Will France Make the Same Mistakes We Did After 9 - 11?

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ― Benjamin Franklin

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”—Hermann Goering, German military commander and Hitler’s designated successor

For those who remember when the first towers fell on 9/11, there is an unnerving feeling of déjà vu about the Paris attacks.   Once again, there is that same sense of shock. The same shocking images of carnage and grief dominating the news. The same disbelief that anyone could be so hateful, so monstrous, so evil as to do this to another human being. The same outpourings of support and unity from around the world. The same shared fear that this could easily have happened to us or our loved ones.

Now the drums of war are sounding. French fighter jets have carried out a series of “symbolic” air strikeson Syrian targets. France’s borders have been closed, Paris has been locked down and military personnel are patrolling its streets.

What remains to be seen is whether France, standing where the United States did 14 years ago, will follow in America’s footsteps as she grapples with the best way to shore up her defenses, where to draw the delicate line in balancing security with liberty, and what it means to secure justice for those whose lives were taken. 

 I listened to Shawn Hannity rant and rave about the United States accepting Syrian refugees for the millionth time.  I guess that issue is a real winner for the Republican party these days.  It’s some other group they can hate and be afraid of.  But like I say it’s an endless treadmill of the same warped half truths and generalities.  Obama's point is well taken that we shouldn't be dominated by fear.  The Bible says "Perfect love casts out all fear" but there are fewer and fewer reasons for connecting the Republican party with anything Christian.  It's Christian to pay decent wages.  We learn this from a parable of Christ.  One would get the idea that generosity is not all out of order.  Compassion is a Christian trait.  The old testament explicitly says to welcome the stranger among you.  But instead all we get from Shawn Hannity are all these statistics saying how many people of Arab extraction are among the refugees we've let in.  Germany has accepted a hundred thousand.  They're not worried.  Neighboring Mideast countries have accepted a million refugees.  It's pointed out that it's a lot easier to get a tourist visa than it is to get refugee status.  But the Republicans think the terrorists are all stupid.

I had Norman Goldman on and he claims a lot of Republican Governors are forbidding the enterence of any refugees from Syria.  But constitutionally and by a 1980 congressional law, the President of the United States has the discretion to let in as many as fifty thousand refugees from countries that qualify- - and Syria meets these qualifications.  It’s just a case of more Republicans sticking their nose in other people’s business where it doesn’t belong.  I’m not worried about terrorists “slipping in” to the country.  We have opened the door to refugee Cubans and Vietnamese and others and there’s never been a problem.  There is something called the displaced persons act of 1948 letting in massive ammounts of people after World War II.  We have let in refugees from a whole host of communist nations.  It goes without saying that Republican governors don't have the power or authority to forbid refugees to enter their states.  There is that whole block of red states on a map and there are more states with governors barring refugees than accepting them, and in all but one case these are Republican governors, who I'd very much love to see voted out of office next time.

When Bill Clinton said at the 2012 convention "You may not feel the effects of this economic recovery, but you will" he was not speaking the truth.  When he was President there was a pronounced rise in median household income like we hadn't seen in a long time.  During the Bush administration household income at first sagged a little but then rebounded as it approached 2007 and 2008.  But since then household income has fallen apart and hasn't recovered.  If you look at incomes by how much each demographic scholastic achievement strata earns- - you clearly see a downward trend across all education categories.  Norman Goldman tells us "There is no excuse not to look anything up on the internet that you car to learn about".  You can find out whether these right wingers are telling the Truth.  All you have to do is Look It Up.  There was an explosion in the relative incomes of the top one percent and higher in 1986 after the second major "tax reform" bill, the one the right wingers today are most proud of.  If you get paid in stock options and you are a C E O the funny thing is you don't have to exercise that option now.  Normally you PAY for stock call options because they can be like instant money if the price of a stock jumps and you "Call" the stock away at the original low price.  The trick is to buy your own stocks in your corporation.  It's a capital influx so this drives the price of the stock up.  But the corporation is left holding the bag because the corporation went into debt to purchase that stock.  So you can jack your own stock price up- - at will - - and never fear prosecution for acting on "inside information".  Those laws only apply to people like Martha Stewart and not Chief Executive Officers.  It's not just acting on inside information but literally "creating" your own news!

The quality of my writing has taken a sharp drop since I last did entries in this blog.  I wanted to clarify a topic that was in the lead blog post for months.  I said that two ideas can appear to be from independent sources and yet really from the same source.  What did I mean?  I was making an astrological reference.  Ideas are born of planetary configurations and Ideas like people have "natal charts" alias horoscopes too.  So when an astrological configuration happens for the birth of an idea- - - it's the same source of "configuration" spawning the idea even if its localized source comes from different areas.