My Representatives in Congress

• Jim McDermott: contact

• Maria Cantwell: contact
• Patty Murray: contact

10:31:14 PM  comment []    

WaPo: Style Invitational

Report from Week CXXXV, in which we asked you to come up with, and define, a new word crafted from a well-known prefix and a well-known "ism."

Meta-pessimism: The belief that pessimism is a hopeless philosophy that will never work. (Seth Brown, Williamstown, Mass.)

Judeo-cannibalism: Eating human flesh is okay, but not with milk. (Greg Krakower, New York)

And my favorite:

Retro-defeatism: The practice of finding fault with past successes. Very popular with liberals. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)

5:49:19 PM  comment []    

FATWA ON VOTING

I don't have time to do much on this site, but I'll pull out a few quotes from the fatwa.

It is agreed upon unanimously by all Muslims that Islam is the only solution, not only to the problems of the Muslim Ummah but to the problems of the world.

I always find the phrase "agreed upon unanimously" tremendously promising. When the second paragraph starts this way, you know you're in store for a well-reasoned argument. But in the interests of time, I'll skip ahead a bit.

Even though voting in theory is supposed to give the people the right to elect their rulers, in reality the election process in the Western systems is but a mirage. It is well known that all the major political leaders, from the Presidents to the members of the various congresses and parliaments are backed by the wealthy capitalists who fund their campaigns. Furthermore, the election process is filled with loopholes that are easily manipulated by the ruling elite to make the entire voting institution work to their advantage rather than to the will of the people. For all that it may be worth in the eyes of the people, the ballot box is nothing but a waste of time....

Imperfect, yes. Futile, no.

... Some people would argue that, by voting, the people exercise their right of choosing their leaders, but the sore fact is that there is not much of a choice to begin with. Throughout the history of the Western nations, the policies of the major political parties, whether they were Federalists, Democrats, Republicans, Labor, or Conservative, have remained essentially the same. And in all the Democratic societies of the world, all the political parties, while giving the false impression that the people have a choice, are only various shades of the same system: The system of slavery of human beings to other human beings....

Slavery still exists in the world, but it seems to be focused in the Muslim world. And have you considered the possibility that our governments are so stable because a) they work pretty well, b) they make people reasonably content, and c) that the vast majority of this fat, happy population agrees on most issues, or disagrees primarily on peripheral, not core issues? Oh and there's also d) our system of government is designed to push people towards the middle, towards compromise and moderation. Boy, that's galling.

... By voting, many people, and unfortunately many Muslims, believe that they will be able to change the system, but the fact remains that no system is going to allow itself to be replaced from within....

Ironic. Our system -- designed from its inception for flexibility -- can change from within, but is unlikely to. Why? Because it works so well!

... Those who worked to establish Communism in America eventually faced the Black lists and the McCarthy trials. In Algeria, when the Muslims received the majority of the people's votes through the election process, the system was immediate in its response to oust the Islamic party, and the Western nations began to discuss the "limits of Democracy."

Let's stop there for a moment. Is the United States a democracy? Do we unconditionally support majority rule in our country and in the rest of the world? No and no. The US is a Democratic Republic. We've set out basic rights and freedoms for our citizens, and majority decisions rule only to the extent that they don't infringe (too badly) on the rights and freedoms of one or more people.

We support majority rule, but we defend the rights of minorities against majorities. That's the beauty of our system. Many places in the world, don't have the traditions and open government in place to support democracy. But when the Circuit Court knocked down the "under God" clause in the Pledge of Allegiance, no violent mobs broke into their chambers, dragging them through the crowds to be burned alive.

Things like that happen in other countries.

Let's skip ahead to the conclusion.

The only way for the Muslims to salvage themselves out of this mess is to understand that, regardless of their situation, Islam is their only reference in all aspects of life, whether the issue is prayer or establishing the Islamic system, and to realize that, no matter how much they want to believe or pretend otherwise, Islam and Kufr are open enemies, and the Kuffar will stop at nothing to suppress Islam and the Muslims. Participating within the system contradicts the Islamic method because Islam came to dominate over Kufr not to coexist with it....

If we are enemies, it's because YOU made us enemies. We were content to leave radical Islam alone, insofar as it left us alone and committed distant and only slightly horrible crimes. We thought of you as human beings: imperfect, prone to error, but with all the rights, freedoms, and responsibilities that implies.

You talk of us as Kuffar. You consider us as less than worthy, less than human. We thought that quaint and foolish -- until about a year ago.

They sell stuff too.

And the fatwa on voting violoates this fatwa.   

9:52:48 AM  comment []    

USS Clueless: The Essential Library

I've created a new page which I'm calling The Essential Library which links to a very short list of articles I've found online that I think are overwhelmingly perceptive and important.

Yesterday, Sondra and I went to the Seattle Public Library's big book sale. Fighting through the sharp elbows of the used bookstore owners, we found hardcovers priced at $1.00 and paperbacks at $0.50. Oh, and since it was the last day, half off of that. I got a box full of books and CDs for $11.00.

Part of my haul was this gem: Beyond Arabian Sands: The People Places, and Politics of the Arab World by Grant C. Butler, published in 1964. He's an Arabic-speaking American journalist. This book amounts to a New Frontier rah-rah writeup of a) how Arab societies are progressing, b) how they've suffered under colonial rule, and c) how they're not sympathetic to communism.

Take this description of King Mohammed V of Morocco...

I knew that the king was thoroughly familiar with Europe, that he had been there in his teens and had returned with the conviction that his people could adopt modern ways without violating the code of Islam. When his wife had become pregnant for the first time, he had gone to Paris and brought back a crib, diapers, sterilized bottles, baby scales, and a French midwife.

And he closes the chapter on Morocco with this harbinger of things to come...

Princelss Lalla Aisha, whom I had met as a young girl, had now emerged as one of the leaders of emancipation for Arab women. Even as girls, she and her sister, Lassa Malika, had been allowed by their father, Sidi Mohammed [the king], to wear Western clothes and to shop unescorted on the streets of Rabat. Here was proof of progress!

I can't wait until I get to the chapter on Israel.  

8:47:13 AM  comment []