n5wd wrote:
The "security officer" was an unarmed security officer. Hit in leg, discharged from hospital in less than four hours. Everyone's hopeful for a speedy recovery!
"Free speech"? Yes, but like yelling " Fire" in a crowded theatre,
it shoulda been obvious that some sort of negative reaction was going to happen. SWAT was already on scene due to that possibility.
There were apparently no Muslim demonstrators there at the Center - wonder if someone knew something was afoot?
Not only that, but I just saw an Garland PD presser about an hour ago, and the officer said that they were going to rethink allowing these kinds of events in the future.
I agree that there was the potential for trouble in this, but the trouble makers were on the outside, not the inside. And I note that when there was a big Muslim rally a few months ago in Dallas, they wouldn't even allow the media in. Just as the Anglican church in Africa considers a "godless" United States to be a mission field, so does Islam in the rest of the world. The difference is that the Anglicans want neither to convert through violence, nor to suppress free speech, nor to institute a set of laws which curtail human rights and justify execution and maiming for all kinds of crimes against their religious standards.
I have absolutely no problem with Muslims who desire to live here among us and enjoy the benefits of liberty and a free society alongside the rest of us. George W Bush's doctrine was to fight islamic extremism overseas, and that worked after a fashion........we killed a lot of them......but we also probably drove some further into extremist arms in the process. In the end, I honestly think we are going to have to fight and kill them here at home. We have a government that treats border security like it is a joke, using people who invade us illegally as pawns in a larger process to subvert the Constitution. Under the guise of free speech, we allow feloniously-minded Imams to preach a version of Islam that foments violence and hatred. Between terrorists who sneak across the borders, and terrorists home-grown, we are kidding ourselves if we think we're not going to see more and more of this.
The problems are twofold:
One is that our justice system is not really setup to deal with terrorists. Sure, we SAY it is a crime, but what do we DO about it? HOW LONG did it take for the Pentagon to finally agree that the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terror and not "workplace violence", and that (ex)Major Nidal Hasan was a terrorist, and not a "disgruntled employee"? How can we take a government's word seriously that it intends to protect our rights, when it allows one religious variant to preach murder, while it punishes another for preaching the value of life? The reason we have this situation is that we have a government that cowers in abject fear of calling a spade a spade, and appearing to be "insensitive" to the "needs" of bullies.
The other problem is that, because police are hamstrung by the law, and government is unwilling to do its dang job, the protection of individual citizens from terrorists is going to devolve into the hands of those citizens who own firearms and are inclined to keep them handy. When this happens, what are they going to be charged with? Racism and murder? Or will they be recognized for public service?
And a greatest tragedy out of all of this is that there are a LOT of muslim people in the U.S. who are here for exactly the reasons I stated in my 3rd paragraph. Exactly as some early Christian colonists first arrived on our shores to escape a religious persecution from
other Christians in Europe, we have a significant population of Muslims who fled sectarian violence
between Muslims in other countries like Lebanon (our member here, Beiruty comes to mind), Iraq, Iran, etc. So long as they absolutely respect the Constitution in ALL of its particulars - which means learning to live in peace alongside Christians, Jews, Atheists, or other religious people; as well as respecting and obeying secular laws, so long as they are Constitutional. These Muslims are going to pay the price in suspicion and public ill-will because of the general fear that regular people will come to have for anything Islam as a result of radicalized Islamic violence. They will have no more understanding of the difference between a peaceful Sufi and a terrorist Wahhabi, than they might have of the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist. And yet, many of these peaceful people are good citizens, they enlist and serve in our military, they are doctors and lawyers, and contributing members of society, and the blowback is going to hurt them unfairly.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
Geez, read the comments on the Daily Mail site --even the Brits aren't that deluded. I no longer believe immigration is even an issue in California. The problem is California is Californian's. An immigrant take over could do nothing but improve the place and put a little bit of spine back in the population.