RUTHFULLY YOURS

In The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, radical evil is described in the following fashion:

By the way, a Bulgarian . . . told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria[.] They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them all – all sorts of things you can’t imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.

These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children too; cutting the unborn child from the mother’s womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mother’s eyes. Doing it before the mother’s eyes was what gave zest to the amusement.

Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They’ve planned a diversion; they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk, points a pistol four inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face and blows out its brains.

The above passage was used in a 1980 essay by Kenneth R. Seeskin titled “The Reality of Radical Evil,” wherein he describes the actions of the Nazis against the Jews during the Holocaust.

Seeskin maintains that such evil describes “the actions of someone who understands only too well what human dignity is and takes pleasure in mocking it.” In fact, “he has chosen to profane the tenderest and most sacred of living creatures and to do so in a manner destined to show the victim and everyone else that he is fully aware of the horror in what he is doing.”

Seeskin makes a distinction between those murderers with a conscience and those who do not possess one. He maintains that this describes the “essence of radical evil. It both denies God and puts something awful in His place. In theological terms, it is really a form of idolatry – only not the kind which is satisfied with pagan gods or graven images. The person who attempts to exterminate a whole people does not just succumb to evil, he worships it.”

As with the Holocaust, Islamic jihadist evil is a “nihilistic, demonic celebration of death.” Consider the word celebration. In the Muslim world, when the infidel is slaughtered, “they hand out sweets in jubilation” as the murderers are praised, and the families of the evildoers are paid for the evil perpetuated.

Unfortunately, despite philosophers’ and religious leaders’ attempts to explain the evil, “morality has nothing to say to those who appear to choose evil purely for its own sake, nor reason to those who insist on knowing why such choices are made.”

But there certainly is a common thread that describes such evil. It “unites cruelty, desecration, humiliation, and every other form of depravity. Where God creates what has dignity or lasting significance, [evil doers] seek to reduce it to nothing. Human beings, sacred articles, transcendent ideals – all are turned to waste.” Consider the destruction by ISIS of artifacts dating back thousands of years.

Furthermore, “[a]s Joseph Contrad once said: ‘[t]he belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary, [as] men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.'”

As many so-called pundits and politicians attempt to mitigate the evil by equivocation and mouthing absurdities, it is important to recall “that when evil is so foul that its full horror defies description, the categories of more or less and of better or worse no longer apply.”

French President Emmanuel Macron can only be described as close to the business world if one understands how things work in France. The French economy is a mixed system where it is almost impossible to succeed financially without having close relations with political leaders who can grant favors and subsidies, and either authorize, prohibit or facilitate contracts or hinder them. Macron is not supposed to bring any new impetus to business, but to ensure and consolidate the power of those who placed him where he is.
A deliberate side-effect of Macron’s policies will be population change. Macron wants Islam to have more room in France. Like many European leaders, Emmanuel Macron seems convinced that the remedy for the demographic deficit and the aging of ethnic European populations is more immigration.
The French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood published an official communiqué, saying: “Muslims think that the new President of the Republic will allow the reconciliation of France with itself and will allow us to go farther, together.”

Emmanuel Macron — whose victory in the French presidential election on May 7, 2017 was declared decisive — was presented as a centrist, a newcomer in politics with strong ties to the business world, and a man who could bring a new impetus to a stagnant country.

The reality, however, is quite different.

His victory was actually not “decisive”. Although he received a high percentage of the votes cast (66%), the number of voters who cast a blank ballot or decided to abstain was the highest ever in a French presidential election.

Although his opponent, Marine Le Pen, tried to dissociate herself from the anti-Semitism of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, she was treated as a walking horror by almost all politicians and journalists during the entire campaign. That she nevertheless drew 34% of the votes was a sign of the depth of the anger and frustration that has been engulfing the French people. More than half of those who chose Macron were apparently voting against Marine Le Pen, rather than for Macron.

Macron, who won by default, suffers from a deep lack of legitimacy. He was elected because he was the last man standing, and because the moderate right’s candidate, François Fillon, was sabotaged by a demolition operation carried out by the media and by a political use of justice. Significantly, the legal prosecution of Fillon stopped immediately after he was defeated.

Macron is not a centrist: he was discreetly supported throughout the campaign by most of the Socialist Party’s leaders and by the outgoing Socialist President, François Hollande. The day after the election, during a V-E Day ceremony, Hollande could not hide his joy. A few days later, on May 14, when he handed the office of the president over to Macron, Hollande said that what was happening was not an “alternative” but a “continuity”. All Macron’s team-members were socialists or leftists. Macron’s leading political strategist, Ismael Emelien, had worked for the campaign that led to the election of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

Macron’s entire program is socialist. Proposals for additional public expenditures abound. “Climate change” is defined as “the key issue for the future of the world”. The proposed changes to the Labor Code and the tax system are largely cosmetic and seem intended more to give an illusion of change than to bring about real change. While Macron does not reject a market economy, he thinks that it must be placed at the service of “social justice”, and that the government’s role is to “guide”, to “protect”, “to help” — not to guarantee freedom to choose. Significantly, the economists who participated in the elaboration of Macron’s program are those who had drawn up Hollande’s economic program in 2012.

Attempting to upstage President Trump as he travels in Europe, President Obama made an appearance in Germany at the Brandenberg Gate for a rock star welcome. He also appeared with Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a bid to boost her campaign.

Seeking to help Merkel get re-elected (a woman he spied on to much brouhaha at the time, but this is politics), it’s clear that Obama’s new game out of office is to have a cadre of like-minded world leaders to obstruct President Trump as he seeks to work with Europe. (So much for returning to his community organizer roots and helping the black youth or watching Sasha graduate). Obama laid out and advocated the full Eurotrashian platform parade of leftist tax-spend-appease-and-open the borders positions at his events, and the German crowds went wild, quite likely in a way they never would with Merkel alone. Not having had to live with the effects of Obama’s low-growth economy, his corruption of the agencies, or the nightmare of Obamacare up close and personal, the man was easy to cheer.

‘We can’t isolate ourselves. We can’t hide behind a wall,’ he said, to cheers from the audience.

Merkel, who has taken political heat for her open door policy on refugees, including from Trump who called it a ‘catastrophic mistake,’ got reassurance from Obama.

‘In the eyes of God, a child on the other side of the border is no less worthy of love and compassion than my own child,’ Obama said. ‘You can’t distinguish between them in terms of their worth or inherent dignity.’

Here’s the irony of all that scolding about walls, and Obama’s sudden newfound interest in God as a political ally:

Police helicopters patrolled the skies and snipers with balaclavas watched the scene from nearby rooftops.

Get that? Cause. Effect. Obama was surrounded by de facto SWAT teams. Looking for terrorists, rioters and assassins. All of these elements are linked to Germany’s open door on immigration and its failure to assimilate immigrants so that even their offspring have become human bombs, desperate to go from zero to hero as they listen to radical imams, get drunk on Internet chat boards, and join Islamist terrorist groups. The rabid left, of course, helps out with the riots.

Instead of a world of safety for everyone which is the democratic effect of walls keeping out Islamic terrorists, what’s seen here, with the balaclava crowd and the highly trained rooftop snipers keeping guard, is the logical result of Obama’s and Merkel’ open door policy. Walls for elites, zero walls for people. And don’t think this isn’t just what Obama wants. In Obama’s case, he’s knowingly let in MS-13 members to wreak havoc on Long Island and in the skeevier parts of Los Angeles County. Let the little people take the murders. The elites get SWAT team cordons. Who knows how many ISIS members have been let in by Obama’s policy as well? We know Merkel has let them in.

The SWAT teams are evidence of Obama’s howlings about walls: a new normal of constant terrorist vigilance, of a casual willingness to accept losses among the citizenry, even as world leaders merit the finest in protective cordons. The elites get security cordons. The people have to sit there and take it, as leaders like Merkel and Obama virtue-signal about the superiority of having no walls, and the wickedness of building any. They don’t care about miscreants and killers getting in. There are too many political goodies in them. They want votes, Social Security dollars and bureaucrat employment opportunities, particularly in the social welfare sector. Open walls make all that possible.