootings. Most mass shooters don’t have a criminal history that would pop up in the background system. There is also no evidence that longer waiting periods reduce suicides, homicides or mass shootings. Determined killers can always get a weapon.