Cicero berates Catiline in the Roman Senate, where no other senators would sit by him.

Historians have a long memory, one would think in any case, and often are called upon to help describe or put into context whatever latest event has pushed its way to the top of the now never-ending news cycle. In doing so, we often strive to avoid quoting that old cliché “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. Yet it is perhaps because of the nature of humanity that clichés exist for a reason: they are very often perfect for explaining a given situation.

The insurrection (and that is perfectly the word for it) of 6 January 2021 in Washington D.C. was nothing less than an attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of The United States of America. All of the elements were there: months of speeches and comments about “saving the country”, stochastic terrorism and then the implicit backing of those who were responsible for pulling the trigger (which is sadly not a euphemism), and bleating claims about a “stolen election”. Couple that with the rampant conspiracy theories permeating the right wing in this country and you had a situation where Trump and company may well have simply asked “who will rid me of this meddlesome priest”?

What followed was a complete assault on the Capitol building, destroying government property and threatening to hang the Vice-President (complete with noose outside ready to go), and the savage beatings of Capitol police including the murder of one of them. There is no doubt in our mind that had the marauding crowd managed to lay their hands on some politicians it would have resulted in said politicians being murdered. The insurrection failed, thankfully, but the fact that there seems to be no rush to prosecute those responsible will only lead them on to believe that another go at it might just work.

So wherein lies the comparison to Catiline? Those who know Roman history will be well aware that Cataline was plotting to overthrow the government after multiple attempts at gaining the Consulship had failed. Cicero managed to discover the plot in the nick of time and thus acted to counter it but there were rumors that perhaps some of Rome’s more ambitious citizens were tacitly supporting it. Julius Caesar always comes up as one who may have wished for the chaos in order to put his own stamp on the fading Republic much as he did not long after by engaging in a civil war against the state.

In both cases, the 6^th of January insurrection and the Catilinarian Conspiracy, you had a group of disaffected individuals who were testing the limits of the state in order to see if they could get away with abrogating democracy. Cataline never got to assault the forum but his men fought a losing bloody battle in a desperate attempt to impose their will on the state. Likewise, Trump and company did not manage to have those politicians they despised strung up and himself reinstated, but it was a trial run at what could happen if they found enough people properly motivated.

At the time of his conspiracy, the Roman aristocracy had a stranglehold on the wealth and political control of the state. Cataline had appealed to the poor and those who felt they were disenfranchised and ignored by the state much as Trump claimed he would “drain the swamp”. In both cases the politicians found significant support among disparate groups of the population who saw in them an opportunity to advance their own agendas.

The only difference between the fates of the two is that whereas Trump has constantly cowered behind the law and had others do his dirty work for him, Catiline fought to the death at the head of his army. His body, when found, was far in front of the rest of his men and all of them following had wounds only on their front. One did all he could to avoid having to fight and one did not hesitate when faced with reality.

Perhaps most notable is that while Catiline and Trump both failed in their efforts to overthrow the government their general belief in the corruption of the state and the claimed need to inject fresh blood made sense to far more people than the entrenched elites would have believed it ever would. Cicero was genuinely shocked (and partly lucky) to find out about the conspiracy before it was sprung and few serious pundits ever expected Trump to win the election in 2016. The appeal to the common man would continue to grow. “When that the poor hath cried, Caesar hath wept” struck more of a chord than “censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge”.

We are at a precipice right now in The United States, and in our halls of power framed as they are in the Roman tradition with white pillars and domes, it would perhaps behoove those who occupy it to remember their history lessons and to not enjoin upon the multitudes that they might repeat it.

Something about those who do not remember the past…

One has to give credit where credit is due: despite some flip-flops in certain areas, those whom the Trump Administration has chosen to spearhead its efforts in many other departments have shown themselves enthusiastic scions of the MAGA culture. Rex Tillerson, at a horribly depleted State, has shown he is quite incapable of conducting any foreign policy (all the better to leave it to Mr.Trump), Betsy DeVos can’t even get them to spell “education” correctly on the department’s Snapchat, and Jeff Sessions has come out with a determined effort towards changing the way business as usual is conducted at Justice. At least as far as drugs go; when it comes to violence against minorities, that’s just fine.

What we are talking about here of course is the recent espousal by the Sessions lead Justice Department of minimum sentencing laws and the re-ramping up of the “War on Drugs”. There are so many things wrong with this effort that it would easily take the better part of a weekend to write out the flaws, but since brevity is the soul of wit we shall endeavor to do so in as minimal a space as might be possible.

First, the “War on Drugs” has been an abject failure from the beginning. Mandatory sentencing laws have proven not only to be disproportionally racist but have had almost no impact on the drug trade at all. Steep sentences have only resulted in non-violent offenders seeing themselves locked up for years on end; they have not impacted the drug trade one bit. It is absolutely stupid to argue that someone in possession of marijuana is deserving of a few years in a prison cell but that’s exactly what we’re aiming for with this administration: they keep pushing the lie that marijuana is a “gateway drug”, a concept that has been debunked almost as many times as the Flat-Earth idea. Mr. Sessions went as far as to proffer that “marijuana is only slightly less awful than getting hooked on heroin”.

This last statement should offend… everybody. In New Jersey, where we currently have a heroin epidemic running rampant, the very notion is insulting to an inordinate degree. Just ask a parent, any parent, if they were given the choice of being told their child had experimented with marijuana or heroin if they would feel about equally appalled. This essay isn’t being written for the purpose of defending marijuana (which, for the record, should be decriminalized and legalized across the board), but it shows a certain level of Doublethink to hold the belief being espoused by the country’s top law enforcement official: either Mr. Sessions is wildly ignorant about the addictive nature of both drugs, or he is willfully ignoring it. In either case he is ill suited to promulgate any police-work in this regard.

What is dreadfully concerning, however, is Mr. Sessions ties to (and support of) the private prison industry in The United States. Like the rest of the Trump administration, which exists as a kleptocracy determined only to see how much of the public treasury they can loot before they are cast out of office, one cannot help but notice that mandatory sentencing will skyrocket the prison population here. It is a sadistic cycle: the more non-violent offenders thrown into prison, the more one can justify “law and order tactics” since the prosecution and conviction numbers will go up. You are going to ruin lives for no other reason than to help you and your friends turn a profit, but then again that’s this current administration in a nutshell.

Moderate Americans, and even those who are not particularly in favor of drug legalization, must bear witness to the glaring ineffectiveness of rekindling the “War on Drugs” when we have money that so desperately needs be spent elsewhere. The citizens of this country must fight back against these dictates and help elect officials who will refuse to carry out these draconian orders. We must “Just Say No”, alright, to Mr. Sessions and his attempt to roll back decades of progress in the way we view individual rights and free choice as human beings.

Don’t mind what we’re doing, it’s all for your safety citizen…

As we delve ever deeper into the rabbit hole of the Trump Presidency, several issues become more clear: that President Trump is trying to run the United States of America as he does his own personal businesses, that there is a clear disdain for any opposition by the current regime and that they are hell-bent on stifling it, that the current regime is engaging in kleptocratic measures, and that the Republicans realize that there is nothing the Democrats can do to stop them and therefore this is their one chance to reformat the government to their liking.

There are many who point at this regime as one that is quickly moving down the path of authoritarianism. They are not wrong, as many of the regimes actions are steps in that vein. The war on the media in order to render facts as up for debate, the “fake news”, and the use of social media to reach directly to the people with an “alternative” version of events is lock-step in line with the first stages of installing a totalitarian regime. With a pliant legislative branch in the initial few years, little has to be done on that front although plans will doubtless be made on how to deal with them should they either waver from their commitment or fall in elections to the opposition party. Attacks on the judiciary are next, and we can see these being done now: referring to judges as “so-called”, attacking the judiciary as “political”; all of this is meant to undermine the public’s faith in this one branch that is traditionally above sectarianism and factional politics.

Trump and his regime have already begun planting the seeds of an “us versus them” mentality, and this is likely to both continue and escalate over the coming years. One must remember that the subjugation of a particular class does not occur overnight; the Holocaust did not begin in 1933 when Hitler took power but rather it required several years of increasing paranoia and dehumanization before the time was right to open the death camps.

The starting point is when you create a sense of fear among people. You get them to believe that there are forces arrayed against them in the world on multiple levels. It’s the fault of the Mexicans that you don’t have a job. Muslims are a fifth column just waiting to launch waves of suicide bombings all over the country. It is essential that we act to protect the country from all enemies both foreign and domestic. These are the ways that the regime creates not only a fear of the other but also the mindset that only they can save us from the abyss.

Right now, the regime is railing against the judiciary in an effort to convince the populace that a) the judiciary is politically biased and easily subject to manipulation by the “other”, and b) that they are acting against the best interests of the country and as such should be removed by one means or another. With Congress being completely in the hands of the Republican Party, the judiciary is the only power left that can stop them from simply ruling by fiat. Therefore, it must be either destroyed (ideally), or compromised to the point where people no longer have faith in the judiciary or, even better, where members of the judiciary are compelled to toe a particular party line for fear of being removed from their positions. It only takes a few years of this fear in order to push through all of the legislation that one needs in order to radically reshape the United States of America.

The next step after this will be the introduction of legislation that prohibits public demonstrations and/ or declares certain acts (and the groups that sponsor them) against the “public safety”. It is exactly those words that will be used in order to suppress dissent and ensure that the regime can either jail its opposition or cow them. After all, France had its Comité de salut public during the most intense period of the revolution, where individuals such as Robespierre sent thousands to the guillotine all for the safety of the state.

For now, individuals must rally to the judiciary. We must convince them that they are the last safeguard of the republic and the bastion behind which we will rally in our attempts to halt this degradation of democracy. If they stay this madness, we can yet hope for salvation. If they do not, we face the long bleak descent into an authoritarian regime that will not only change the way we view ourselves as citizens of the United States but also how the West will confront attempts to undermine liberal institutions around the globe. Let us hope they have the courage and stamina to do so.

In order to save democracy, we have to ignore the will of the people…

Despite the ups and downs, it now appears that barring an upset of biblical levels Donald J. Trump will be the Republican nominee. Upsetting to many, of course, but even those of us who are not dyed in the wool Republicans have a reason to hope he manages to get the nomination and it has nothing to do with believing he will be an easier candidate to beat come the fall.

Currently, Mr. Cruz and his coterie are determined to steal this nomination from the Republican primary voters. Did I say steal? Of course I did, because it is not his. The nomination belongs to Trump in accordance with the will of the voters. Say what you will about him as a candidate, bemoan the voting trends that seem to have developed, but don’t for one moment pretend that the Republican electorate has spoken with anything but a unified voice: they want Trump.

This would be terrible for American democracy. We have a political system that, for all its problems, still remains one of the best in the world (if you have others that are better, post a comment and we can debate it) and it is fairly uniform in transferring the will of the people into political reality. Whether you like Trump or not, to rob him of what he has put together is bad for democracy in general and it sends a message to the American voter: go ahead and vote for whomever you want, but when it comes to decision making time all votes are equal but some (I’m looking at you Republican National Committee) are more equal than others.

It would be nice if Trump managed to put this out of consideration, but even if he is unable to gather the needed delegates he must be the nominee since there is no other Republican that the people want anywhere close to as much as they want him. Do the right thing, Republicans.

I’m so pro-life I’ll kill anyone who disagrees with me…

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear from the outset: abortion is one of the most divisive issues in the United States today and will be in the foreseeable future. It lines up two very potent forces against one another: those who believe that a woman has the right to decide what goes on in her own body, and those who believe that life begins at conception. Since Roe v. Wade, there has been a struggle in American society to either protect or overturn that ruling and the acts of the past week have only solidified the entrenched opposites in their quest to see total victory for their cause.

The pro-life (so called) side has relied on means both fair and foul to try and eradicate abortion in the United States. They have pushed through legislation aimed at putting clinics that provide women’s health out of business; they have increase the rhetoric to a point where the blood-seeking froth spills over their microphones and washes down into the millions of listening, yearning ears who seek their guidance. They hurl about terms like “genocide” and “baby-killers” and “murderers” at anyone who would enter a Planned Parenthood seeking medical attention.

In the United States we have, thankfully, a constitutionally protected right to Freedom of Speech. One can voice his or her opinion on virtually anything, no matter how out of favour the opinion, with the knowledge that our laws act as Voltaire would have: although the laws may not agree with what you are saying, they will defend to the end your right to say it. Certainly there is space in the forum of open discussion for the voices of those who claim to act in the name of the unborn. They have that right, and the right to try as they may to convince women not to have abortions.

What they do not have is the right to suborn murder, which is what they are all too often guilty of doing. These radicals spew their message of hate and disguise it as a message of love: they act as veritable wolves in sheep’s clothing. They provide the gun, load it, place it in the hands of their adherents, aim it for them, and then feign shock when someone follows through to the logical outcome of such a scenario. There is no mistake here, no confusion. They get exactly what they want by the use of third-party terrorism. It saves the likes of those Republicans and Christians who pour their vitriol into every microphone they can find from being culpable in the most literal sense of the fruits of their words.

The war on Planned Parenthood is a war on women, make no mistake about it and do not let the protestations of so called “feminists” who condemn it sway your mind. Planned Parenthood provides tremendous services often to women who would have no other options were it not for them, especially in lower economic regions. Were they really serious about trying to end abortions in the United States, these conservative hypocrites would be lauding Planned Parenthood for the contraceptive options they provide women: after all the less unplanned pregnancies, the less potential for abortions.

This is all, however, a convenient disguise for their overall objective: to punish women for being sexually active. Nothing new here, as this has been understood on the left for some time now. Denying women access to the means of control over their own reproductive system is essential in their efforts to relegate women to a second-tier citizen. What Planned Parenthood has done, an unforgivable offense to the puritanical conservatives in this country, is provide women with choices about how they wish to manage their sexual habits and reproductive rights. It has allowed women to be sexually active without the worry of pregnancy and it has allowed them to be active in monitoring their own sexual health.

What has happened in Colorado is not an isolated incident as it must be read in the context of the greater movement to demonize Planned Parenthood and women’s reproductive rights across the board. While Republican candidates condemned the act (the killings specifically), there is no question that they silently nodded in approval in the hopes that it would discourage people from using these facilities. This is, let us be frank, terrorism defined most excellently. Do not be surprised if some of these fringe politicians and demagogues begin calling for the shuttering of Planned Parenthood facilities on the grounds that they attract terrorism; the conservative right (Christian as it is in this flavor) is well versed in the “blame the victim” mentality.

As a free country, as a country that values individual rights, we must call this latest rampage out for what it is: not the deranged act of some “lone wolf” individual, but the logical outcome of hate speech and rhetoric from the Christian Right. We here have long spoken positively of Planned Parenthood and we see no reason to cease that today; in fact, the need to support them in their fight against tyranny over women’s reproductive rights, and indeed their personal freedoms, is paramount. We say to all lovers of freedom: stand with Planned Parenthood and against terrorism.

Awaiting your call Mr. Trump…

There were many of us who, in the naïve early days of this election cycle, took the aspiring presidential ambitions of Donald J. Trump to be something of a novelty. Certainly the man had some charisma, though he could just as often come off as rather boorish, but he did have that seeming bit of charm and, of course, more than enough of the necessary alpha-male chutzpah to be a convincing candidate. In any case, since Jeb was bound to win going away what difference could The Donald’s entrance into the clown show that was thinly disguised as the Republican primaries make?

Apparently all the difference in the world. From the beginning, Mr. Trump has relied on a combination of his grandiose visions and combined them with the typical red-meat for the primary crowds: there was talk of building a wall to keep immigrants out which would be especially needed after he expurgated some eleven-millions of them. There were the promises that he would crush ISIS, somehow defeat the Chinese at business, and deal with Putin on an even level. All of it seemed all good and well given the fact that one does need to swing to the extremes during the primaries before coming back to the center for the general election and, of course, it wasn’t going to matter since even if he somehow managed to win the Republican nomination over a terribly underwhelming Bush, the election was Clinton’s to lose.

That of course was before the Paris attacks of November 13^th, 2015. After that the United States public went into another of its typical panic modes with all too many people forgetting that the entire point of terrorism in all of its forms is to affect the discourse by instilling fear into those it targets. Yet Mr. Trump went even further in his pandering and suggested forming a database for Muslims living in America. Not content with that, he said he would consider requiring Muslims to carry a special identification card and, if he felt it necessary, would close all mosques in the United States.

This is when his campaign moved from simple pandering to demagoguery; the fact that one could make such vile suggestions in a country founded on the rights of individuals, and further to think he could simply effect these acts by fiat, makes one wonder if Mr. Trump has ever even read the Constitution. But that is not even the most troubling thing here: what Mr. Trump is suggesting brings up direct links to both the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War as well as, let us be honest here, the acts that preceded the Holocaust.

I am one who hates when people lightly toss about references to genocide as much as calling any group “Nazis”; there was only one major Nazi movement and to suggest that someone, or some other group, is comparable to an organization which launched a war costing some 80 million dead and which perpetrated the single most horrific act of genocide in our collective history is quite insulting. I do not, therefore, want people referring to Mr. Trump as a Nazi and he is certainly not calling for the extermination of the Muslim population in the United States.

He is, however, suggesting a path that leads down the road towards considering Muslims in America as “the other”. Would he require them to wear a yellow crescent on their jackets or shirts? Would he make the lists of Muslims public information so that anyone could know if a Muslim resided in their neighborhood much like in some states one is required to register if they are a sex-offender? Even more disturbing, are there really that many American citizens who hear these words, who think on them, and then look in the mirror and say “I call myself an American, I call myself a human being, and I’m perfectly fine with these suggestions”? O tempora! O mores!

We should take it as a symbol of national shame that there are enough people who would even contemplate this man as a legitimate contender for that most sacred of positions. Christopher Hitchens, who one thinks (a bid sadly since he is missing this) would have had an absolute field-day with Mr. Trump’s campaign, once said, “Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake: the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.” There are still individuals walking this earth who bear the tattoos on their arms that cry out as a witness against an unspeakable horror committed by individuals who began by using the same terminology Mr. Trump is now voicing. I am most unsorry to have to break to Mr. Trump that there is no way in hell that some of us are going to sit back and watch as you attempt to steer the masses down this path once more. If “never again” means anything, if it ever meant anything, it is now crying out for people to quash this hate-speak in its nascent stages.

We have this choice now. We have the opportunity to throw Mr. Trump and all of his megalomaniacal demagoguery back in his face. We can show that his narrative in all its hateful rhetoric is simply a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If we do not, if we allow this to pass then we are no different than any of a number of previous generations who, before allowing their crafts to careen over the waterfall, simply shrugged and said “it’s not my problem”. This man is every decent human’s problem, and as such every decent human needs to rally against him. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it; let us not find ourselves in their sorry company.

The absolute best way to start your day

The word legacy is often tossed about with impunity since those opining on any particular legacy are usually in a position to observe without being observed on their marking; what we mean here is that the people who decide on an individual’s legacy are often doing it from afar both spatially and chronologically. So it is with President Jimmy Carter, of late, sadly, admitting to being afflicted by that most odious of maladies: cancer.

Those looking over President Carter’s legacy as a political leader tend to render their verdict based upon the subsequent eight years of President Ronald Reagan. They point to the malaise that existed during the Carter years, the long gas lines due to shortages, indeed even the Iran hostage crisis falls clumsily at his feet. Compared to the “feel good” 1980s, with Reagan staring down the Soviet Union, bombing Libya, and creating a general attitude of positive Americanism, what lasting contribution could Carter have to offer this esteemed country?

The answer lies in H.R. 1337, a bill signed into law in 1978 by President Carter which essentially allowed for home-brewing beer with an alcohol content higher than 0.5%. In other words, President Carter opened the taps (if you will) to what would become a flourishing industry in the United States and one that would have a positive impact culturally and economically up to the present day. Before the home-brew revolution, American beer had never really recovered from the post-Prohibition days of bland, macro beers using inexpensive adjuncts and selling because there was quite literally nothing else with which to compete.

What the home-brew bill did was enable innovative entrepreneurs to experiment and learn brewing from the ground up. Companies like Sierra Nevada which began in 1979 by two home-brewers now produce almost a million barrels of beer a year and employs around 450 people. Even bigger is the Boston Beer Company whose founder, Jim Koch, famously brewed his first batch of beer in his own kitchen in 1984. His company now produces over 2.5 million barrels of beer a year and employs 1,300 people. The numbers are astounding: in 1979, there were 89 breweries in the United States; in 2013, there were 2413. In an almost unbelievable side note, and just to show you how much the macro-breweries are pumping out, these breweries which produce 480,000,000 (four-hundred and eighty million) gallons of beer per year represents 7.8% of the total market by volume. Do the math.

Today one can find a craft-brewery in almost every major town (or right outside of it) in the United States. These places often have strong local ties and, because they are producing maybe a few hundred gallons at a time (or less), can be much more experimental with their beers than those companies that need to produce 100x that amount every day. Unlike Germany, with its Reinheitsgebot , American brewers are free to dabble with various grains, fruits, and more exotic additions (cinnamon, peanut-butter, chocolate) in an attempt to create a beer that really speaks about the ambitions of the brewer and his/ her craft.

In conclusion, while he may be pilloried for his political accomplishments, President Carter should always be remembered as the man who made this brewing revolution possible. So the next time you travel down to Dover, Delaware, and visit our friends at Fordham & Dominion Brewing Company, or Athens, Georgia, and taste the offerings at the Terrapin Beer Company, or even find yourself in Northern Alabama (Madison to be exact) and partake of what’s on tap at the Blue Pants Brewery raise your first glass to President Carter; if you enjoy craft beer, you owe him at least that.

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.”

– Leviticus 20:13

This past Thursday, during a Gay Pride march in Jerusalem, an ultra-Orthodox Jew ran through the crowd brandishing a knife and using it to indiscriminately stab and slash at anyone within arms-reach. A terrible act, but one to which he was no stranger: he had just been released, weeks prior, from an Israeli prison for doing the exact same thing at a Gay Pride march in 2005. During that attack he managed to wound three people; during last week’s he stabbed six one of whom, sixteen-year old Shira Banki, has died of her wounds.

To their credit, the Israeli government was swift to condemn the attack in no uncertain terms with both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Rivlin speaking out on the basic rights for an individual in Israel to live in security however they wish to live their lives. Even the Anti-Defamation League in New York spoke out condemning the attack and praising the open and tolerant attitude expressed towards the LGBT community in Israel.

So what then is the real root of this problem? What causes a man to charge into a peaceful march and begin attacking people? One could certainly suggest that he was mentally unstable, or even insane, but one would think that were this the case that he would have been identified as so by the Israeli authorities after his previous attack. No, sadly the answer to this lies all too readily visible by the very nature of his belief system: he is a radical adherent to a religious ideology that condemns homosexuality and calls for its punishment by death.

That he is an ultra-Orthodox Jew is almost irrelevant: radical Christians in the United States would ban homosexual acts if they thought they could and, in Africa for example, are behind funding to try and get countries such as Uganda to pass legislation making homosexuality punishable by death. Radical Muslims are no different as one only has to look to Afghanistan to witness men being thrown off of buildings as punishment for their homosexual acts. The common thread here is evident: the literal interpretation of these ancient texts as having unalterable divine instructions is the root cause of an inordinate amount of pain, suffering, and evil actions today in the world.

When an individual believes that killing in the name of a god is acceptable, it creates the situation wherein a normally rational individual might not only decide to commit murder but, perhaps only slightly less odious, that he might sit back and accept/ condone the murder taking place. I have no doubts at all that Mr. Schlissel believed he was carrying out his god’s work when he attacked the participants in 2005; moreover, I am certain he had a sense of shame that he wasn’t able to fulfill the dictates of Leviticus, an effort to which end was made this past week with slightly more success. He will sit in a jail cell for the foreseeable future, possibly for the rest of his life, with the satisfaction that he has done the work of his god and that some kind of reward awaits him once he has shuffled off this mortal coil.

Civilized societies pride themselves on the fact that they entertain a wide variety of opinions, many of which they may not agree with at all. That is, in so many ways, the ultimate sign of a progressive society. Yet even with the word “toleration” we find a problem: to “tolerate” someone, or some cause, means only that you are willing to suffer that it exists. If a society “tolerates” homosexuality it by no way means that it has accepted homosexuals as equal members of that society; it only means that they are willing not to kill them or discriminate in a horrible manner against them. This is not acceptance, nor is it a sign that the individuals at question here have been made an equal part of the society.

The real issue here is that an individual or group who believes in these archaic texts leads to exactly what unfolded this Thursday past in Jerusalem just as it results in people being thrown off walls, young women being murdered because of “honor”, doctors being assassinated for the legal exercise of their practice, and the overall retardation of progressive movements worldwide. One cannot separate out the words by verse; he must hold that all of it is divinely inspired or none of it is, and therein lies the rub for all of this. When individuals feel that they have a divine mandate to commit horrible acts against their fellow man, and can feel justified in doing so because their god has ordered it, we see a civilization in decline. It is no real wonder that humanities greatest achievements tend to come when religion takes a back seat to science and secularism; rather, we find that when humanity has tended towards not a radical interpretation of the texts, but rather a radical implementation of what is already written that atrocities against the nature of man tend to develop.

In the end, there are many who will never give voice to what they feel in their hearts and that is a sort of approval for what has happened in Jerusalem. Behind closed doors, and only in like company to their own prejudices, there will be those smug smiles and shrugging shoulders that implicitly condone acts like this in the hopes that it will influence the narrative towards their own religious beliefs. That, my friends, is the true abomination: a society where texts written by men and ascribed to a god hold sway in lieu of logic, reason, rational thought, and basic human decency. We must do all we can to ensure that such a place ever only exists only in the deranged minds of these religious zealots.

This palpable sense of fear is especially tangible when it comes to Muslims in the United States. When a young man murders his mother, then goes on to murder a classroom of children we explain it away as that he was “mentally ill”. When a young white male sits in the pews of a church before murdering multiple blacks with the intention of starting some kind of white backlash against African Americans, we label him “disturbed” and try to look for reasons in his upbringing that could explain why he would be driven to commit such a hideous act. The bottom line is that overwhelmingly, if you are not Muslim you will somehow be excused as either insane or deluded or a multitude of other words that have in effect the same meaning.

The reality for Muslims in the United States is of course much different. The first word to describe a Muslim who has committed a murder (or killings of any sort) is “terrorist”. Who actually says that right away? Not many, but what they do say points to it just the same as when whites got away with accusing President Obama of being “uppity”; everybody knew exactly what they were saying since there is another word that goes along with that and which we will not print here. With Muslims, within minutes there are pundits asking if there were any connections to terrorist networks. Did the individual travel overseas? Did they frequent a local mosque, or any mosque for that manner? Had they grown their beards out? Were they refraining from drugs or alcohol?

Next comes the inevitable “he had expressed displeasure with American policies in the Middle East” and “he had spoken to friends about what the U.S. was doing to civilians in Iraq”. Both of these lend credibility to the idea that he is, in fact, a terrorist, and if he managed to actually act upon his feelings, how many more individuals out there are harboring similar sentiments? The New York Police Department has launched one of the largest domestic spying programs ever, tracking Muslims as they go to buy groceries, park at their mosques, even go to get their hair cuts. In this post-9/11 world, the majority of citizens have simply given in to fear and taken an “if you have nothing to hide, why are you afraid?” attitude. It becomes more a case of Muslim-Americans having to prove their loyalty; it is not enough even that they can say they are loyal but rather that they have to almost prove that they are not disloyal at the same time.

Herein lies the rub with Mr. Clark’s comments. First of all, he declares that “disloyal” Americans should be put into camps until the “War on Terror” is finished. Those who know me know that I am a huge fan of George Orwell, and I firmly believe that this “War on Terror” would fit in quite nicely with all of his feelings about the world of 1984. Declaring a war on an idea is at best a hopeful delusion (War on Poverty), and in this case it is quite simply stupid. Given the ever-changing definition of what defines “terror”, this so-called war will never end. Therefore what Mr. Clark, and those who back him in this instance, are really advocating for is the life-imprisonment of all “disloyal” Americans.

Second of all, who defines loyalty? I have spoken out many times on these very pages about the displeasure I have for American foreign policy. I have criticized multiple Presidents and hammered the judiciary when I see it fit to do so. Does this make me disloyal? Are we going to make another attempt at the Alien and Sedition Acts after Jefferson and company proved their stupidity? Is it speaking out for movements that have fallen foul of official sanction? For example, if one supports Palestinian liberation movements (not the PLO, just movements in general), would they be accused of supporting the “other side” in the “War on Terror”? Many Irish-Catholics in the United States long supported the IRA, a group that was known for terrorist acts. If we are fighting terror, why does it always seem that we are only fighting terror within the confines of that which is however loosely affiliate with Islam?

There is certainly a place for intelligence gathering with the intent to block attacks domestically. Yet the intelligence agencies in the United States are going about things in a way that, instead of diminishing the possibilities for an attack, seem only to encourage them by creating a greater sense of distrust within the Muslim community for any government agents and it is not just in the Muslim community: overall, you are creating a palpable tension and fear of the government throughout the liberal community and, given enough time, will also face a backlash within conservative factions.

You cannot govern how people feel. The United States was built on a sense of respectful discourse and a healthy opposition to efforts by the government to crush any freedoms since, once taken away, they are almost irrevocably lost. This siege mentality must be publicly rebuked and those who espouse it in any way, shape, or form must be called to task for their statements. True to the very nature of the fight here we do not wish to prevent them for saying things, but we reserve the right to show them what they sound like and to see what lurks in the shadows of those who had before them taken this very same route.

Comparing ISIS to other historical organizations is not entirely fair. For example, to bring up the Nazi regime is to insult the memory of the tens-of-millions of deaths that abomination was responsible for both directly (through their racial policies and the Holocaust) and, well, directly by starting the Second World War. In this regard, ISIS is, as President Obama referred to them, “the JV team”. Their death toll pales in comparison to regimes such as that which existed under Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao in China (who may well hold the record for deaths), the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia under Pol Pot which, although much lower on the scale for total deaths must be recognized for the absolute barbarity of the regime, or even any of the more localized genocides such as the Hutu extermination of Tutsis in Rwanda.

Some people right here might argue, “yes, but it’s only because they do not yet have the ability to wipe out people… look what they have done in many of the places they’ve conquered and just imagine what would happen if they managed to take over a city full of, say, Hindus?” I would lend this line of thinking some credibility, but the fact remains that they have not yet done mass killings on a huge level and we here aim to describe a regime not by what they had wanted to do (the Nazi regime after all had intended to starve 30 million people living in the then Western Soviet Union) but rather by what they have done.

Rather, I think it is the degree of ideological psychosis to which they fervently cling that puts them into a different category and allows us to make some justified comparisons to those more blood-soaked regimes of years past. During the Holocaust, the annihilation of the Jews was carried out mostly in secret. Yes, the Nazis made no bones about creating the ghettos nor were they quite secretive about sending in special groups to round up Jews when they had conquered new lands. The mass killings, however, centered around the extermination camps that were created with the only purpose being to erase all Jewish life in Europe, were shrouded in secrecy. Did people have ideas about what went on there? Of course they did, but overwhelmingly they were not allowed to become cognizant about it.

Stalin’s regime as well, for all of its show trials and “public confessions”, most signed by a hand still dripping blood from the torture used to procure said confession, still maintained a large degree of secrecy about what went on. People simply disappeared, were sent to the east, were shot inside a prison and dumped in a mass grave, or a variety of other things, but only the most prominent were given the distinction of having their executions be made known for public consumption.

ISIS is different on several levels. They seem to revel in their murder-lust and they have no qualms about others knowing of it; quite the opposite, in fact they take pains to ensure that every beheading, every hanging, every killing of whatever sort is broadcast to the largest possible audience. They are a child of the internet age and have used it both for the dissemination of their ideological underpinnings (largely to gain recruits) as well as to showcase their latest batch of executions. They murder with a real sense of glee, not just because they have to go on with it. Perhaps some of them are, as the old adage goes, “just following orders”, but the first order of business with that tired trope is that it has never (with the exception of post- World War I German court inquiries) been accepted as legitimate. No banality of evil here; we are being allowed to gaze upon what hell would look like if it existed.

ISIS also has an ideology that puts them at odds with all competing states. All regimes at one time or another make treaties or covert deals with others that do not share their common cause. Hitler did not want a war with England, he wanted them to leave him alone in Europe so he could focus on the real enemy: Soviet Russia. Just the same, Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with Germany even though both sides could clearly see that the shoe of Eastern Europe was only big enough for one foot. ISIS however has no problems attacking every and any state that it borders and, since the declaration of subordinate provinces beyond its immediate reach, other states abroad. They have, in effect, declared a state of perpetual war to exist between them and anyone who does not submit. This is, of course, not terribly different than the primary modus operendi followed by the Caliphates of old with the one exception being that they had the military power to back up their threats. Another is that they treated subject nations with a large degree of mercy and justice. Indeed, many peoples found it much better living under the Islamic system (even as Christians, and especially as Jews) than under their previous state.

ISIS also makes a mockery out of Islam by their complete trampling on the tenets of that faith. Cruel methods of execution such as burning a man alive are forbidden under Islamic Law. Rape is forbidden under Islamic Law (though they seem to ignore that point when they consider, for example, Yazidi girls whom they have captured as sex-slaves and rape them up to five times a day) as is waging war during the month of Ramadan. During discussions with other Socialists, it is common to hear the old claim that Marx and Engels would have been horrified by Stalin. Just the same, Muhammad would be horrified by ISIS. Islamic leaders in the past have not laid waste to culture (Mahmoud of Ghazni aside), but ISIS seems to create a barren wasteland and establish a state that would have made Orwell consider it too extreme to model the world of 1984 after.

One could go on about the massive differences between this regime and those of the past, but this article is not written in an apologist fashion. The main issue here is to point out that for all of the reasons previously stated, ISIS is a scourge on human civilization and must be eradicated. How best to do this? There are those who suggest military action and this is not altogether a bad suggestion. Yet to be very frank, there is no reason to believe that any western democracy is going to risk the lives of their soldiers fighting this menace. One only has to think back twenty years to the debacle that befell American servicemen in Somalia and the subsequent demand for the withdrawal of troops from that country in order to imagine what the repercussions of seeing an American serviceman turned into a human torch would elicit on the home front. That leaves us with the alternative method of engaging a proxy to do the dirty work for us, say arming the Kurds or any of a number of opposition groups that are currently engaged in fighting ISIS. While this does have promise, the issue of accidentally arming the “wrong” groups is always at hand and in any case all one is really doing is piling on to the arms race of the region.

Perhaps the best way to go about dismantling everything ISIS has built up is to cripple their ability to generate income. True, it’s nowhere near as sexy to sit down and comb over a multitude of reports in order to cut off streams of revenue as it would be to simply announce that the bombing starts in five minutes, but it will work. Without money it will be increasingly difficult for ISIS to launch any real offensives. True, they will still have the capability to abduct, suicide-bomb, and behead individuals but even that, over time, will diminish. ISIS is built on an ideology that needs above all else to go from victory to victory. They need to conquer, lest their brand suffer, and all of the foreign fighters upon which they depend to swell their ranks will think twice if they truly feel that ISIS is just one of a number of failed attempts to revive the caliphate rather than the genuine item. Nobody wants to back a loser. and without money and the ability to continue functioning as a true state in the territories they control a loser is exactly what ISIS will become.

Another key issue is to help expose them for what they really are within the Islamic Community thereby reducing the chances that any young man or woman in that community will think to travel over and join them. Even though the number of individuals who have gone over is very small compared to the Muslim population at large, one can never do enough to reduce that number until it reaches zero. Fortunately, Muslim leaders are doing this by and large in most parts of the world. Especially in the West, where the allure of becoming a fighter seems to resonate a little with dissatisfied younger Muslims, we need to do all we can to work with the Muslim Communities and all possible to support them in their drive to ensure that people do not associate ISIS with mainstream Islam.

In the end it will probably be a combination of economic sanctions, public education, and military force (and quite possibly in that order) that leads to their dissolution. One can only hope that this takes place as quickly as possible, obviously, but a lot of that depends on the efforts of several major states both in the region and elsewhere. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has recently come out and vowed to help the United States in destroying ISIS, which is a fine bit of news and very welcome indeed, but we need more than just two states if only because ISIS is damaging to so many states around the globe. Let us hope that sooner rather than later the forces of civilization and the civilized world decide the time has come to put an end to these barbarians once and for all.