the Flea is on fire

“Atheists don’t fly planes into buildings” –
it was a point delivered with all the certainty of a man who feels he has
just delivered a killer blow to his opponent who was in this case,
yours truly.
His ‘point’ repeated thousands of times on atheist and secularist
websites and social media (from whence he had gathered this bon mot)
was greeted with rapturous applause by those who shared his faith.
The response?
‘Neither do Presbyterians…nor Baptists…nor Catholics…nor Anglicans…
not even Charismatics…and in fact neither do the majority of Muslims”.
But for the simplistic worldview of the Atheist Fundamentalist this point is missed.
In their world they put together two and two and make 25.”

David Robertson


(a summer evening’s view of Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada / Julie Cook / 2017)

The flea is on fire…
or so it seems in his latest installment of the book review
The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray.
(and may I note that in my past writings regarding Mr. Murray, I think I have inadvertently referred to him as
as “David” rather than Douglas—too many Davids on the brain I fear…
so I have gone back and corrected those previous errors)

I have yet to order my copy…and maybe it has something to do with
my latest book purge taking place at home, but I have every intention of
ordering a copy…as I feel as if the good pastor
has pulled out such tantalizing nuggets, whetting my appetite,
that I can barely wait to begin reading.
For the Wee Flea, with obviously the help of Mr. Murray,
has sounded the alarm as he is acting as that lone voice in the desert.

This part 3 review deals more in the way of the views of the Muslim world and Islam
as through the eyes of Europe—but like I said the other day, why stop at just
Europe…because this book speaks as much to those of us here in the US
as it does to our friends across the pond.

In this latest review, I have actually pulled more of the fiery flea’s words
than I have Mr. Murray’s as Pastor Robertson is spot on in his observations.

“It seems to me that there are those who are so obsessed with hating the Christian background of their own culture that they are willing to ignore or distort the
teachings of Islam –
solely as a means to attack their real hatred.
Or perhaps even worse –
there are those who have such a hatred for the Jews that they are willing to
excuse and even endorse the ideology that wants to wipe them out.
What does Murray argue about Islam?

Firstly he points out that the liberal elites are so determined to show that their
belief that Islam is compatible with Western civilization that they will do
their utmost to promote what amounts to a re-writing of history and a distortion
as serious as those who want to portray all Islam as barbaric.
And they combine this understanding of Muslims as the new oppressed people
(and themselves of course as the Social Justice Warriors/Saviours of the Oppressed)
with their hatred of their own Christian traditions,
by building up the former and demeaning the latter.”

David Robertson

We might consider the fact that here in the US, we are currently reeling, caught in
in the very throws of much of the same mentality,
as we are now witnessing those here in this country who are desperately
trying to rewrite our history as they try, albeit in vain,
to whitewash our past into something that never even existed…
as if erasing the bad will now make everything perfectly good and somewhat of a nonexistent utopia

Add to that our own influx of immigrants, those who are here illegally, as well as
the hundreds if not thousands of foreign nationals who, since before 9/11,
have come into this country from the Middle East, as officials now admit,
that there are countless individuals here who have simply fallen off the radar
and basically have “disappeared into the crowd” as our various agencies
have failed to keep track and account of such individuals.

So no longer are we the proverbial melting pot, but rather we are
a dangerous and angry boiling pot…waiting simply to boil over.

“In fact such is the fear of Islam, or of being accused of being Islamaphobic
that our liberal elites are even prepared to change our whole culture for the sake of accommodating their fears.
“In September 2015 officials in Bavaria began to warn local parents to ensure their daughters did not wear any revealing clothing in public. ‘Revealing tops and blouses, shirts and shorts or mini skirts could lead to misunderstandings’, one letter to locals warned. In some Bavarian towns, including Mering, police warned parents not to allow their children to go outside alone. Local women were advised not to walk to the railway station unaccompanied.”

Mr Murray Page 196

Pastor Robertson continues…
“Even worse than that officials and politicians are sometimes too scared to face
up to the implications of what is going on.
The Rotherham case is the worst example we have of this.
Over 1500 girls were abused because they were white girls and their abusers
considered themselves to be immune of prosecution because of the authorities fear
of being accused of being Islamaphobic and racist.”

David Robertson

And just in case you don’t grasp the serious concerns over the progressive
secular liberal leanings within this current culture of ours, the good pastor,
reminds one and all about the dangers in the rise of such a demigod mentality.

“Secular Liberalism cannot help itself.
It so believes itself to be ‘god’ that anyone who goes against its doctrines
will be banned –
in this respect questioning Islam is on a par with questioning
Same Sex Marriage which itself is seen as being on a par with racism,
genocide etc.
The white Middle-Class guilt complex leads us down some very strange paths!
One of which is that there will shortly come a time when my even writing an
article like this could be considered a ‘hate crime’.
David Robertson

Robertson continues “Murray pointed out in an article in The Spectator that the “popular al-Jazeera star and leading cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi when he said:”

‘Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.’
Douglass Murray

They fail to grasp one of the most essential differences between Christianity and Islam is that Islam is a political system as well as a faith.

Lastly from a Christian perspective I return to the question of what the Lord of history is doing in permitting this ‘death of Europe’.
It could be that it is a judgment – after all Turkey was once the stronghold of Christianity, then North Africa –
and look where the church is now in those countries.
Southern Africa, China and South America will probably be the growth areas for the church in the 21st Century.

“But Europe can still be resurrected….”
David Robertson

Pastor Robertson does leave us with a slight ray of hope.
He muses that perhaps there is still hope for Europe,
as that same hope applies to us here in the US.

He ends his review with the notion that perhaps the influx of Muslims
is but an opportunity to the Faithful to press on in their witness of
the salvation from Jesus Christ…in turn leaving the family of Christian
believers to be the final hope found in the lost sea of mass immigration.

The Strange Death of Europe – 3 – Islam

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

Isaiah 43:2-3

mirror mirror, review part II

“One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere on this planet
to burst into the northern one.
But not as friends.
Because they will burst into conquer,
and they will conquer by populating it with their children.
Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.”

Algerian President Houari Boumedienne in 1974 speaking to the Gen assembly
of the United Nations
Excerpt from David Murray’s book
The Strange Death of Europe
(Page 310).


(Longshanks, King Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots played by Patrick McGhooan)

If you saw the 1995 movie Braveheart you may remember the early startling
scene where King Edward “Longshanks,” also known as the hammer of the Scots,
proclaims his right and the right of his noble knights of jus primae noctis.
It is a a Latin phrase translating to “right of the first night.”
It was a custom where a nobleman or king had the right to have sex with any
lesser woman or peasant on her wedding day…
beating the groom to the punch as it were.

It was often done with intent of being the first to take the girl’s virginity,
but more importantly it was a custom for impregnating the girl with a higher breed
of gene and a way of lessing the undesirable population.

Longshanks stated that if “they could not bend the will of the Scots,
then they would simply breed it out of them.”

It was a scene that left me sickened as I had never imagined such a thought.
Perhaps back then at 34 I was simply naive to the wicked ways of mankind…
at 57 I now fear I’ve seen a bit too much.

Now whether or not there is any historical accuracy or truth behind Edward’s
proclamation, that will be left to the historians to decide,
but the actual practice does indeed date back thousands of years and has been
documented as used in various cultures.

A sort of population control as it were, ensuring the propagation of a particular
lineage at all costs.
And it harkens back to Hitler’s same desire to breed pure Germans.

There is debate as to wherever he actually put this notion into practice
with the youthful female members of the Hitler Youth.
Sending the young girls to “camp” where they were mentally indoctrinated
as well as physically…as the Nazis hoped to breed a new race of
“perfect” Germans.

It is a rather sick and twisted way to do battle against an opponent…
simply breed them out of existence.

And even here in today’s quote we have a rather alarming modern nod to the
same thought when in 1974 the Algerian President,
Houari Boumedienne, told the United Nation’s General assembly very much
the same thing.

I read that quote on the good Scottish Pastor David Robertson’s latest posting on
his second installment of his review of
Douglas Murray’s book The Strange Death of Europe

The Strange Death of Europe – Part 2 – Immigration

It was actually the quote David Robertson closed his post with and the one I’ve
opted to open with as it showcases a mindset that is not so far removed from our
view as we of the oh so post modern era might imagine.

Below are the running thoughts and quotes pulled from this most recent post
with excerpts from the book along with David Robertson’s piggyback candid
observations.

I just can’t help but feel this is not merely an EU or UK problem.

We sit here in America rather smugly watching the tit for tat taking place
across the pond… what with Brexit and the EU’s response coupled by the on going
terror attacks in France, the UK, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Sweden…
as well as the massive influx of migrants…
predominantly a Muslim migrant population flooding into a non majority Muslim
land….

Thinking that the proverbial pond exempts those of us here from the
troubles over there.
But what we fail to realize is that their problems are indeed our problems…
as we are also wrestling with an extreme identity crisis…

In August 2015 Angela Merkel announced that Europe was open to refugees and she declared, “We can do this”.
Much of the media, like the Economist,
backed her and said that her move was brave, decisive and right.
And yet in 2010 in Potsdam she had made a speech in which she admitted
that “the approach to build a multicultural society and to live
side-by-side and to enjoy each other has failed, utterly failed”.
(Page 96)

“In 2015 after Merkel’s announcement, 400,000 migrants moved through Hungary.
They didn’t stay—or at least only 20 of them did.
They don’t want to go to the poorer EU countries–
they want to come to Germany and the UK especially.”
(David Robertson)

“The six Gulf cooperation countries comprising Kuwait, Iran, Qatar,
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman had granted asylum to a grand
total of zero Syrian refugees by 2016.”
(Robertson and Murray)

“Not only has Saudi Arabia not made one Syrian into a Saudi citizen,
it has also refused to allow the use of 100,000 air-conditioned tents
there which are erected for only five days a year by pilgrims and the Hajj.
At the height of the 2015 crisis the single offer the Saudis did make
as to build 200 new mosques in Germany for the benefit of the country’s
new arrivals”

(page 316)

“When the 2015 crisis was at its height many individuals in Britain
from the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party to the Labour Party
Shadow Home Secretary, with numerous actors and rock stars in between,
had said they would take in a refugee family.
More than a year later not one of these people had actually done so.
As with the generosity and benevolence throughout the crisis,
it was easy to expect others to be benevolent on your own behalf once you
had signaled that you are on the side of the Earth’s poor and oppressed.
The consequences of your benevolence could be left to others.”

(Page 285)

“The big problem that Murray identifies is that the assumption that millions
of people would just assimilate and accept ‘European’ values is proving
to be demonstrably false.
We are ending up with a clash of cultures and our liberal elites just haven’t
a clue what to do with that.
As a result they are creating a vacuum which is most likely to be filled by
populists of right and left.
It is astonishing that in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and France,
the far right are making great progress.
In Austria an extreme right-winger was almost elected President.
And yet lemming like the liberal elites still think that they are so
right that ‘everything will just be ok’.
After all they have the media, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Richard Branson,
George Soros and Lady GaGa to reassure them that of course they are right!”
David Robertson

“What is the effect of people coming into Europe in very large numbers
who have not inherited the doubts and intuitions of Europeans?
Nobody knows now, and nobody ever did.
All we can be certain of is that it will have an effect.
Putting tens of millions of people with their own sets of ideas and
contradictions into a continent with its own set of ideas and contradictions
is bound to have consequences.
The presumption of those who believed in integration is that in time
everybody who arrives will become like Europeans,
a presumption made less likely by the fact that so many Europeans are unsure
whether they want to be Europeans.
A culture of self-doubt and self-distrust is uniquely unlikely to persuade
others to adopt its stance.”

(page 225)

“Whilst our political leaders talk of European or British or indeed
Scottish values–they don’t seem to be able to identify what those are.”
(David Robertson)

Meanwhile there is a crisis of confidence in much of Europe about what it
actually means to be European–
is it more than Ode to Joy, Italian lattes and Belgian beer?
The EU leadership has already decided that it has nothing to do with
Christianity (refusing to recognize Europe’s Christian roots),
but still can’t tell us what it does have to do with.
The one thing they do seem to have accepted as facts are the doctrines of
cultural Marxism – aka Gramsci.
This involves deconstructing the previous values on which European culture
was built and indeed trashing that culture.
(David Robertson)

Long before the politicians notice,
the public already knew that a continent which imports the world’s people
also import the world’s problems

(page 302)

To pile on the agony Murray then indicates how he considers Europe is
committing suicide –
(David Robertson)

“Moreover, Europe remains the world leader in not only allowing people to stay
but in assisting them to fight the state even when they are there illegally.

(page 204)

I don’t want to leave it there.
I think Murray’s analysis is correct–
but as we will see in a future part of this series–
he does not really grasp what Christianity is.
So just before I finish let me offer an alternative vision.
I think the EU is fundamentally corrupt and undemocratic and that,
because it is geared for the corporate elites and posited entirely on the
gods of free market capitalism and the ideology of cultural Marxism,
it cannot and will not deal with the coming crisis.
Indeed it is far more likely that an economic collapse will further fuel the disillusionment with mainstream parties and drive many people to the
political extremes.
A Weimar style collapse may well lead to a Nazi type solution.
(David Robertson)

Perhaps also we should recognize our debt to the Christians of the Middle East–
we bombed their countries and as a result they have been increasingly persecuted…)
(David Robertson)

We must remember that Mr. Murray is an avowed atheist yet seems to wrestle with ‘the notion of Europe glibly tossing away her very Christian foundation…
I look forward to the good pastor’s next review installment as I also await the
arrival of Mr. Murray’s book…

until tomorrow….

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads,
with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.
And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s,
and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his
power and his throne and great authority.
One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound,
but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they
followed the beast.
And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast,
and they worshiped the beast, saying,
“Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”
And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words,
and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. …

Revelation 13:1-18

“The Cost Of Courage”

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
“Atticus Finch”
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“There is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.”

― Charles Dickens

“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.”
― Napoléon Bonaparte

DSC02492
(the cover of my most recent read)

According to Merriam Webster, courage, a noun, is defined as the “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty”

Is it something we are born with?
Perhaps something hardwired as well as innate?

It seems as if it’s something that transforms ordinary human beings into the extraordinary–
Beckoning some to run towards a catastrophe. . .while others run as far away as possible.

Yet when it comes to courage, there is always tragically a flip side. That’s the thing about courage, it exacts a toll.
For each act of courage or bravery, the remnants can result in a tremendous cost—a willing sacrifice of everyone and everything which the courageous holds dear. A sacrifice offered up within a nano second, sans decision making, without thoughts of consequence or possibilities of regret–all of which are assumed and accepted rapidly without remorse. . .

Throughout the duration of WWII there are many known stories of bravery and sacrifice offered by ordinary citizens.
Yet for every known account of courage and sacrifice, there are countless tales of the extraordinary that are simply lost to the annuals of time. . .of which stretch from Italy, to Poland, from Russia to Czechoslovakia, From Albania to Turkey, From Japan to Hawaii, from France to Great Britain. . .

I’ve read countless numbers of books about the lives and exploits of those known and unknown average individuals, across the globe, whose private moments of sacrifice changed the course of destiny for vast numbers of the unsuspecting—all of which saved and spared those otherwise doomed.
Sacrifice which often left the courageous individual on the losing end of life.

And that’s the thing about courage and the courageous—the ultimate cost is readily paid with no expectation of reparation.

Author Charles Kaiser has compiled an extraordinary tale of the greatest cost paid by one Parisian family during the Nazi Occupation of Paris. The true story, untold until Kaiser’s personal connection with the family wove itself into a printable format, is but a scant microcosm of the real price paid by the average French citizen during the French Resistance which grew from the defeat and eventual occupation of France by Nazi Germany.

Not only is this a tale about a single family’s war tragedy and of the tiny ensuing triumphs found in liberation and freedom– freedom of which should ensure that life in one’s own county is lived as one culturally and religiously should live—rather it is a tale of all those individuals and families who believed in a life free from murderous tyranny and of the choices they each took to guard against its ultimate conquest.

I think such a story of the sacrifices made for the betterment of not merely one’s self, but rather for the betterment of all of humanity, is so vastly timely as well as important for those of us living today in the 21st century. . .
It is a story that is not only to be shared and remembered, but it is a story which reminds those of us who enjoy the freedom of life today that we owe an endless depth of gratitude to those who once gave so very much. . .

Merci mes amis. . .

A must read. . .