CIVILIZATIONAL CONFIDENCE

Here’s a tip for all of you younger folks in your 20s and 30s.  If you think the world is strange now, wait ‘till you get older.  For the older you get, the weirder the world looks.

There comes a time for us when the observation of scientist J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) regarding the ultimate laws of physics governing the universe comes into play, that “the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

Then again, Haldane had an unusual sense of humor.  His famous reply, when asked what attribute of God, the Creator of the Universe, he personally found most remarkable, was:  “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”

There are an estimated five to eight million separate species of beetles comprising the order Coleoptera.

But far weirder to me than beetles and science’s inability to explain sub-atomic particles in terms other than probabilities is being at an airport.

Specifically, being at an airport waiting to board an incredibly complex machine that will lift me and hundreds of other people thousands of feet into the air, and land us safely on the ground thousands of miles away in a few hours – a simply astounding achievement of reason and civilization – while a few minutes before I had to take off my shoes and had a tube of toothpaste confiscated because of fear of proto-hominid barbarians chanting Allahu akhbar who want to destroy such achievements.

What is stone cold weird is that the civilization capable of such achievements tolerates the proto-hominids for a picosecond.

So we come to the key fundamental issue of our day, the outcome of which will determine our future:  civilizational confidence.

The absolute last thing we are involved is a “clash of civilizations.”  Our civilization is in a fight to the death with sub-human barbarism.

With folks who believe in a Whorehouse Heaven which they can get into by blowing themselves up in order to murder women and children.

With illiterates who can only chant from an unintelligible book they don’t understand.

With grotesque distortions of humanity whose souls are filled with hate and whose greatest desire is live in the 7^th century.

And we don’t denounce their primitive ideology, profile them at airports, shut down their mosques preaching Jihad, kick any of them we suspect of such preaching out of the country, and tell them we’ll MOAB them into the Dark Ages they want to live in if they won’t leave us alone — because we’re afraid of hurting their feelings, because we’re afraid of being called Islamophobic?

That’s called the collapse of civilizational confidence.  It’s also called suicidal masochism.

Yet believe it or not, this is not something new to America.  We bemoan our current crisis of confidence and compare it to those golden years when America was young and wasn’t willing to get pushed around by anybody.

So – ever hear of the Barbary Coast Pirates?

The Barbary Coast (named after its Berber inhabitants) along the African shore of the Mediterranean from Morocco to Libya had a string of pirate kingdoms – Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli – when America came into being.  Prior to the Revolution, American merchant ships were protected by the British Royal Navy, and during the war by France.  But after 1783 we were on our own.

In 1785, the pirate ruler of Algiers called the Dey took two American ships hostage and demanded $60,000 – an huge sum back then – in ransom for their crews.  Thomas Jefferson, then Ambassador to France, argued strongly against paying.  Congress capitulated and paid up.

For the next 15 years – which means through the entire two-term presidency of George Washington (1789-1797) – the United States continually paid extortion money to the Barbary pirates.  For the pirates were Moslems and would enslave any Christian not ransomed.

By 1796, the US was paying almost one million 1796 dollars a year to the pirates – the largest single expenditure in the federal budget of $5.7 million.

When Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated president in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli, Yussif Karamanli, demanded a tribute of $225,000.  Jefferson refused.  Insulted by the infidel, the Pasha declared war on America.  Algiers and Tunis did the same.

Jefferson responded with force.  When US warships showed up on their shores, Algiers and Tunis sued for peace – but the Pasha of Tripoli did not.  A blockade of his ports was set up and a campaign of attacks on his fleet conducted.

In October 1803, the Pasha’s forces captured the USS Philadelphia when it ran aground in Tripoli harbor.  Captain William Bainbridge and his crew were taken hostage.  Jefferson refused ransom and continued the war.

What won the war was a successful overland attack on Tripoli’s city of Derna on April 27, 1805.  The taking of Derna was achieved by a detachment of United States Marines commanded by Marine Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, who became the first man ever to raise the American flag in victory on foreign soil.

The Pasha surrendered, Bainbridge and his crew released, O’Bannon was presented with a Mameluke sword for his bravery (which Marine officers carry to this day), and ever since, the Marines have sung about “the shores of Tripoli.”

It is such a strange irony of our day that the two great Marine victories of the early 19^th century commemorated in their Hymn – “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” – were over Mexico and Moslems.

Today we are again at war with both.  And this time the Marines can’t come to our rescue.  These are wars they can’t fight for us.

These are wars we must fight by ourselves.  Even against the Jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Marines and other American soldiers are fighting to protect us.

For only we – Americans as a people, a culture, a society – can regain the civilizational confidence ultimately required to win these wars.

They must be won in different ways.  With Mexico, it is a civilizational clash, for Mexico does indeed have a civilization and is a part of the West.  It is conducting an undeclared Reconquista war upon America, flooding us with illegal aliens, because of its inferiority complex towards us gringos.

To win this war we can’t just play defense, however important that is to do – building border fences, denying welfare and amnesty to illegals, making English the official language with no bilingual education, etc.

To win we must play offense – which means make every effort to provide Mexico with her own civilizational confidence (an inferiority complex sure is a lack of confidence).

A prosperous Mexico with an honest government where people can raise their families and live a good life should be America’s goal. It’s a win-win achievable goal.

We thought there was a chance to start towards this goal with Vicente Fox but he turned out to be a loser.  Now hopes are placed on Felipe Calderon.  Let’s wish him success in 2007 – but as we build a fence as well.

Moslems also have an inferiority complex towards America and the West, and the only way to deal with it is to not care about it.  They must be given a stark choice:  leave us alone or submit to us.

Leave us alone doesn’t just mean no terrorism and violence and threats.  It means leave our country, leave the West, go back to whatever Moslem country you came from if you are not willing to submit to our values of human rights and treating women as fully human, if you’re not willing to abandon medieval “Sharia” Moslem laws.

It means prosecuting, not placating, Flying Imams.  It means no more appeasing and paying psychological tribute to Moslem cultural pirates.

Could this come in 2007?  It’s a faint whiff in the breeze and it may end up being gone with the wind.  Or will this coming year see “civilizational confidence” emerge as a buzz term, an issue of public awareness, debated and argued over?

The libs will sneer and denounce it of course – so our job is to be prepared to put them on the defensive when the time comes.

To The Point will do its best to help you be prepared all during the coming year.  All of us at To The Point wish you a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous 2007.

Ps: There’s no way I can resist asking: What does the Marine Corps Hymn have in common with the French Can-Can?  Answer:  The music for both was written by the same composer, Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880).

The music for the Hymn is taken from the Gendarmes’ Duet in Offenbach’s opera Geneviève de Brabant debuted in Paris in 1859. (An unknown Marine wrote the lyrics.)   The music for the Can-Can is from Act II Scene II in Offenbach’s opera Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) debuted in Paris in 1858.

Marines and French showgirl dancers.  Now that they know the connection, they have good reason to get to know each other.