Watching Western Civilization Implode

 by Phillip Ellis Jackson  

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How long before the rot infesting mainland Europe spreads to American shores?

I know a fair bit about the governmental process, but I readily admit to being a dilettante when it comes to history. 

In this I guess I’m like a lot of people.  History holds a certain fascination for me, but I absorb it rather than study it intensely. This doesn’t mean that I’m completely ignorant about what happened in the years, decades and centuries preceding my birth; only that my primary source of education is the History Channel, combined with varying amounts of national and international travel to interesting historical sites.

From this I form my judgments, supplemented by the things I have a better understanding of.  Taken collectively, I use this information to draw certain conclusions, and the one I’ve just drawn is frightening on a number of levels.  It’s been rolling around in the back of my mind for a while, but wasn’t brought to the surface until I got a call this morning from my brother Dan (he of the “the Three Amigos” fame in my Looney Liberal Chronicles), who started off his call with the exact words that have become the title to this essay.  A demented foreign national slaughters a couple dozen innocent college students in Virginia, and what is the reaction of the Western European press?  They show a photo of Charlton Heston holding up an automatic rifle, and imply that he and the NRA — as subsets of “American culture” — are to blame.

I live in Texas, where it’s legal to carry a concealed weapon.  This law was passed in the wake of a similar rampage at a Killeen restaurant a few years back.  Rather than declare a “gun free zone” as the good folks at Virginia Tech did, which allowed the bad guy to identify targets that couldn’t shoot back, Texas adopted a different approach.  Walk into a Luby’s Cafeteria, a public shopping mall, or try to hijack a car, and you just might end up with a Glock pointed in your face instead of the other way around. 

Contrary to what we’ve been told by the national media, expanded gun ownership actually decreases violent crime, rather than enflame it.  According to the April 17, 2007 edition of the Orlando Sentinel:

John Lott, a University of Chicago economist, collected data from every one of the 3,054 counties in the United States over an 18-year period and examined changes in the rates of nine different types of crime. He also accounted for the effects of dozens of other variables, including variations in arrest rates, in the age and racial composition of a county's population, in national crime rates, and in changes made to gun-control laws, including the adoption of waiting periods. Lott's findings show that concealed-weapons laws significantly reduce violent crime. On average, the murder rate fell by 10 percent, rape by 3 percent, and aggravated assault by 6 percent.

I start with this fact because in the wake of the slaughter at Virginia Tech, we’ll undoubtedly hear more calls to disarm potential victims so the perpetrators of these crimes will have even more “gun free zones” to choose from in selecting their victims.  Fortunately, the United States — as a whole — doesn’t suffer from the rot which is decaying the rest of Western Civilization, so Red State America will be less likely to follow this drumbeat than Blue State America.  I mean, after all, outlawing guns has worked so well in bringing down the murder rate in Washington, DC, that one can only wonder why it hasn’t been enforced universally across the nation?  The fact that gun-free Washington, DC ranked 13th in the number of murders in 2005, while gun-toting Dallas and Houston Texas ranked 45th and 46th, respectively, is just — as Al Gore is fond of saying when he talks about the “proven fact” of global warming — a “detail.”

And so we’re told by Western Europe, the supposed cradle of modern civilization, that the true cause of the Virginia Tech massacre is . . . the gunman?  No.  It’s the NRA!  Had it not been for Charlton Heston holding that rifle above his head, Cho Seung-Hui (better known as “Billy Bob Cho”) would never have resorted to violence of any kind.  Heston, the NRA, and America as a whole turned him into a criminal, and for this we must all hang our heads in shame.

This conclusion comes from the same Europe that excuses anti-Semitic Synagogue burnings in Paris as “small fires,” while removing references to the Holocaust in school textbooks for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities.  It’s the same Europe that allows any anti-Christian cartoons, editorials, or programming to be presented in the name of open dialogue and a free press, but self-censors any cartoons, editorials, or programming that might be deemed insulting to Islam.  And it’s the same Europe that sees George Bush as a greater threat to world peace than an Iranian nuclear bomb.  Bush, in fighting international terrorism instead of making oil-for-food type deals with the world’s dictators and Islamo-fascists, is enflaming tensions you see.  If we don’t make the terrorists mad, they’ll surely leave us alone. 

Just tell that to BBC reporter Alan Johnston, whose death was reported yesterday at the hands of Palestinian gunmen.  The BBC is the best friend the Islamo-Nazis have, next to Reuters, CNN and Al Jazeera, to name but three.  What the Euro-weenies and American Left have yet to realize is that an Infidel is an Infidel, no matter how much lipstick you put on that pig.  If you don’t believe in Allah, and/or you don’t practice the right kind of Islamic faith, you have a target on your back.  Expressing sympathy and understanding for freedom-fighting Islamo-fascists may move you to the back of the execution parade, but not always as the late Mr. Johnson recently discovered.  And even if you survive the first few rounds of bloodletting, eventually your float makes its way down the reviewing line, so in the end the outcome is destined to be the same.

My one hope for Europe has always been Great Britain, which has steadfastly bucked “conventional wisdom” by bucking the trend of a trans-national currency and keeping the Pound, and fighting the bad guys wherever they are. 

But then recently a group of British Royal Marines and sailors were taken captive by the Iranians and subjected to all sorts of unspeakable tortures, causing them to break down almost immediately and make propaganda statements for their captors.  Some of these tortures included calling one sailor “Mr. Bean” for his uncanny resemblance to the British comedian.  This made the man cry himself to sleep every night because of the humiliation.  The sole woman prisoner was forced to wear a head dress and kept alone in her cell for several days.  She was fed regularly and wasn’t beaten, but she was told some very unpleasant things.  There was even the “Old Spice Torture” where an Iranian Guard stroked one prisoner’s hair, then dabbed some sweet-smelling aftershave on him.

No wonder these prisoners gave in so quickly!  One can only imagine how John McCain, Sam Johnson and the other Vietnam U.S. Prisoners of War would have held up under such pressure.  They faced nothing as diabolical as this.  Instead, they broke only after weeks and months of near starvation, and having the living hell beaten out of them.

Rather than condemn the behavior of their captured military, many in the British government and press have applauded their actions.  Lives were spared (I mean, no one is supposed to be injured in a war zone), and the restrained actions of the British government — combined with the captives’ sincere-sounding, heart-felt apologies — contributed to the quick release of the prisoners. 

Surrender usually does, so maybe I’m missing the point here.  But I think not.  Though no student of history, I’ve seen enough on the History Channel to be reminded of the fall of Rome, whose rot started from within.  By the time the barbarian hordes were at its gates, the citizens of that failed civilization had no stomach to fight, for there was nothing left worth fighting for.

Europe is at a similar crossroads.  In many respects, that point may have long since passed.  Mainland Europe sees very little worth fighting for in defense of its own interests.  Accommodation and conciliation are their current weapons of choice, as the Spanish more than clearly demonstrated by their last election.  It’s only a matter of time until numbers alone (i.e. the fast growing Muslim population) overwhelms and swallows them all. 

Like the Borg attacking in a Star Trek episode, resistance is futile because the people of mainland Europe believe it is futile to resist.  Now, that same poison has infested the soul of Great Britain.  When soldiers in a combat zone refuse to repel an attack because, as one sailor put it, they were outnumbered, I think back to other great moments in British history when soldiers fought for King and Country, instead of the right to sell their story to the highest tabloid bidder.

It’s the 1930s all over again. Europe appears lost in the face of a growing, obvious threat.  The only question left is, is America next?

Foreign Affairs: Europe, The Courts, Legal, Criminal Justice, Death Penalty

Read more articles by Phillip Ellis Jackson