July 4th itself was controversial and the subject of an ideological battle between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams favored the 2nd, which was the anniversary of the resolution of national independence. Jefferson favored the 4th which was the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The battle had an obvious egotistical element with each men putting forth his chief accomplishment, but it also had an ideological one, for the Declaration spelled out not just national independence, but that it was premised on the rights of the individual.

Unlike the independence movements of many other nations, American independence had always been premised on the rights of the individual. It was because of the unaddressed violations of the rights of British citizens in America, that the growing resistance, revolution and eventual self-rule took place. The fundamental reason for the existence of the United States of America was that colonial rule had violated the contract between citizen and state, therefore requiring a new form of local independent government to take its place.

American independence has therefore always been premised on the individual freedoms of its citizens. It is unsurprising therefore that as America loses its independence in an entangled maze of foreign treaties and UN agreements, Americans lose their freedom. And vice versa. American independence and the rights of Americans are bound together. When one goes, so does the other.

A governing body that bans fireworks, as is the case in a growing number of states and cities, is one that has already banned firearms on the understanding that dangerous things should not be in the hands of individuals. Britain, the mother country long parted, is still pursuing that approach to the bitter end as it conducts a campaign for "Knife Control" against a rash of stabbings, turning satire into reality. Because of course you cannot take dangerous things out of the hands of people. You can only take them out of the hands of law abiding people.

The wide range of Chinese and Japanese martial arts weapons that Western teenagers know and admire from countless martial arts epics, such as the Nunchaku, were created by people who had been barred from owning swords by authorities that practiced their own form of "Knife Control". In turn the populace and monks created lethal weapons made from sticks of wood and built entire martial arts around them. The lesson of course is that it is not weapons that are dangerous, but people who are dangerous. And people are very dangerous indeed.

The government of adults is a social contract between adults, dangerous men and women who choose to live by certain rules with one another. The government of children is a nanny state that panders to them and takes away their dangerous toys while preaching to them endlessly how to live their lives. Put on more warning labels, exercise more, eat less, don't play with guns or fireworks or lawn darts. You'll put your eye out.

We live today under a children's government. A government to whom Freedom is a word and Independence is something to be given up to an even larger global government. A government that treats its citizens as children to be talked down to when their cooperation is needed, but not partners in what needs to be done.

There are a packed mass of civil rights organizations opening up shop on every corner, but those organizations have nothing to do with individual rights which underlie the state of freedom. They represent group rights, with the mission of ironing out the inequities in the current system with special benefits and even more government oversight. If the government is the nanny state, the civil rights organizations are the toddlers demanding more cookies than the other boys and girls because the nanny likes them less.

The fireworks that shoot up over the river are a gorgeous and dazzling sight. They represent the greatness we can achieve when we work together. But the small fireworks represent the energy and force of individual initiative. Both are needed and both are vital to the health of a working democracy. Within the great blaze in the sky reminding us that we all stand beneath one greater light, there is nothing more than anarchy. But without the smaller fireworks displays, the individual is robbed of individual initiative and joy.

An independence day that forbids the independent spirit of Americans is not fundamentally different than the fireworks displays of any other nation, free or not. The joining together of a people means nothing if they are treated as nothing more than cogs in a great machine without free will. Such a system crushes the initiative of the individual for a collective good that is defined as his own good by the forces of authority. Such a system cannot long remain free, for freedom derives from the individual. As individuals in a government of adults we choose within a social contract to restrain ourselves from certain actions. But in a government of children, there is only the mass, a dangerous mass that must be restrained from wrong thinking and wrongdoing.

The greatest weakness of the War on Terror is that it is being conducted while disdaining the contributions of individual Americans in fighting terrorism by condescending authorities that preach to us that the path to victory is through a shopping spree at Best Buy, rather than by combating Islamism at home. The real revolution will come when the government is again prepared to treat Americans as partners rather than dependents and to unleash the power of Americans in the face of all threats, political, military and economic. For the light that millions of Americans can create easily outshines even the bright glare of any corporate spectacular.

Sultan Knish
07 Jul 2008

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/07/independence-vs-freedom-on-fourth-of.html

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The French revolution was preceded by a worship of the naturalism of Rousseau. Like all the egotistical elder philosophers who light the match while rarely suffering its consequences, the ideas of Rousseau contained the seeds of the youthful chaos of the last several centuries. To Rousseau civilization was theft, culture was degeneracy, order was oppression, technology an evil, the common good supreme to the individual rights, property a crime, sex is detached from commitment, the middle class is beneath contempt and only the savage is virtuous.

There is little of any principle that political radicals and philosophers have preached of the "wisdom of youth" that Rousseau had not already set down. The Age of Terror, just like the Age of Aquarius, was in truth the Age of Rousseau-- who was to these as Marx was to Communism.

Rousseau's vision is the social vision of the egotist, a seemingly ideal world in which convention has been disposed of and one's natural instincts in harmony with the common good reign, and it is naturally embraced by youth in age after age. It is the vision of the pied piper, replayed through art, music, literature, theater and all the varied entertainments of youth.

The elder egotists who plot to make revolution know quite well that it is made by the young and so they play pied piper, teaching the ideas of naturalism, and playing the tune that leads the next generation out of the city and the village and into the forest. And when the liquor and drugs are flowing, the steel guitars are pounding, protest signs are raised high, terrorist groups are building bombs in Manhattan basements and flowers are braided into hair before being tossed in the mud-- the counterculture's pied pipers state their terms to the parents. Social transformation.

The pied piper forced the parents to pay for the return of their children. The counterculture forces a nation to pay for integrating its children back into the fold as adults by adopting the values of the counterculture. Thus the divide is seemingly met, the piper is paid and adults find themselves in a world whose values and ideas no longer make sense.

"Give me the child and I will give you the man," the counterculture says, echoing the Jesuits. And when we look at the modern Democratic party, we can see the man-- the men and women they have become. And looking at the Obama rallies, we can see what is yet to come.

The counterculture cultivates the natural dissatisfaction of youth, breeding it and grafting it into an outright hostility and even hate for their own country. This time the pied piper's price to be paid is Obama for President. It's turning over the country to those who hate it and adopting their values. And just as in the 70's, the 1970's or the 1790's it's much too high a price to pay.

We have already accepted the ideal of the noble savage, detached sex from commitment, treated civilization as a plague, heaped contempt on the middle class, attacked property rights, elevated the common good over individual rights. Rousseau's Pied Piper has played the tune from which modern Western society derives its value systems, listening eagerly for the voice of youth to tell us how to be more "natural" and "open" to the authentic call of the inexperienced and unbiased life. Now the question is whether we will wake in time and reject the piper and the tune or become lemmings, allowing the counterculture to lead us off a political cliff and into the abyss.

Sultan Knish
06 Jul 2008

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/07/pied-pipers-of-lefts-counterculture.html

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Child labor laws have drastically decreased the economic value of children, (except as child actors and celebrities); accordingly birth rates have dropped even in industrialized Second World nations with child labor laws. With children less able to contribute to the family and with an increasingly prolonged educational process that now culminates anywhere from ages 18 to 22 to a high of 26, high birth rates become increasingly difficult to support. Consumerism itself drastically raises spending on children and by children, making larger families all the more economically trying.

When Third World cultures enter First World nations, they enter an industrial economy whose birth rate they quickly exceed. These multiple births however are out of place in an industrial economy which is no longer meant to accommodate them. Supporting such a birth rate therefore becomes a problem that is foisted onto social services. Once a family becomes dependent on social welfare programs, it can often decide to milk the system for all it can get, creating endemic fraud. Even if does not go this route however, the children are often put to finding extralegal means of contributing to the family income, which generates crime and creates a criminal culture within the family and the community that can then last for generations.

There are a number of ways for First World nations to cope with this situation.

First of all set immigration quotas by birth rate. While some immigrants are needed, immigrants who out-reproduce you are not, since they create radical change that a nation's own culture cannot sustain. The melting pot only melts so far until it explodes.

If immigration quotas are set by family size and by the average birth rate of the country of origin, a country can better accommodate the collision of birth rates, taking in those immigrants whose birth rate is more compatible with their adopted country.

This would for example mean more Polish (10/1000), Chinese (13/1000) and Irish (14/1000) immigrants and less Pakistani (27/1000), Mexican (20/1000) and Somalian (45/1000) ones. Note how this compares to the American (14/1000), Canadian (11/1000), British (10/1000), French (13/1000) birth rates -- and decide for yourself which groups are more compatible birth rate wise.

The advantage of this is obvious. Large birth rates are more taxing and require heavy investment in schools and social services infrastructure. This diminishes the value of the immigrants to their host society and creates a heavy burden.

Secondly, increase native birth rates to better match those of the incoming populations. The common approach has been to do this through tax incentives and similar programs, but that has been demonstrated to be unsatisfactory. First World countries have adopted economies that make childbearing a burden, even with incentives and generous maternity leave and similar programs, all that is accomplished is to make the burden a little more manageable.

It is important to recognize that the entire economic structure in the West, from consumerism to high tax rates to heavy debt to extended educational processes that primarily serve as an advanced educational form of babysitting, effectively make large families difficult to sustain. Restoring the birth rates we used to have will require deemphasizing consumerism and the debt economy, reducing the tax burden significantly on native born families and enabling the return of the extended family, trimming the extended educational process and accepting a larger role for children and teenagers in contributing to family finances. While none of this is likely to happen, it is worth noting in order to contemplate what it would take to compete in terms of birth rates with incoming immigrant populations.

Thirdly the economic structure of the population in the target country and the country of origin must be heavily weighed in considering prospective immigration. People from a country of origin who are not capable of properly functioning in a Western economy without becoming a burden on social services should not be admitted. Western countries have no shortage of shopkeepers that we constantly need to be importing more and more of them.

Taking in immigrants who cannot function economically and demographically in a way that contributes positively to the country without excessive negatives, is unhelpful both to the host country and to the immigrants themselves.

The real problems of immigration stem from its unplanned and chaotic nature as random rules and a complete lack of oversight make no coherent attempt to plan the flow of immigration with a view to integration.

Sultan Knish
17 Apr 2008

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/04/when-birth-rates-collide-coping-with.html

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Israeli hospitals and food along with Western aid prevent the inevitable famine and mass death, but that only builds up the pressure of a ballooning population dependent on the charity of others and devoid of any useful function. The picture looks nearly as bad across the Muslim world. Iran has its own demographic population explosion which is driving its own expansionism, while Egypt faces a swelling population and swelling poverty, driving the popularity of the Muslim brotherhood.

The well meaning Western aims for the Muslim world ran into the law of unintended consequences, because not only does the Muslim world suffer from a growth spurt but much of that growth spurt is single sex. Sex screening via ultrasound machines before birth in the areas that have access to them and infanticide and honor killings in the areas that don't have them, repeatedly target girls... creating an even greater surplus of males. Combine that with the propensity for older men to marry younger women and wealthier men marrying multiple wives, not only does the Muslim world have a population boom but that population boom quickly becomes a population of angry and dissatisfied young men. A population that has to be burned off somehow.

The engine of Islamist Jihad is that surplus of young men. Most Arab Muslim societies are static and slow to adapt to changing times. That means far fewer conventional opportunities for the newest generation of men which leads them naturally into armed gangs, militias, terrorist organization and madrassas. The dissatisfied populations of the Muslim world cannot be appeased with democracy or foreign policy changes. Their core problem is that they are members of societies incapable of coping with their own problems. Instead of addressing those problems, the Arab Muslim world exports them through immigration.

Immigration allows the Muslim world to unburden itself of a dangerous surplus male population. Those same males move on to Europe, America and Australia and become those countries problems. To compensate for the shortfall of Muslim women, they marry Western women. They send money back to the home country and support Jihad in their home countries, either financially or by actively enlisting in terrorist cells. This neatly exports the Jihad from Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the West and makes it our problem.

The simpleminded answers offered by everyone from Michael Moore to Ron Paul arguing that our foreign policy is to blame, ignores that terrorism is just another one in a card deck of problems generated by Muslim immigration and Islam's demographic problem. The same surplus of males that is set to destabilize China is already badly destabilizing the Middle East and the West. The difference is that where China is actively dealing with the problem, the Middle East is simply exporting it.

Islam's Demographic problem is the result of a meeting between two civilizations, with the superior civilization generously bestowing some of its humanitarian gifts on the more backward civilization without realizing the price that would be paid for it.

The Jihad, the Clash of Civilizations, the campaign of terrorism and violence that we have seen is the product of that same demographic expansion sweeping across the West and purging the way in the name of their own brand of Lebensraum, crying "Make Room. Make Room!"

As Western birth rates drop to "make room", Muslim birth rates continue rising, parasitic on the technology and charity of the West. Like a virus devouring the body that sustains it, Islam's Jihad would never survive its own success. Were that same agricultural and medical infrastructure to collapse, Muslims would wake to find themselves in a strictly Malthusian world devoid of charity or compassion in which they would have to face the consequences of their own destructiveness.

Democracy is not the solution to the Muslim world's problems, civilization is and civilization requires maturity. The West has provided the Arab Muslim world with just enough of a taste of civilization to infuriate it and to cause a variety of social and political problems. Democracy in the Muslim world just turns the violence, the irresponsibility and the frustration into the electoral platforms of Islamist parties. Civilization is what is needed, but a people must choose civilization, they must choose to grow and learn. Instead the Jihad is the Muslim world's reply to the West's offer of civilization.

Sultan Knish
December 18, 2007

Original article: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2007/12/islams-demographic-weapon-against-west.html

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About the only real export of these Arab states is oil and this oil was discovered and developed by primarily American companies which were then slowly taken over and in effect nationalized by these Arab countries. The ruler of the House of Saud, Ibn Saud, began as a bandit and camel raider in the desert at the turn of the century. American and British patronage turned him into a monarch and turned Saudi Arabia into a wealthy land. The House of Saud turned around and has backed Islamic terrorism and expansionism across Europe, America and the World.

Saudi money drives the global Jihad but Saudi money and oil are really American money and oil. It was American tanks that kept Saddam out of Ridyah in 1992. But it is in fact America that has kept most of the Arab world intact. It was America which forced England, France and Israel to pull out of Egypt in the 1956 Suez Canal War. Egypt rewarded America for this by inviting the Russians in. It was American influence that kept Russia from going into Iran instead of Afghanistan. Today Iran is America's worst enemy. The list goes on and on.

If America and Europe did not exist, does anyone really believe that oil hungry world powers like Russia or China or Japan would have allowed the tinpot bandit Emirs and Princes and Tyrants of the Arab countries to keep control of their oil for very long? It was the long hand of America that protected them all along. For all their wealth and brutality, no Arab state has managed to defeat even tiny Israel, how long would they have lasted against Russia or China?

Not only has America protected their independence, it has even allowed them to nationalize resources developed by American and British companies. The United States has pumped in money and sacrificed the lives of American soldiers to protect them, in return we have received terrorism, oil boycotts and the funding of Islamic expansionism on our own soil.

Rarely has ingratitude been so viciously manifest, but all this goes to show that the Jihad is a self-destructing Jihad. The Jihad is aimed at the West, yet it could not exist without the West. The Islamic terrorists attacking America resemble an angry passenger carving a hole in his lifeboat in the hopes that everyone else in the lifeboat drowns while he somehow swims to safety.

The Arab world has produced nothing in the last century, its technology and its money come from outside. Its literacy level is below that of Sub-Saharan Africa and its labor, from its oil production to its simplest tasks is done by imported foreigners, often Westerners.

The self-destructing Jihad, should it destroy the West, would leave the Middle East barren, without customers for its oil, tourists for its cities, workers for its oil operations and protection for its kingdoms.

If the West responds by cutting immigration and achieving oil independence, then the Middle East will wind up with an economy based on worthless oil and a demographic time bomb turned against itself.

Either way the Jihad loses. The Jihad may succeed in either pushing the world back to the dark ages or at least turn the Middle East into fanatical Mullah and Imam ruled enclaves, but it won't create a new Islamic civilization, only chaos and dark ages. In Iraq and Gaza, the Jihad quickly degenerated into Muslims killing Muslims. This is nothing new, the Jihad in the end has always turned against fellow Muslims.

When Muslims in the West wage Jihad, these engineers and doctors also attack the very system that provides them with a generous income and generates the technology and resources that makes their profession possible. When Muslims in the Middle East wage Jihad, they attack their best customers and the source of their protection and wealth. One way or another the Jihad is engineered to kill the Goose with the Golden Egg and is literally a suicide Jihad, because its success would destroy the very sources of that Jihad.

Original article: www.sultanknish.blogspot.com/2007/12/self-destructing-jihad.html

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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