Posted on 08/21/2006 8:54:13 PM PDT by ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton
Dear Freepers:
I have an old high school buddy named Dave who runs the European Association of Physicists. So he lives in Strasbourg France.
He is the son of a retired Doctor and big RNC fundraiser from Northern Cal.
He was very conservative in High School but even then he was taking French!
He has a degree in international law.
I've been causally mentioning the Muslim problem in France for oh about 3 years now.
Usually he doesn't respond (we have grown apart obviously) but he did reply when I sent him the following note:
Dear David:
I’d be interested in your thoughts on the following article:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1183
Take care and all the best…..
China
So this is what he send me (my name is change obviously)
Dear ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClintoon:
On Saturday, I spent a very pleasant evening, drinking wine and listening to Yes. Of course, it brought back lots of memories of our times together.
With regards to the article, it is a mixture of truth, and interpretation. It is true that Muslim culture is very visible throughout Europe. Muslims tend to be poor, working class, often unemployed, and live in what in the US we would call ghettos (though the living conditions are better). These are not good neighborhoods, and crime and violence are higher than in other parts of the same cities. Someone with money (better clothes, car etc.) is more likely to be robbed than someone without money in these areas. However, its not because I'm white. I can and do go to areas like this, and have not noticed frankly anti white, or anti European attitudes.
It is also true that political unrest between western and islamist governments creates tension, and that imams fan the flames in these areas. These are however the minority.
Immigration in Europe is not more or less a problem in the US, or elsewhere. People come to the west because the standard of living is better (schools, food, health care, and yes, liberty). Assimilation and the learning of the values that make the standard of living in the west better takes about three generations: the first generation often embraces our culture, but is discriminated against, and don't frankly understand the culture or the discrimination but life is better than in the village back home; their children grow up in the culture, recognise that they are part of minority that is discriminated against, criticize their parents for accepting the yoke of the oppressor, and believe in the return of traditional culture. The third generation adopts democracy as a means of political organisation, and integrate the society.
It always surprises me when immigrants criticise their host country. Of course its their right. And they can even try to change it. That's democracy. But if what they were escaping was so good, why don't they go back? They don't, and what makes living in the west better is not only economic well being. Hindus and turbans, christians with crosses, jews with yarmulkas, muslims with sharias - who cares? Its hard to learn that your freedom ends where mine begins. After over 200 years, normal americans don't always understand this, nor do normal french, or germans, or danes ...
And if islamic culture becomes the dominant culture, well that's history and darwin at work.
To be honest, I think that religion will not be the major issue in future. Soon (in our life times), we will not be able to drive our cars like we want to. Imagine gas as a luxury, where you have the money to drive 50 miles a week. How far do you drive to shop for groceries? What is the average distance travelled by the products you buy? Soon, the radius of influence of the individual will be drastically reduced. Imagine that you ride a bike to do your shopping. Your looking at 30 minutes to go 7 miles. If its flat. And sunny. Forget carribean vacations, skiing etc. Forget open heart surgery, radiotherapy, expensive chemicals.
Either their will be a big war, or there won't. But veils will not be our major worry.
Take care
David
Basically he is more worried about fuel than the Fascists!
He is old enough to remember all the BS about this topic from the Jimmy 'Commie' Carter era is what blows me away.
Here is what I've written so far.
I have to play it a little like I am swayed by his viewpoint or else it might not work....
Dear David:
As always your interpretation is greatly appreciated and read and studied.
With all due respect some interpretation is needed. Trends can’t be ignored.
Like birthrate and the historical conflict between 6th century civilization and the west.
Something like 70% of Muslims worldwide think that Israel should not exist, 80% believe in a Islamic republic worldwide and 95% believe that Muslims didn’t have anything to do with the Trade Towers and the US government brought it down.
Look at countries where they have control.
They are a return to the 6th century.
We have been given a very biased view of history in favor for the Muslims.
Anyone writing anything about the atrocities on their side historically became disconnected from their heads in short order.
Monks were allowed to record atrocities on the Christian side..
Prior to 9-11 in the Library of congress a search for the crusades brought 1000s of references a search for Jihad brought less than 10.
Meanwhile the most radical of them is months from getting a nuke in Iran. He has said he will use it. I don’t think we can safely ignore his words which are remarkably similar to Adolf Hitler’s prior to WWII.
As the great economist Adam Smith said price is determined by supply, demand and the invisible hand of the free market. In Colorado we are on more supplies of shale than the oil of the world combined.
The US needs nuclear like France.
But if gas goes up as a natural consequence people will drive less and alternate energies will be pursed.
So I would agree natural selection will occur. Not in religion but in energy production.
The west has undergone centuries of assault by the Islamists. The Catholic Church has a long history of standing between western civilization and this 6th century death cult.
The pope has a book written when he was still a cardinal, Called "Truth and Tolerance." Recommend he read it, so he will know which side of the fence is is on. So he will know there is a fence.
If indeed he is listening to jazz, some of us would consider there is still hope for him.
Some of us think jazz is the second greatest music America has given the world.*
Some of us might be listening to jazz even as we write.
Some of us might be listening to the freshly-purchased remastered Count Basie at Newport.
Some of us might have Three Suites (Duke Ellington), Sketches of Spain (Miles Davis), Guitar on the Go (Wes Montgomery Trio), and The Complete Gramercy Five Sessions (Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five) cued up in the CD player to follow.
Some of us might even be native to the country which birthed the music in the first place.
Hint: It ain't France.
;)
* Do forgive me if I think the blues---without which there really couldn't have been much of jazz in the first place---is Numero Uno . . .
That's OK as long as he keeps it that way.
What he said about assimilation didn't seem that bad or off the mark. But he has his head in the sand with respect to the current forces against the third generation being fully assimilated.
He also has the case of the "I am above it all and it won't ever effect me and if it ever were to I'd be dead for a long time anyhow, best represented in his attempt at pith: And if islamic culture becomes the dominant culture, well that's history and darwin at work.
This mis-use of Darwin is also representaive of the social liberal libertarian lazy thinking that is common.
Bump!
Yeah good point.
On the other hand I could only HOPE he finds freerepublic.
Did you see Talladega Nights?
Your friend is readily identifiable with the details you provided.
Netiquette tossed out the window, and yuo posted it on FR no less, where horribly crude responses on the subject are bound to be posted. Looks poorly on you all around.
You might want to try to scare him into reasonableness, and explain to him the ill fate that the leading intellectual and politicial families of Assyrian Chaldean and Hindu communities had forced upon them when the Muslim hordes overtook their nations.
Many of the great "Muslim" science discoveries were from Assyrians and Chaldean families who had converted by the sword within 2 generations prior. Once the wellspring of the Christian institutions of higher learning were dried up within 150 years at most, all Muslim science and intellectual pursuit in a conquered area ceased, in many places, until this day.
Your friend's an idiot that is willifully ignorant of reality around him. People like that are hazards especially when they walk into danger like busses in the street, high crime areas and other Darwin candidacy award type activities.
That reminds me. I have some Hugel Riesling around here somewhere. Think I'll stay up all night, sipping that and having pate and and a little choucroute garnie fom the other night as the war comes on over Jerusalem. Better enjoy ourselves, things are about to become unhinged everywhere.
Really? I wasn't aware that my Irish-immigrant ancestors were portrayed as strapping bombs on themselves and blew up innocents, or flying airplanes into skyscrapers.
Or portrayed as beheaders
Or portrayed as cartoonist killers (and there were many anti-Irish cartoons).
Or portrayed as killers of sisters "to protect family honor".
Or portrayed as creating explosive liquids to blow up airliners.
Or portrayed as blaming everything on the Jews. Or deniers of pogroms (forerunners of the Holocaust).
etc., etc.
Was there bias against the Irish - sure! Were the Irish from "beyond the pale"? Sure! Were the Irish at the time locked in violent struggle to kick the English out of Ireland, and thus supportive of freedom fighters (like Michael Collins) who used borderline methods? Yup.
But that's a long way away from being compared to the scummy things the Muslims are doing NOW, and HAVE BEEN DOING FOR 700 YEARS!
Sheesh. Some people find equivalence in the most dissimilar things...
ping
Wow!! That's sobering.
Yup. "Ricky Booby."
Thanks everyone!
You have given me some really good ideas!
Here is what I sent...
Enjoy:
Well there are several things we agree on and one of them is that those were some good times for me as well.
As always your interpretation is greatly appreciated and read and studied.
Certainly if it wasn’t for the current oil situation, Islam would be no more than a minor nuisance and leaders would have great difficulty in their dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons.
In Colorado and Wyoming there is enough oil shale to produce power for over a century at our current rates.
And we have untapped reserves in Alaska and offshore.
France and Europe has shown us safe nuclear power. Production of electricity takes up a high percentage of our oil imports.
So there is room for improvement even without breakthroughs in technology.
I think if and when supplies go down, the invisible hand of the free market which Adam Smith referred to will stabilize the market and make some of these considerations come into being along with future undiscovered technologies.
If the next 20 years see the changes in populations and international wealth that the last 20 years have seen the West might see some threats from fundamentalist regimes and China. China is of course based on a unsustainable economic system but they have such huge inflows of western cash that it delays the breakdown of the government.
The same thing is true in the Middle East.
But the first step is for both of these problems is oil and energy independence.
The Democrats and turn coat Republicans have stopped any meaningful progress in that direction.
Hopefully some incentives for local energy production will be made into law soon.
I've given up on my liberal friends, and vice versa.
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