I think you have to judge any religion by its outcomes, intentional or accidental. Islam has some wise and beautiful elements to it. Much of the practical application of Islam is sensible, particular when applied to a tribal culture. That’s only part of the story. The other part is the butchery and forced ignorance that is the natural result of the full flowering of Islam. There’s a reason no Islamic society has produced anything of any value, other than things like suicide bombers and terrorism.
Marxism is another dreadful loser of a religion. The Soviet empire was good at keeping its people backward and ignorant, but not much else. Germans, despite there obvious faults, were able to reach the very pinnacle of human civilization, except when they were under Marxism. For fifty years Germans in the East produced nothing other than steroids to rev up their female athletes. Amazingly, East Germans even made bad cars while under the rule of Marxism. Then you have the enormous body count.
The weird religion of our current rulers has similarly outcomes. Steve Sailer points to a story in the lefty journal The New Republic extolling the glories of Qatar. People forget that the New Republic was founded by Malcolm Crowley, a fascist sympathizer who thought Mussolini was a leader FDR should emulate. But that was a long time ago and who can remember that stuff. Anyway, Steve’s point is the ruling class has no problem persecuting someone for not worshiping transvestites, but they are OK with slavery.
The Left is shot through with these bizarre contradictions. Liberals, for example, are crowing about recently passed marijuana laws, decriminalizing possession of weed. They forget that the Old Right was never in favor of drug laws and it was the Left that was behind Prohibition and the early war on drugs. But, weed is now a liberal fad so it’s OK. Contrast that with their never ending war on tobacco. A town in Massachusetts is now planning to ban tobacco entirely.
The cartons of Marlboros, cans of Skoal and packs of Swisher Sweets are hard to miss stacked near the entrance of Vincent’s Country Store, but maybe not for much longer: All tobacco products could become contraband if local health officials get their way.
This sleepy central Massachusetts town of 7,700 has become an improbable battleground in America’s tobacco wars. On Wednesday, the Board of Health will hear public comment on a proposed regulation that could make Westminster the first municipality in the United States to ban sales of all tobacco products within town lines.
“To my knowledge, it would be the first in the nation to enact a total ban,” said Thomas Carr, director of national policy at the American Lung Association. “We commend the town for doing it.”
Town health agent Elizabeth Swedberg said a ban seemed like a sensible solution to a vexing problem.
The vexing problem of people making informed decisions that the busy-bodies and pests don’t like.
“The tobacco companies are really promoting products to hook young people,” she said, pointing to 69-cent bubblegum-flavored cigars, electronic cigarettes and a new form of dissolvable smokeless tobacco that resembles Tic Tac candies. “The board was getting frustrated trying to keep up with this.”
Citing a report from the U.S. surgeon general, Swedberg said that if tobacco use continues unabated, 5.6 million American children who are younger than 18 today will die prematurely because of smoking. Change, she said, “has to start somewhere.”
The fact that they wish to ban things that are not smoking in order to keep people from smoking is lost on these people. Tobacco and anything related to it is bad because the Cult associates it with the type of white people who shop at Walmart and make fun of men who wear dresses. Weed is cool because it what young people like and you can now buy it at those quaint boutiques near that ski resort you went to in Colorado. Tobacco is what the guy fixing the lifts uses.
A sane person would ask whether it is better for the guy fixing the chair lift to be smoking a Marlboro or a jumbo? I’m OK with the repairman sucking on a cancer stick while he repairs the lift. Nicotine helps concentration. The same repairman doing bong hits before working on the lift is probably about to kill a bunch of people. Of course, he probably called out of work so he can play video games and eat chips all day, but that’s another story.
I once worked blue-collar, smoked with the boys on break and went back at it. Blue-collar sucked a lot and I went into a job where I was sitting down a lot more. Also quit smoking.
Blue-collar jobs down my way have mostly dried up. My buddy does that kind of work still and has me come and help him once a week. Went out on break and there was nothing to do. Looked around at the trailers being unloaded and a magnetic scrap loader. Boring! Had a cigarette. Haven’t taken it up again permanently since I am only there a day a week.
Is the decline in smoking connected to the decline in blue-collar work?
Strange that MCLs hate smoking but throw a party for every homosexual out-coming. Homosexual men have greater numbers of every disease like syphilis, gonorrhoea, HIV, giadiarsis, worms, warts, proctitis, herpes, etc and the public has to pay for it.
And homos have a much shorter average life span than smokers.
Their domestic violence rates are double that of normos.
Oh the delicious hypocrisy! Look away children, look away!
I did my best programming when I could smoke a cigarette while thinking about the coding. Years later, after being forced to quit, it seemed harder to get it done. Of course, it could be simply that I was older, and thus slower in brain function. No way to test that theory, and it’s way too late, now.
Tocqueville thought so poorly of the adherents of atheism that he believed even Islam to be a less harmful alternative then atheism or polytheism. When studying the Koran and related documents before visiting Algeria, he changed his mind. The actual visit increased his horror.
The politics of Islam and Marxism are not terribly different. When Muslims lose faith they easily gravitate to Marxism, and sometimes before. Neither has any ground for the peculiar needs of liberty to root. Although is is obvious that the Marxist hate Christians more than they fear Islamist, that is because it is really liberty that they detest.
I take serious issue with your characterization of Islam. There is almost nothing about Islam that is wise or beautiful. Islam is a totalitarian political system using the shield of religion to advance it’s cause. And what is its cause? World domination, the entire world under Sharia Law. There is absolutely nothing about Islam that is sensible, not even for a tribal culture. You got the brutality part right, because every Moslem is required to follow the literal example of the “prophet” of Islam, Mohammed. And what is this example? Mohammed was a thief, a pedophile, a polygamist, and a mass murderer. He commanded his followers to kill the infidel (anyone who is not Moslem) wherever he is, to kill the homosexual, to subjugate women, and force people to either convert to Islam, pay a tax called the jizya (wherein the payer of the tax submits to Sharia), or be killed. Anyone coming to their senses and leaving Islam is called an apostate and is killed.
I’ve really only scratched the surface here of this most horrible of religions called Islam. The 1400 year history of Islam is available for anyone to read. It is a history of brutality, subjugation, and death. More people have died at the “alter” of Islam than any other religion. Even Marxism did not kill as many.
I would recommend this: if you really don’t know that much about Islam, which I find to be pretty common, you owe it to yourself to come up to speed. If you’re not up for reading the Koran at this time, I highly recommend the website inquiryintoislam.com to get you or anyone else started.