John Kerr and Mitzi Gaynor, South Pacific
John / Billybob
How long did we hate the Germans after WWII? My mother, of German ancestry, married my father, of English ancestry, in 1953. My mother wasn't accepted into my father's family for at least 10 years.
Another home run John. Thanks!
As an aside, may I say that this subject has long been of interest to me. If I knew how to pitch such a project, I would love to do a PBS-type documentary covering all the ways in which the elites of Hollywood and New York incorporated subtle (and not so subtle) plot devices into the entertainments of that time to promote the an anti-prejudice and pro-civil-rights message. Part of this dynamic was purely commercial; there is no doubt that music arising from African-America culture was very popular among teenagers and young adults of the post-WWII generation; this gave rise to the whole Rock-and-Roll phenomonon (nothing novel about that insight, I know).
Anyway, even with that, I think one of the things that made the shows of Rogers and Hammerstein so timeless was that they expressed fundamental truths of human nature. The song you reference is one example of that.
(steely)
A glaring contrast between the Nazi and USSR regimes cited and the madrasses generating the terrorist recruits: during the darkest days of Hitler or the Soviets there were brave parents willing to pass on in secret to their children the truth those children would never see in a public school or library. At literal risk of their lives a resistance was kept alive against the day they might effectively rise up.
We keep being told the terrorists are a tiny minority within this "religion of peace", but even in countries where the right to speak is protected, public protest of the militant voice of Islam is rare from the Islamic community and its leaders.
Until I see evidence to the contrary, I will call the "religion of peace" cover a sham, an ineffective non-entity. This alledgedly tiny minority of terorism cannot operate without support, safe haven and at least silence, if not overt cover from a much wider spectrum of the religion of peace.
They will like us when we win! We will not win soon or easily, but we absolutely must. They will not accept surrender. We can come home tomorrow and put Saddam back on his throne and it will only encourage these barbarians. Their goal is the utter destruction of the West, nothing less wil do. Count me in with Cal Thomas, I want to kill them before they kill me.
Merely shutting down the murder factories will, in time, be enough.
As 9/11 or London (or Madrid, or Sharm el-Sheik for that matter) didn't originate from our late invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam, neither did it originate with the formation of the nation of Israel. The bloody origins go back a lot further than the Madrassahs phenomenon, of course. They go back to the Prophet Mohammad himself, his examples and teachings, and those adherents who immediately followed him which all set the bloody pattern for Islam. In other words, the cancer dates back over 1300 years and has never been successfully exorcised despite whatever has been tried against it.
So, the primary malignancy is Islam itself, which has proved itself quite capable of mountains of atrocities piled upon atrocities over the centuries - not dependent on any particular set of individual actors or political situations.
I doubt the long term situation will change by closing down the "murder factories" (as indeed they are, and their closing down will be a vast, if temporary, improvement). The lasting change can only come when these people have a complete change of heart, not a costume change of Islamic clothes for other Islamic garments.
Quite frankly, I think Christianity is the only power capable of doing that job effectively to the deep extent required. After all, one is not here addressing a mere nation state, emperor, race, ethnicity or even Axis of Evil. What is involved at bottom is a seamless and millenium-long world-view of immense culture and societal power which has permanently changed vast regions of the globe and completely erased previously thriving cultures.
To expand the theme further, this is a spiritual as well as a temporal war - perhaps primarily spiritual. Therefore, the cure must also be spiritual (to loosely quote Douglas MacArthur). The Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany and even the Soviet Union were regional, late-blooming pikers compared to Islam.
We can aid the necessary change by promoting personal, civil and religious freedoms within these miserable, bound countries - such as we are attempting to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we cannot force it to happen. It goes down deep to the very core cultural and theological beliefs of large societies and individuals who comprise in excess of a quarter of the world's population. This is not something simply grafted or veneered on top of a single society. But the cosmic change will not happen if Islam is left alone on it's own to fester along in it's own malignant soup of theology, precedent and Sharia Law - even without the "murder factories". As you indicate, it will require strong temporal support on our part and it is not a quick fix. It will not be done alone with armies.
In the end, IMHO, only the intercession of the Holy Spirit in uncounted legions of lives of current Muslims and their offspring will make the necessary change to make it work and deliver us all from the scourge of this horror. That is ultimately beyond our immediate control, but not beyond our hopes and prayers aided by our long-term intelligent temporal actions.
It will take a lot more years than you and I have, Congressman, and certainly more power and wisdom than can be packed into 750 words. ;>)
The problem with the lyrics is that they are just not true. I think people have a natural tendency to dislike and even hate groups of people who are noticeably different, especially when they have had bad experiences with members of those groups.
I think it is much more accurate to say that children need to be taught not to hate. Anybody who has ever watched a playground full of children will quickly spot the outcasts and scapegoats. Nobody had to teach those children to turn on those who didn't fit in.
ISLAMIC MADRASSA IN NORTH AMERICA
http://www.as-sidq.org/school.html
Conversely, children have to be taught the philosophy of "Creator-endowed life, liberty and unalienable individual rights" and of the "laws of Nature and of Nature's God" that expand liberty and allow for the "pursuit of Happiness" in order to enjoy the "blessings of liberty" protected by their Constitution.
Sadly, for decades now, we have failed to pass on the ideas of liberty in our publicly-supported schools, and now we are threatened by the offspring of parents whose children have been brainwashed in the ideas of hate, tyranny, and oppression.
Ideas have consequences! (Weaver)
As Americans, we must articulate the underlying philosophy that made America a beacon for liberty to the oppressed from all over the world.
On July 4, 1821, John Quincy Adams said of our Declaration of Independence:
"It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the corner stone of a new fabric. . . .It demolished at a stroke the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. It announced in practical form to the world the transcendent truth of the unalienable sovereignty of the people. It proved that the social compact was no figment of the imagination; but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the social union.
"It stands, and must forever stand, alone, a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes. . . .It stands for ever, a light of admonition to the rulers of men, a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed. . . .[as the delineation of] the boundaries of their respective rights and duties, founded in the laws of nature, and of nature's God."
President Lincoln put it another, but equally powerful, way:
"Most governments have been based practically, on the denial of the rights of men. Ours began by affirming those rights....[These opposing ideas] are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. . . .It [the denial of individual rights] is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself....it is the same tyrannical principle."
How true! Today, the shape of the "tyrannical principle" takes one form. In other times, it has taken on different forms. We, our children and grandchildren are in a battle of ideas. Are we armed to articulate the ideas that must oppose tyranny, or have our years of neglect effectively "erased" them from our national memory?
Lincoln, again, can be consulted:
". . . it is no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. . . .The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. . . . And yet, they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. . . .All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a . . . revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers [initiators of threatening change] of reappearing tyranny and oppression."
Islam is a Death Cult.
Not a Religion. We need to start immediately deporting all Muslims. If, they are Muslim they have been taught hate and they believe it.
Generally good, BUT I really doubt that you ever read (as you say you did) translations of Islamic textbooks from North Korea. They do not have any muslims in North Korea. They have no Christians left, either, except some actors and security people playing the role for visitors, and gullible celebrities like Billy Graham.
Got an email from a friend in Afghanistan who wrote, "Been humming an Eric Bogle song lately...he wrote the song "What Kind of Man is He?" back in the late 80s.
He does write powerful lyrics. As I recall they went like this:"
What kind of man is he,
And which cause did he use
When he placed the bomb,
When he set the fuse?
Did he walk away
Crying, "liberty!"
And, if he did,
What kind of man is he?
Did he sleep well that night,
Wrapped in the dying's last screams?
Did no bloody ghosts
Walk through his dreams?
Does he shed innocent blood
As part of a grand strategy,
And, if he does,
What kind of man is he?
For all the tears of mourning,
For those you've maimed and killed,
For all the murdered children,
God damn your soul to hell!
Is he a family man?
Does he have any kids?
Will they ever understand
What their father did?
Does he use noble words
Like "freedom from tyranny"
And, if he does,
What kind of man is he?
Are you out there tonight
Wearin' your every man's face?
Do you still think of yourself
As part of the human race,
In spite of all the murders you've done
And the killing you've yet to do?
And that's why I ask,
"What kind of man are you?"
For all the tears of mourning,
For those you've maimed and killed,
For all the murdered children,
God d*** your soul to hell!
From Gethsemane to Auschwitz
The man with the gun
Has stood between us
And what we could have become.
Shall we be dragged back once again
Into barbarity?
If we let them do that
What kind of men are we?
If we let them do that
What kind of men are we?
The problem is growing. When Pakistan became independent in 1947 it had only 137 madrassahs. Government sources put today's figure at 13,000, with enrolment close to 1.7 million.
Those vicious lessons have been reinforced in these young people by supposed moral leaders in their sermons, preaching the same doctrine to adults. There is a vast gulf between what representatives of some Islamic nations say in English to the US diplomats and to us on TV, and what they say to themselves in their institutions that breed bigotry and murder.
Important stuff...
"You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught" -- I remember that! Mark Fuhrman sang it in the movie. ;)
Seriously, we had to sing it in junior high school in the '60s, along with other pop cultural favorites like Kum-ba-ya and Blowin' In The Wind. School was a nest of lefties even back then.
John Kerr and Mitzi Gaynor, South Pacific