The Price of Liberty

Libertarian Commentary, 18 JAN 2016, #16-03B by Nathan Barton

In Europe in 2016, we are seeing a clash of cultures, caused by mass migration of, and failure to integrate, Muslims whose religion, mores, and society do NOT fit with modern European society, culture, and way of life. As a result, we see violence for the most part caused by these Muslims, and the threat of violence in response. Violence that can be, if not already, characterized as a state of war.

What is the solution? Ironically and even paradoxically, it is MORE violence.

But we live in “modern times” and surely we don’t have to repeat the mistakes of the past, right? It doesn’t have to be a dog-eat-dog world, right? Everything can be solved without violence, right? War never accomplishes anything!

Wrong. In Europe, the situation may already be beyond the point that things can be settled peacefully, if they ever could have been. Remember that Islam has invaded Europe multiple times, and been pushed back each time. First was in the 700s, through what is now Spain and into France, where the initial thrust was defeated at Tours. (It took 700 years to regain that part of Europe which was overrun then.) Second was the invasion of the Mediterranean islands and coastlines which accompanied the Turkish conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 1200s. Much of that area (the Balkans) has been strongly Muslim since, but areas such as Greece and southern Italy were slowly taken back between 1700 and 1850. The third was defeated at the “Gates of Vienna” in the late 1600s, and losses slowly regained over the next 300 years, leading directly to the European imperial control of most of the Ummah in the middle 20th Century. In each of these situations, the necessary response to violent invasion was violent self-defense. Even if that self-defense later degenerated into violent aggression, defense was the right action. Continue reading →

Libertarian Commentary, 17 JAN 2016, #16-03A  by Nathan Barton

In Part I (HERE), we discussed the rash of sexual and other attacks on New Year’s Eve, the response to those attacks, and the context: the massive immigration especially of Muslims and particularly of Arabs, and the decline in native European populations.

Why is this context important? The Fifty States have had many millions immigrate from all over the world, but we have not seen the massive outbreak of violence. Indeed, in the Fifty States, violence of this sort has declined significantly in the last four decades even as migration has grown.

The source of immigrants is one key, as is the fact that these immigrants come not just from a totally different religion and social climate, but also from lands brutalized by decades of war: The Arab-Israeli wars, Indian-Pakistani wars, Iran-Iraq, internal civil wars, and of course nearly two decades of Iraqi, Al-Qaeda and now Caliphate wars. And, of course, because these migrants have NOT assimilated over the decades and generations. Added to this is a massive trend, worldwide, of Islamic “fundamentalism” – returning to ancient customs and interpretations of the requirements of their faith, especially as related to religious law, dress, and women. Continue reading →