The Church speaks out. In Australia

Cardinal George Pell has written a thoughtful piece on the confrontation between immigrant Islam and secular Australia. He enumerates the usual problematic nature of Islam, its offensive, universalist notions, its connection between violence and spirituality, its emphasis on procreation and its ability to sustain high birth rates in connection to the low Western birth rates. A most salient paragraph in my opinion is:

"These two examples show that there is a whole range of factors, some of them susceptible to influence or a change in direction, affecting the prospects for a successful Islamic engagement with democracy. Peace with respect for human rights are the most desirable end point, but the development of democracy will not necessarily achieve this or sustain it. This is an important question for the West as well as for the Muslim world. Adherence to what George Weigel has called “a thin, indeed anorexic, idea of procedural democracy”[21] can be fatal here. It is not enough to assume that giving people the vote will automatically favour moderation, in the short term at least[22]. Moderation and democracy have been regular partners in Western history, but have not entered permanent and exclusive matrimony and there is little reason for this to be better in the Muslim world, as the election results in Iran last June and the elections in Palestine in January reminded us."

"Belief in a thin, [...] procedural democracy". The idea that society, organised human life can be reduced to a simple procedure, a ritual, is one of the biggest threats of the West to itself.

There were the usual nauseating cries from the Left demanding that the Cardinal be punished for speaking out, because naturally the Left knows better and everybody disagreeing with them is an idiot who has to be silenced.

Such a nice thing that Truth has been contracted out to the Left. Saves everyone a lot of thinking for themselves.

USA Patriot Act will only be partly renewed

The USA Patriot Act which was legislated after the 9/11 attack on the twin towers in New York is up for renewal. Sixteen clauses of the Act are in force only temporarily.

The broad concensus on the powers of state agencies such as the FBI and the CIA to search registries and records of confidential data on US citizens is breaking apart. More and more people are recognising that the state can be a more dangerous enemy for Americans than bearded Muslims terrorists.

A Republican supporter of renewal of the broad powers for the state, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, said:

The failure to renew the provisions would be "interpreted by our enemies as somehow inviting or even enabling further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil,

The critics, both Democrats and Republicans stated:

They says the current Patriot Act gives government too much power to investigate people's private lives. "Folks, when we're dealing with civil liberties, you don't compromise them," said Craig, a board member of the National Rifle Association. Chief among the critics' concerns are the National Security Letters that the FBI can use to compel the release of such private records as financial, computer and library transactions. The bill for the first time explicitly says the third-party recipients of NSLs banks, Internet service providers and libraries may hire lawyers and challenge the letters in court.

The US is the house of Freedom. No European nation knows the freedom that the US gives it citizens. although political correctness and anti racism legislation takes a lot of freedom away from Ameican white males. Whether or not Al-Queda wins, if they manage to turn the house of Freedom in a jail, Islam will already be victorious.

Also in Europe legislators are taking away freedoms from the citizenry to deal with Islamic radicalism amongst Muslim immigrant communities. If this goes on the West will turn into a Soviet Union type prison, where societal dynamic is absent. Eventually that prison will come down too, like it did in Eastern Europe in 1989, but let us try to avoid the prison altogether.