Being against immigration does not mean you hate the foreigner

NPR no longer makes even a pretense at balance.  It doesn't have to.  It is all about sympathy for the poor victims of "Islamophobia" or something.

So this is just to say, one does not need to hate the foreigner to not want them to be here.  That there may be some wonderful folks among the refugees does not mean admitting them is all good.  The undeniable fact is that if no immigrants had been allowed in France, there would have been no Paris bombing.

Of course, one does not need to hate another to not want to have them as neighbors.  I don't hate people who listen to loud music at 3:00 a.m., but I don't want to live in the same apartment.

We have people in the West spouting about how the refugees are salt of the Earth and the terrorists are perverting the faith.  One needs to look to history for what is reality.

When Thomas Jefferson asked the Ambassador of Tripoli in London, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, by what right the Barbary states took our ships and enslaved sailors and demanded tribute the envoy replied,

The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Now this would have been mainstream Muslim theology back in the day.  Why would it have changed?  A religion that changes doctrine with the wind is not much of a belief system.  The diplomat said it without trying to soften it.  It was certainly believed in Tripoli, Cairo, Constantinople and kabul as well.

There is no reason to believe it is not the theology to day.  There is no reason to belief your peacefull, professional neighbor, if honest would not say, "Well, yes, I do have a right to enslave you, but it is not in my interest at this point in time."  If he does not say it, if asked, he is being cute.

If the above is true, both for the short and long term, separation is the best and most humane policy.

The Neutralist is open to correction.  If someone can, without obfuscation, reasonably convince me that the Haji was wrong and an aberration back in the day, I am open to hear it.

I suspect I won't be putting a coexist bumper sticker on the car anytime soon.

Krauthammer, Will, Trump and the Bozo Wars

Memo to Chuck and George; Looking serious, sounding serious is not being serious.

On Fox News Special, they pooh pooh Donaldo calling him a rodeo clown. Yah know, I've always thought the guy was at least giving that appearance. Was he crazy like a fox, using a garish style to attain goals?

I think he's phony. I remember hearing his commercials about how he, along with some guy who I think was named Kiyosaki, was going to teach me to be rich in some seminar or something. If I were a billionaire, the last way I'd spend my time would be going around the country, staying in motels, giving courses on how to be as rich as himself.

That said, our goofy friend is saying things directly that so called serious people merely dance around. We have no southern border and your man has noticed. That strongest field, as Krauthammer put it, is mute.

As to being the jester at the horse competition, one might point out, this is not the first rodeo for either Willie or the Krautster. Both lads were all for going into Iraq. Georgie was sure the reign of heaven would descend and said so in an October 8, 2002 interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose:

I think the answer is that we believe, with reason, that democracy’s infectious. We’ve seen it. We saw it happen in Eastern Europe. It’s just — people reached a critical mass of mendacity under those regimes of the East block, and it exploded. And I do believe that you will see [in the Middle East] a ripple effect, a happy domino effect, if you will, of democracy knocking over these medieval tyrannies . . . Condoleezza Rice is quite right. She says there is an enormous condescension in saying that somehow the Arab world is just not up to democracy. And there’s an enormous ahistorical error when people say, “Well, we can’t go into war with Iraq until we know what postwar Iraq’s going to look like.” In 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor, did we have a clear idea what we were going to do with postwar Germany? With postwar Japan? Of course not. We made it up as we went along, and we did a very good job. . . .

Kind of the crazy talk that would make a real professional clown like Emmet Kelley blush. Of course, wisely, EK never spoke.

Charlie was equally voluble and wrong about Iraq. He never admitted he was wrong, but changed the justification he claimed for the war.

DeTocqueville observed that democracy separated the generations. In our era, not only are the generations separate, but we are different minute to minute, if not second to second. The two pundits' words of a war ago are as distant as Rome's invasion of Britain. By the time you read this, there recent words will be forgotten by most and they will go on to speaking fees and other emoluments.

Krauthammer has not always felt so badly about Mr. Hair. His feelings about Trump evolve as he saw some dignity in the man once,

 Krauthammer took a phone call from Donald Trump in April of 2011 and somehow came away with the impression that Trump was going to make a genuine run for the White House. Krauthammer’s reasoning was this: “But as a person, I thought more highly of him … because of the gracious way and the calm and courteous way he discussed the issues.”

At least Will has learned something as he wrote in a column:

The last 11 years have been filled with hard learning. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history, coincided with mission creep (“nation building”) in Afghanistan. Both strengthened what can be called the Republicans’ John Quincy Adams faction: America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

What is lacking, as far as we can find, is the owning up that he himself has had to learn something. No admission of error.

It does boggle the mind that these men continue to be taken seriously. At least they should be made to wear greasepaint makeup and big red noses as they bloviate on whatever outlet puts them on.

The Atlantic's Peter Beinart, who supported the Iraq war and honestly admits the error put it nicely,

To a degree that will baffle historians, the political-intellectual complex that made the Iraq War possible remains intact, and powerful. Amnesia is part of the reason why. If Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Benjamin Netanyahu knew that before denouncing the Iran deal they’d be required to account for their views on Iraq, they might not show up in the green room. If they did, their television appearances would take a radically different course from the course they generally take today.

We all know the accounting will not take place.

Ah well, On to Teheran.