Review: Pride, Prejudice and Politics: Roosevelt versus Recovery, 1933-1938 by Gary Dean Best, Praeger 1991

In the last few decades several excellent books have been published documenting the New Deal's failure. Amity Shlaes The Forgotten Man (2007) was a milestone because of its popularity. It's now impossible for anyone to state that the "New Deal got the country out of the Depression" with a straight face. Even "court" academic historian Alan Brinkley in his The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995) had to admit that the New Deal's commitment to "reform" over recovery caused immense hardship and damage to the country. Nevertheless, Brinkley remains a True Believer of modern "liberalism." 

One of the best deconstructions of the New Deal is Burton Folsom's New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy has Damaged America (2008). Folsom ably goes through the militant irrationality of most major New Deal programs. After his thorough demolition job, there's little left of New Deal pretensions. It's a highly readable book that is infuriating in what it documents. In his acknowledgements, Folsom has the grace to note, "My starting point is Gary Dean Best. His books, his insights, and his knowledge of primary sources were very helpful to me at different points in my research." Other scholars on the New Deal have been rather churlish on their refusal to acknowledge Best's pioneering work. 

"The Roosevelt Recovery"

One of the best works on the New Deal is Best's Pride, Prejudice, and Politics. Gary was chairman of the University of Hawaii-Hilo's history department for many years. He is well remembered for his "regulation" tan shorts and black shirt. I met him a few times at local watering holes after he had retired from UHH. When I asked him for recommendations on good books on the cause of the Great Depression, he gave me a copy of Murray Rothbard's book America's Great Depression. He was a gentleman and scholar and is missed. 

In a nutshell, Best's thesis is that Roosevelt's hostility to and ignorance about business needlessly prolonged the Depression for years. If Roosevelt cared about or felt any guilt for inflicting massive amounts of hardship upon the American people, there is no historical record of it. His thesis is amply demonstrated by the use of primary documents. Most of the book's sources are from contemporary documents that illustrate the desperate straits business was pushed into by Roosevelt's policies. One investment banker testifying before Congress in 1935 on a particularly odious bill asked:

Is it the wish of the Government in Washington to advance recovery; to ease those who are seeing their income and their savings shrinking, to quiet fears that retard all progress, to do the utmost possible to help us out of this depression? Or is the desire to increase confusion and difficulties; to take advantage of opportunities to press its social theories and to distort the whole concept of American business? If the former, this Bill seems a mistake; if the latter - and all the indications of this Bill suggest it - then it is a success. (p. 87)

Best proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the banker's "latter" alternative is the correct one. Roosevelt's main goal appears to be the centralization of governmental power in the presidency. I say "appear" because the purpose of the power was to impose longstanding Progressive policies. In the election of 1920, the nation thoroughly repudiated the Progressives. Roosevelt was a Progressive who had served in the Wilson administration. Like his far more corrupt and evil political descendants, Roosevelt wasn't going to let a crisis go to waste. 

In 1932, Roosevelt ran as a moderate against the toxic Herbert Hoover. He even came out in favor of ending the Progressive hangover of Prohibition. Once in office, he tried to "fundamentally transform" the United States into Mussolini's Italy. In that endeavor, he had some successes and some notorious failures such as the NIRA. Roosevelt essentially bought the 1936 with a massive barrage of "targeted" federal spending while running against a hapless "me-tooing" Republican. The bill came due with the crash of late1937. 

Some historians, such as Alan Brinkley, have argued that the 1937 debacle forced Roosevelt to face reality and endorse a recovery/full employment policy. Best argues different. He documents how Roosevelt responded in 1938 with a anti-trust pogrom that certainly did not help business recovery. In fact, it was only large Republican gains in the 1938 Congressional races that forced Roosevelt's hand. What the suffering of millions of Americans couldn't do, the loss of some seats in Congress did. As Best observed: 

The war on business was ended, an international war was increasingly a prospect, and the Roosevelt administration quickly filled with advocates of recovery and preparedness, many of them from the business and financial world. (215)

This is an excellent and often brilliant work that belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in its topic or economic history in general. Unfortunately, Praeger's editions are very expensive. However, any decent university or public library system should have a copy. If not, tell them to get one on order!
 

Ayn Rand, Culture and Immigration

Ayn Rand did not comment much on the cultural underpinnings of Western Civilization and its greatest creation, the United States of America. In general, she focused on the philosophical foundation of liberty such as reason, rational self-interest, individualism and individual rights. There are, of course, some very important exceptions in her writing on the topic of culture.

In The Fountainhead she illustrates the use of nihilism to undermine a culture and people's ability to recognize achievement. The villain's aim is to render his victims incapable of recognizing or even holding personal values by undercutting all cultural values. With the character of Ellsworth Toohey, Rand dramatized the soul, methods and intentions of the Cultural Marxists. 

For all its evil, Marxism exists within the Western intellectual tradition. In the cultural conflict of individualism versus collectivism, Rand wrote within that context of what was a schism or civil war within the West. Her early political writings were addressed to Americans concerned about the nation's future. In both "Textbook of Americanism" (1946) and "The Only Path to Tomorrow" (1944) her main focus was on "The greatest threat to mankind and civilization [which] is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy." In these essays it's clear that she is referring to totalitarian philosophies derived from the German Romanticism of Kant and Hegel.

Rand viewed the conflict as between reason and post-Enlightenment irrationalism and the resulting conflict between egoism and altruism. As she wrote in "The Only Path to Tomorrow":

The rise of the United States to a degree of achievement unequaled in history - by the grace of the individual freedom and independence which our Constitution gave each citizen against the collective.

Of course, Rand understood that the creation of the United States was not the result of a handful of political philosophers' writings or speeches. Leaders are vital. But, leaders require a receptive audience to affect real change. The American Revolution had leaders, but not "followers" in the usual meaning. The message of life, liberty and property found resonance in America. Why? Rand's answer was that the unique "American sense of life."

The question is where that "sense of life" came from. And, is it now dying. Rand did not much address the first question, but she did comment on the second. On this topic today, self-appointed spokesmen for Objectivism are simply an embarrassment. As an answer to the first question, they provide some cartoon-like schematic ala, Aristotle ➔ Thomas Aquinas ➔ John Locke ➔ Thomas Jefferson ➔ the American Republic. Needless to say, historical causation involves more than that. David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed is an great place to start on this topic.

Rand's most well-known and extensive essay on the American sense of life is "Don't Let it Go," which is available in the anthology Philosophy: Who Needs It. She contrasts the United States with Europe thus:

It was a European who discovered America, but it was Americans who were the first nation [Emphasis added] to discover this earth and man's proper place in it, and man's potential for happiness, and the world which is man's to win. What they failed to discover is the words to name their achievement, the concepts to identify it, the principles to guide it, i.e., the appropriate philosophy and its consequence: an American culture.

 Ayn Rand's mission was to provide that philosophy. She succeeded brilliantly. She probably didn't have the time, interest or training to delve into the issue of where this American nation came from that predated the Revolution by a century. It should go without saying (but, I'll say it), that Rand's contemporary, self-appointed interpreters at the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) have no such excuse.  

At the beginning of her essay, Rand makes one definitional mistake. (Although, she deserves much praise for defining her terms.):

A "nation" is not a mystic or supernatural entity: it is a large number of individuals who live in the same geographical locality under the same political system.

This definition is clearly inadequate. Yugoslavia was never a nation. It was a state that housed several nations. Rand didn't dignify them as nations. In her essay "Global Balkanization," she referred to them as "tribes." This is both inaccurate and unfair to the Czech, Croatian or Serbian nations. For that matter, she couldn't be unaware of the fact that Russia had been long known as "the prison house of nations." This is a small error by Rand on a topic the was probably of no great interest to her. 

Rand understood the importance of the nation-state. It is clear that she knew Marxist inspired "globalism" would mean the death of freedom, much less prosperity:

Championed and propagated by "liberals" for many decades, internationalism is collectivism applied to the relationships of nations. Just as domestic collectivism holds that an individual's freedom and interests must be sacrificed to the "public interest" of society - so internationalism holds that a nation's sovereignty and interests must be sacrificed to the global community. (Ayn Rand, Los Angeles Times, November 4, 1962)

Read the above carefully. It is a position that Rand had consistently held for decades. She was an advocate of America First long before it was cool. As she observed in her Los Angeles Times column of October 21, 1962,

For decades, the "liberals" have regarded "nationalism" as an arch-evil of capitalism. They denounced national self-interest - they permitted no distinction between intelligent patriotism and blind, racist chauvinism, deliberately, lumping them together - they smeared all opponents of internationist doctrines as "reactionaries," "fascist" or "isolationists" - and they brought this country to the stage where expression such as "America First" become terms of opprobrium.

At the time she argued that the battle was over a pro-liberty domestic policy and not foreign policy. I doubt she ever conceived of that the West would ever allow the mass invasion of Europe and the USA by illiterate barbarians - it should go without saying that this is the issue of our time. I'm equally sure that she would be appalled at a "liberal" institution bearing her name.

Some readers may take offense at my use of the term "barbarians" above. Ayn Rand would not be one of those persons. She often used the term "savages" when discussing backwards people. For example, her characterization of Arabs in this clip:

The following audio is an excerpt of the Q and A in her guest lecture at West Point. At 9:24 she is asked a question on the Holy Trinity of America Hate: slavery, Indians and Japanese-American internment. Note that this litany hasn't changed in over forty years. The answer is worth a listen on her views on neo-lithic, and other backwards, people.

 After listening to the above two audio recordings, ask yourself if it is conceivable that the same women would approve of the mass invasion into the West by the most violent, barbaric and backwards people on the face of the earth.

If more proof is required, there is the following quote from her 1965 article "The Obliteration of Capitalism." Rand thought this statement was sufficiently important to quote it herself in her essay "The Age of Envy" from 1971:

It is to the Mohammedans, the Buddhists, and the cannibals - to the underdeveloped, the undeveloped, and the not-to-be-developed cultures - that the Capitalist United States of America is asked to apologize for her skyscrapers, her automobiles, her plumbing, and her smiling, confident, untortured, un-skinned alive young men!

It never occurred to Rand that the West's traitorous leaders, at their most depraved, would simply import Mohammedans and cannibals (that's a nice touch) to facilitate the skinning, torture and rape. Although, she knew full well that the elites' purpose was to permanently wipe the smiles from their own people's face. Nor would she have imagined an organization that bears her name would be one of the most vociferous cheerleaders for such depravity.

Fortunately, a growing number of individuals are rejecting "Official Objectivism" or, more accurately, "Obleftivism." Both, Ed Powell and Ed Mazlish have written excellent essays deconstructing ARI's deconstruction of the USA. Lindsey Perigo is usually overwrought and "over the top." However, his essay "Make Objectivism Great Again" is worth reading. In it, he correctly observes that "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is alive and well at ARI and in other such circles. Their antipathy to Trump does illustrate the snobbery of the "gated community" crowd. I don't see any cure soon for what ails them on the horizon.  

Review: The Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust by Michael Hirsh, New York: Bantam Books, 2010

Michael Hirsh covers a topic in his book that has been dealt with before, but never so well. It is based on excellent archival research. However, the real key to its success are Hirsh's extensive interviews with veterans, nurses and surviving inmates. Sixty years after the end of the war, these veteran reminiscences make compelling reading.

Sergeant Tony Cardinale was originally from Pittsburg, California. During the war he served in the 42nd "Rainbow" Division. On 29 April 1945, Cardinale's unit was one of the first to arrive and liberate Dachau. He was driving the jeep of Colonel Henry J. Luongo, who was the commanding officer of the 222nd Infantry Regiment. On a railroad siding just outside the camp was a long line of boxcars filled with dead bodies. Cardinale was ordered to investigate. As he describe the scene:

We'd peer into each car, just disgusted with all the dead bodies. And as I'm walking along, I see something move, see a hand waving like this, back and forth, like that. The boxcar was open, and he was towards the end ... That particular scene is embedded in my mind all these sixty years. The sun never sets on any day that I don't think about when I found that man. But at that particular time, what was going through my mind, you know, that we had to stop this. Somebody had to be there to stop all this crap that these Nazis were doing. (pp. 196-7)

Nazi atrocities were ended by mostly young Americans from all walks of life. Many were still teenagers who had no warning about the nightmare they were walking into. 

Liberation of Dachau

Based on its subject matter, this book is largely episodic in nature. Hirsh follows the US Army as it sweeps across Germany after crossing the Rhine River in April and early May of 1945. He provides a detailed narrative from the first camp liberated at Ohrdruf in mid-April to the truly horrific Mauthausen camp complex in Austria in early May. He ably allows the veterans to tell their stories, while providing enough context for the reader. 

Hirsh recounts one other aspect of the liberation that infuriated American troops. At every camp, the local German civilian population would do their Sergeant Schultz routine that "we know nothing, we saw nothing, we smelled nothing." The US Army did its best to jog their memory. For example, 82nd Airborne Division commander General James Gavin force civilians to help bury the dead. 

It was a very solemn ceremony. And, of course, the Germans felt what we were making them do - to walk by the deceased bodies - was an insult to the Germanic character, so to speak. Everybody claimed, 'We didn't know.' It was their standard excuse. No one spoke out loud, but since I spoke German and listened to some of the conversations, I could gather that they resented to fact we made them walk by. (pg. 279)    

I would like to conclude this short review with an extended quote from a survivor of the slave labor camp at Salzwedel. It speaks for itself. This quote also illustrates that until the Vietnam War era, American troops were always considered the most humane and decent of soldiers. For any Axis soldier in the war, being captured by the Americans was tantamount to winning the lottery. After fifty years of a considerable Progressive smear campaign upon the American character, military and "bitter clingers" such historical facts are largely forgotten.

The U.S. Army had organized a special diet for us as we had to get used to eating again. We had the normal facilities of a dining room and we sat on chairs at tables, like human beings again. There were always several Army people present to make sure that all was well, and all this at a time when the United States was still fighting a war.

The most astonishing thing I found, then and today, was how wonderfully kind they were to us. How remarkable it was that under the dirt, disease, rags and lice, these soldiers could see human being, young girls. Their kindness and their thoughtfulness gave us back our belief in the human race.

A doctor came around to each room to examine us, recommending treatment or said, with a smile, "You will be fine, miss, with good food inside you again."

In the evenings, time and time again, there would be a knock on the door and soldiers would come in and do conjuring tricks or other silly things to get us to laugh or at least smile again. It took some time before we learned to smile again.

Today, 52 years after my liberation, I stand in awe and thank you not only for liberating me, but for being so humane, efficient and kind.

God bless you. (Lea Fuchs-Chayen, Tel Aviv, 1997. Pp. 94-96). 

Edward Gibbon and Ayn Rand on the Fall of Rome

The slow decline and eventual fall of the (Western) Roman Empire is a topic that lends itself to philosophic history. Philosophic history is concerned with the causes of long-term change in a society (Burrow, 320). Depending on the philosophic perspective of the historian (and it would be nice if they made their views explicit), the primary cause of historical change can be ascribed to internal or external events, economic development or cultural evolution. For Rome, Edward Gibbon argues that moral and ideological changes were significant. To illustrate his case he uses irony: “It was a mismatch of intention and outcome whose natural treatment in historical writing was as irony” (John Burrow, "A History of Histories," p. 326). The problem is that irony illustrates issues; it does not explain them. Nor does irony explicate why it is that results often conflict with intentions.

 

 

Irony is all very well, as is observing the differences between the Western and Eastern parts of the Empire along with demographic and economic deterioration.  However, these issues hardly qualify as philosophical. The changes in Roman cultural values, which were determined by changes in the Roman people’s philosophical outlook, were what lie beneath the more concrete, and observable, examples of Rome’s increasing decadence. In excerpts from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire read for this week, Gibbon goes into exhaustive detail about the underlining causes of Roman decadence. But, he does not connect the dots. He does describe the dots of causation in his section on the creation of the Dominate: “Philosophy, her most dangerous enemy [superstition], was now converted into her most useful ally” (Gibbon, Ch. XVI, 62). He further observes that while the later emperors owed their existence to their swords, “they still retained their superstitious prejudices of soldiers and peasants” (Gibbon, 63). The decline of reason in the Roman world—which Christianity benefited from—was conterminous with the growth of statism in the Empire. The greater the Imperial control over the lives of its subjects, the less operative reason became. The more mysticism dominated the Empire, the more both rulers and the people turned to physical force to solve their growing problems.

It has been said that in his basic attitude towards life every man is either Aristotelian or Platonic. The same can be claimed for cultures and societies. We see in the fall of Rome that two philosophical archetypes came to the fore. These are best represented by a metaphor created by Ayn Rand of the social archetypes the Attila and the Witch Doctor. For both of these figures reason is the enemy. The Attila is a thug who lives by looting the productive. The Witch Doctor is a mystic who lives by sponging off Attila in return for providing him with justification for his depredations. To some extent, history can be viewed as a contest for power between these two characters. Rarely, do the men of reason and science come to dominate a culture. The West has managed to do that on a few occasions. Observing the current, rapid decline in both reason and liberty in American society—however instructive –is not edifying.   

The Fall of the Western Roman Empire was the result of a combination of factors, both internal and external. The loss of cultural confidence and the supplanting of paganism with Christianity is one obvious cause. The barbarian invasions that the depleted Legions could no longer stop is the most dramatic reason. Rapid population decrease that was the result of disease and the decrease in economic productivity are difficult to observe in the short-term, but was very real. The rot was deep. The legions had held off the barbarians for centuries. They could not continue to do so for a hollowed out Empire.   

Thoughts on Historical Causation

In his presidential address to the American Historical Association, Samuel Eliot Morison argued in favor of a “common sense” approach to history utilizing the precepts of Leopold von Ranke: “Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances.”  He continued by observing that Ranke sought to understand the motives of historical actors and accurately record them. In order to do this, the historian must possess a sense of “balance” and be intellectually honest. He also stated that in order to fulfill his task the historian requires “above all, a philosophy of life.” By this, Morison was not arguing in favor of any form of subjectivism. My interpretation is that he is arguing for a proper balance between inductive and deductive reasoning.

USS Samuel Eliot Morison

 

 

According to Morison, the historical evidence must be used in order to discover what actually happened. His contention that the historian also have a “philosophy of life” is based on the requirements of applying deductive reasoning to the evidence: “After his main object of describing events ‘simply as they happened,’ his principle task is to understand the motives and objects of individuals and groups….” Morison’s article is one of the most sensible things ever written on the subject of the historian’s craft.

Unfortunately, in What is History, E.H. Carr finds it necessary to set up Morison as a strawman. He argues against the contribution of individuals, and the decisions they make, to historical causation. Although he protests that he is not an advocate of determinism, he does shamelessly define “causation” in a way that omits human agency. He calls this the “Bad King John” theory of history (55). Carr’s contempt for individual causation in history stems from his view that human beings are “moulded by the environment of the time and place” (53). His argument, of course, begs the question of how the particulars of “time and place” come about.

 

His viewpoint is that reason is inoperable for the individual, but it somehow functions in the aggregate. History is filled with counterexamples. Hugh Dowding’s fight to create an air defense system that reached fruition just when it was needed most in the summer of 1940 is a good example of the individual’s contribution to causation. It is odd that a British historian who lived through World War II would forget this. It is in this context that he cites Morison’s quote on the “mass murder of historical figures” (55). It was less than completely honest of him not to provide the entire quote: “Personality ceased to be important if statesmen were puppets of economic and social forces.” Morison’s critique of “dialectic materialism” must have stung the Marxist Carr.

Hegelianism creates the bizarre position that abstractions have agency, but human beings do not. G. R. Elton said it well: “Abstractions describe; they must not be personified into activators” (102). It is this twisted viewpoint that led Marxists to murder tens of millions of actual individual human beings in the name of their abstractions of utopia. Sadly, the same process led/leads many historians to make excuses for, or to ignore, their crimes. 

Morison In His Natural Environment

               

Review: The Fog of Peace: A Memoir of International Peacekeeping in the 21st Century by Jean-Marie Guehenno, Brookings Institute, 2015

Jean-Marie Guehenno - who is a man - is representative of the mid-level globalist apparatchik. He began his career as a French diplomat. He moved to the United Nations and was its Undersecretary for Peacekeeping from 2000 to August 2008. He is currently CEO and president of something called International Crisis Group. No doubt, a good living if you can stomach it. In his latest posted article, he blames the escalation of violence in the world on a "resurgent nationalism." The overall tone of the book can be found in the article with its feminine, and cheap, moralism and its fact free "content." 

If you can't trust us with your life, liberty and property...

The main virtue of this book is that it provides a window into the mentality of the globalist evader. In both his article and book there is no mention of, much less discussion on, the number one threat to world peace: the global jihad. Instead, he wallows in a cowardly moral equivalence. For example, his analysis and description of the peacekeeping mission on Cote d'Ivoire leaves the reader wondering what the issues were between the contenting parties, "in September 2003 the ministers of the major rebel armed group, the "Forces Nouvelles," walk out of the government of national unity" (98). Who are these rebels? What do they want? Are their demands reasonable? Who knows and cares? Obviously not the author. Or, he doesn't care enough to inform his readers.

Guehenno is clear that his job was to hoodwink governments into throwing away their treasure, and the lives of their young men, to satisfy the "greater good." And, not incidentally, the author's need to be a do-gooding big shot. In the preface he notes, "For many years, some of us had felt slightly uncomfortable that our wealth and security apparently were not transferable ... I saw it as a unique opportunity to change my life by having for the first time the opportunity to change the lives of others" (x, xiv).  Or, as he demonstrates his new found lack of loyalty to the nation of his birth:  

My compatriots were doing their job, and I would have done the same had I been working at the Quai d'Orsay, making sure that French interests were protected and that the French Army would not walk into a disaster. But my job as an international civil servant was now to mobilize the resources of a powerful nation for a broader interest and reconcile legitimate national concerns with the higher goal of saving lives in Congo. I felt that in most situations, national interests are not compatible with the goals of the UN charter, but harnessing them for that purpose is hard work and sometimes requires a bit of clever diplomacy." (133)

From the horse's mouth, as it were. Ayn Rand once wrote that in any conflict between good and evil or right and wrong, the compromiser is the rubber hose that transfers the living power of the good to the bad or evil. Guehenno's mission since 2000 has been to transfer the West's life, liberty and property to third-world corpses. Another way of looking at Guehenno, if one must and one should in self-defense, is by analogy with Lancelot Clokey. Clokey was a minor character in The Fountainhead. As another character describes him: 

You have the right to make people conscious of yourself. So you've done the wise thing. You've written a remarkable collection of bilge - yes bilge - but morally justified. A clever book. World catastrophes used as a backdrop for your own nasty little personality. How Lancelot Clokey got drunk at an international conference. What beauties slept with Lancelot Clokey during an invasion. How Lancelot Clokey got dysentery in the land of famine.

Guehenno is not quite that bad, or maybe, he's far worse. But, for some reason while reading his book, the name "Lancelot Clokey" popped into my head. However, the author's constant and obsequious browning nosing of Kofi Annan does get old very fast. 

This book's main value is the glimpse it provides into the rationalizations of a Davos Man functionary. His job is to maintain the facade of "humanitarian" globalism so that its Western victims don't take notice of the destruction of their countries and way of life. He briefly mentions that his father was a "leftist." The author also admits to participating in the notorious Paris riots of 1968. He doesn't provide much background on his ideological upbringing. However, it's clear that destroying the sovereignty of Western nations, and the freedom they preserve, has been his family's business for quite a while. 

Being a big shot when others pay the bills is fun.

 

Stephen Coughlin's Red Pill Brief and Excellent Book Catastrophic Failure

Yesterday there was yet another jihad attack in London. These attacks are becoming routine and Europeans and Americans are being conditioned to living in a garrison state. There have been so many such attacks in London that one has to be quite specific in the terms used when searching for it online. Pop concerts cannot be held in England without extreme security that was unknown and unnecessary a few decades ago. The performers and backers have an unlimited ability to evade reality as they trumpet such inane slogans as "one love Manchester."

It's easy to ridicule pop stars and concert promoters for their cowardice, political correctness and ignorance. There are others with much less excuse. One such, is the Lord Mayor of London. The first Moslem mayor of London has stated that jihad attacks are just part and parcel to living in a big city, or a small town or attending an European synagogue. Oddly enough, Sidiq Khan has yet to comment on why jihad attacks are not "part and parcel" to living in Warsaw or Tokyo or Beijing.

Perhaps even more odious is Ron Bailey's response to the Manchester Massacre on the aptly named blog "Hit and Run" of the inaccurately named Reason magazine. In his comments, Bailey labors like a rat in heat to deny the significance of the jihad in Europe. He spends most of the article crushing statistics to show that your chances of being killed by an jihadist are slim. So, don't worry and be happy. Oh, and for the loved ones of the statistically unimportant, Bailey says "so sorry." Joseph Stalin showed more compassion and concern for innocent victims.  After all, more people are killed on the freeways of Los Angeles in a weekend than were ever murdered by the Manson Family. If fans and moderate followers of Charlie move in next door, don't worry and carry on. I'm surprised that Bailey doesn't argue that a criminal justice system is also just a waste of time and money ... oh nevermind.

"My cult is peaceful. Would this face lie to you?"

As an antidote to the insanity illustrated above, I can't highly recommend enough the works of Stephen Coughlin. His legendary "Red Pill Briefings" are available on You Tube and elsewhere. It was for speaking the unvarnished truth that he was fired as a consultant to the Pentagon by the Obama administration. The truth about Islam is something that many people can't handle.

 

 

If you have the time and interest, his book Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad is a must read. It's a long, difficult and often technical read. But, if you read only one book on Islam and jihad, this is it. I know, that's a cliché. In this case, it's a true one. Edward Cline has already written a review of the book that covers most of the basics. Read it and discover how much you have been lied to.