"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our Liberty." Thomas Jefferson
June 24, 2015
By: Linda Case Gibbons
Wouldn't it be easy if we were more like ISIS?
We'd have Sharia law and that would make things a lot more simple.
Everything would be black and white, no inconvenient shades of gray.
Although some have noted that there isn't much wiggle room when it comes to Sharia law, you have to admit, it's an easy law to impose.
With Sharia there are no "issues" to discuss. If it's in the Koran, it is, quite literally, gospel. It's a one-way street. My way or the highway.
And ISIS is a no-nonsense bunch who never leave home without consulting the Koran and Sharia law.
Take same sex marriage, for instance. It's a controversial issue here in America, but not for ISIS or in countries with Sharia law. In Sharia it's a slam dunk. Homosexuality is not only a sin, but a crime against Allah, punishable by death.
And it's not the only crime.
If you're not a Muslim, you're killed.
If you've committed adultery, you're killed.
If you "blaspheme" (read here "exercise free speech") against the faith, the Prophet or the Koran, you're killed.
Stoning, crucifixion, beheading, that sort of killing. Get the drift?
And jihad? It's a religious responsibility to defend Allah.
So why would anyone think that such a group is not a threat to the United States?
But the president doesn't think it is. Neither does The New York Times.
Instead of denouncing ISIS, the Gray Lady's editors didn't spare the horses to dig down deep, to research and come up with an article that boldly declared, and documented with statistics, that the "U.S. right wing extremists are more dangerous than ISIS."
Needless to say, ISIS must have been furious at the article, which basically rendered ISIS not "all that," which minimized all their efforts to establish a worldwide caliphate, including expanding into the United States.
ISIS' response probably went something like this.
"After all we've done to make beheadings and torture popular again!" or
"After we have made such strides in wiping out the Infidel! After destroying priceless, thousand-year-old artifacts without a by-your-leave, this is what we get? This slap in the face?"
Unfortunately ISIS would be right. The Islamic terrorist group hasn't been given the credit it deserves for being the horrible bunch of guys and gals that they are, or for how hard they are trying.
It all started when Obama called them the j.v. team. Then he never referred to them as "Islamic terrorists." And it only got worse.
That had to have rankled.
And this week the president ignored ISIS's most recent and gruesome torture tactics, the ones employed to kill non-Muslims, by celebrating Ramadan at a White House dinner instead.
There he urged people to reject "those who seek to divide us by religion or race or sect," and to accept the "Muslim community for what it is, peaceful and welcoming."
It looks like he's not paying ISIS any mind! Of course they're miffed! Who wouldn't be?
Yes, life would be easier if everything was black and white. No discussion would be necessary, no knotty issues would have to be solved.
But living under American law? Hmmmm. Now that's a whole other can of worms.
This country's laws can put you in a pickle. We have something called "rights" and that makes things complicated and annoying because with freedom and rights, a lot of jerks are allowed to do a lot of things.
People like Eric E. Shepperd, Jr., of Valdosta State University fame, are allowed to stomp on Old Glory; are allowed to say putting the flag on the ground and walking on it is part of a protest; and that our "flag represents white supremacy racism, which is plaguing the entire earth, so when we step on the flag, we are stepping on racism, white supremacy."
This week, after nine innocent people were murdered in a black AME church in South Carolina, we heard from the other usual big mouths, not to console the families, but to rabble rouse.
Louis Farrakhan reared his always-ugly views. He figured that since there already was a hue and cry to give the Confederate flag the heave ho, he'd suggest we throw out the Stars and Stripes, too, as he said, "We need to put the American flag down!"
No one was surprised.
And remember former New Black Panther leader, Malik Zulu Shabazz?
You saw and heard him rabble rousing down in Baltimore and in Ferguson. He was also the guy who put out a "Wanted Dead or Alive" on George Zimmerman.
Well, he showed up in Charleston, to race bait again, not to console, but to tell a crowd that "it was time to finish the mission" started by a slave, Denmark Vesey, "to kill the slave masters and their Goddamned families."
None of these guys were stoned to death, by the way, because of our laws. Wonder what ISIS would have done?
This week the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision, making same-sex marriage legal in all 50. Not everyone agreed with the decision, but that's okay. In America you can disagree, you can have opposing views.
Or can you?
Some people would point to America and say, "To live here, under such a Constitution, under such laws, what a blessed people they are."
But not U.S. citizens like Farrakhan, or Shabazz or Shepperd. The list of jerks who hate America, who criticize and object, is long, but that's okay, too.
What isn't okay is the people who want rights, who are given rights, then want to take away your rights.
What kind of American wants his cake and yours, too? Or sues you to bake his cake?
What kind of American gets a guy fired because he contributed money to pass a bill supporting traditional marriage?
What kind of a publication would announce that any letters in opposition to the same sex marriage decision, or criticizing the decision, would not be published?
The editor of The Patriot News/Pennlive did. He said he was to "try to create a space for civil discussion in the pages of Pennlive, while allowing reasonable and intelligent debate on the issue."
He said this in America.
What kind of people want to tear down the Jefferson Memorial as an answer to a mad man's killing of nine black people in a church? People who don't read history, I guess.
And what kind of an atmosphere has been created in our country that people are thinking this way and not recognizing ISIS, the danger of open borders and racial division as the dangers they are?
In America.
Ask your president.
Hold the line, America.