The attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris presents the question of whether I should be worried about Jews taking over America and transferring its wealth and power to Israel, or whether I should be worried about Muslim terrorists attacking Western institutions, or whether I should be worried about the increasing Hispanic nature of America due to the Hispanic influx. Or maybe something else, like the decline of religion in America. Things change, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. People fight, sometimes because they have to in order to survive, sometimes because the choose to overthrow the status quo.
The fact is that I agree with the Democratic side of the Jewish establishment on most issues. I just worry that they love Israel more than America. Jews tend to consider Israel as a 51st state, and people in the Middle East perceive it the same way. They see Israel with its occupation of Palestinian land as an extension of America. They tend to see Israeli hatred of Arabs as an extension of American hatred of Arabs. Israeli and American Jews bear a significant responsibility for Muslim hatred of the West. It's hard to say which came first Arab hatred of Jews before Israel, or Arab hatred of Jews (and the West) due to the creation of Israel and resulting displacement of millions of Arabs. Israel was created first, then the Arabs stated the first war.
The Israelis have faced Arab and/or Muslim terrorism ever since the creation of Israel. Of course the Israelis also stooped to terrorism in order to create Israel. Now terrorism has spread to the whole world, in part thanks to cheaper, easier transportation. The first step was high jacking airliners. The world responded pretty well to these hijackings and now we have moved to a new tactic. It is pretty cheap and easy to get from Yemen to Paris, much easier and cheaper than it would have been 50 years ago. Or over the Internet you can recruit someone in Paris to do your dirty work without having to travel. The increasing homogenization of populations another factor favoring terrorists. A couple of generations ago, a Muslim in Western Europe would have stood out and been easy to track, but not so today. Muslims make up a significant percentage of the French population, partly a result of a long war in Algeria, which brought many Algerians to France under unpleasant circumstances.
All of that is no excuse for the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians. If Muslims want to prevent unpleasant depictions of the prophet Mohamed, they should go about it like everybody else in democratic countries. They could try to get a law passed outlawing such depictions. Hopefully they would not get such a law, but that is the way you go about it in democratic societies. We have laws against certain types of pornography and other things that offend most of the population. If many people are offended by certain characterizations of Mohamed, then they could be outlawed or restricted. But violence is not the way to do it. If some Muslims are not going to act in a civilized manner, then Western society must take steps to protect itself from them. The problem, of course, is to take steps that do not destroy the very civilization that we are trying to preserve.
That is the attack from the top, by rich Jews and militant Muslims. What about the attack from the bottom, the increasing influence of Hispanics, who have recently arrived, and blacks, who have recently begun to acquire political and economic power. As a while Anglo, I am sorry to see our traditional power eroded. Rich Anglos may have been as bad as rich Jews, but I always had hope that culture and religion would be some restraint on them, which has been lost in recent years. Rich, white bankers may have been a inwardly greedy as Jews or others, but they had to sit through Sunday services in main line Protestant churches which held them to Jewish and Christian standards set out in the Bible in the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and many other places. They at least had to publicly subscribe to these teachings in order to do business and maintain their place in the community. That no longer seems to be true. Thus there are fewer restraints of the worst impulses of human nature. I often thought that blacks, especially black women, had a sincere religious faith and decency that surpassed most everyone else in society. Much of that seems to be lost, as so many black women today end up as struggling, single mothers.
The Hispanic influx is probably much like the earlier influx of Poles, Germans, Irish, Italians, and so on. One difference is that the influx has been so large, at least until recently, that there are not the same pressures to assimilate as there was on the previous immigrants. They could always live in small communities where they could speak their native language, but with Spanish, they are not restricted to small communities. You can pretty easily live a normal, active life in America speaking only Spanish. You are hardly restricted at all. There might be some grocery or department stores that are not Spanish friendly, but there are many that are. If you compare Spanish immigrants to Asian immigrants, there appears to be a big difference. Asians don't bend the community to their ways, but Hispanics do.
I guess I have to accept change, but I'm still resisting.
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