Left & Right March 11, 2020

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair. 

First question from the producer asks: “Do you feel confident that the government is competently managing COVID 19 in the US?”

I think there are three phases of competent leadership: monitoring constantly-changing information, adjusting logistics appropriately, and projecting an aura of confident leadership. I think the feds are good on the first two, but somewhat lacking on the third compared to, say, FDR’s fireside chats during the Great Depression.

Mark says at first it was: “What’s the big deal? It’s a little worse than the flu, but then he worries about healthcare infrastructure being strained — ICU beds for one. He sees politicization of response or lack of it in this election year  as impeding effectiveness in dealing with it. He thinks it will be Trump’s undoing.

I raise the border conflict between Greece and Turkey where Turkish leader Erdogan is releasing a million more refugees bound for northern Europe. Greece is fortifying its border. It’s getting violent and Erdogan is looking for leverage with the EU to have it recognize its claims to parts of northern Syria. He also wants plaudits from the world’s Muslims because he wants to be the next Caliph of the Islamic world.

Mark blames Trump’s pullout of US troops from northern Syria as the cause. I disagree, saying our troops were too vulnerable to attack from several different factions there and there was confusion about who were our friends and who were our enemies. I see the primary dynamic as Muslim designs on Europe — taking over demographically in a generation or two.

Mark asks who is more likely to beat Trump: Bernie or Joe? I say Bernie because he’s an outsider and may ride an outsider wave, whereas Joe Biden, who never was very bright now shows signs of dementia.

Mark claims: “That’s what they said about Trump.” I contend that Trump’s issue is more a chronic personality disorder than dementia. I see no signs that’s changing, whereas there’s plenty of evidence that Biden is deteriorating and he makes a terrible candidate. Mark tells why he chose to endorse Bernie. Biden’s campaign wasn’t organized and didn’t come to the Sun’s editorial board, that only him and Warren failed to make it because their campaigns were disorganized.

Mark thinks Biden’s surge is a big surprise and his victories in the previous day’s primaries, especially Michigan, means Bernie should drop out. He thinks voters are looking for moderate leadership from someone like Biden and not someone who wants to burn the place down like Bernie or a flamethrower like Trump.

I read a quote from Bernie from an LA Times interview in the 1980: “[I believe in] traditional socialist goals — public ownership of oil companies, factories, utilities, banks, etc.” Does that make him a communist?

Biden says dumb things, like pretending to know about guns for example, when he clearly doesn’t know an automatic from a semi-automatic.

We discuss conflicting information being put out about the virus and speculate about what will our world be like a year hence. Should we bail out cruise ships? Airlines? Insurance companies required to cover virus-related claims with no deductible? 

Tulsi Gabbard — why is she still in it?

Graffiti A Sign of Cultural Decay

It was a bad sign and disheartening to see. While strolling along the new, upper-cliff walk at Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth, Maine — one of my favorite places — I saw the graffiti. Park officials had cleared brush from a small level area and put in a picnic table surrounded by a semicircle of ten or twelve boulders rolled into place. Then some selfish, depraved individual came along with a can of red spray paint and defaced them.

It’s an otherwise lovely spot in a stunningly beautiful park with views of Portland Head Light, the shipping channel to Portland Harbor, islands in Casco Bay, and the open Atlantic beyond. Now, however, anyone enjoying a picnic there is forced to look at undecipherable symbols on most of the boulders and a good old, “F*** You” on one of them. If I were a judge and the apprehended vandal came before me, I would force him (it’s most likely a young male) to sand off every bit of that red paint by hand, however long that takes, or go to jail for the maximum sentence.

Graffiti signals a deteriorating society, the cultural equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. It should be eradicated as soon as it is detected. To leave it is to invite more. I’d liken it to the “broken window theory” first put forth by George Kelling and James Wilson in a 1982 Atlantic article: “if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.” It’s the same with graffiti. Leave it up and it will spread.

Woodford's Corner http://portlanddaily.cradockphotography.com

I’ve witnessed the phenomenon over the past seven years driving up and down Portland, Maine’s Forest Avenue every week. Stuck in traffic, I’d stare at graffiti on buildings and rooftops. At first, property owners would hastily remove it either by sandblasting it off brick walls or painting over it on other surfaces. After a year or two, however, those efforts slowed down. Now it appears proprietors have given up and the contagion is getting out of control.

"Graffiti is Art, Not Vandalism" claims an article in the Temple University newspaper Temple News. The argument is ridiculous at best. Graffiti spoils someone else’s property. I’d liken it to a dog lifting his leg on a building to mark his territory. How would a genuine artist feel if he or she purchased a large canvas and a graffiti “artist” sprayed on it in the dark of night? If vandal “artists” won’t rent billboards, how about they walk around wearing a sandwich board to display their “art”? One commenter wrote: “Graffiti is filth, period. That is like saying I took an artistic dump on the sidewalk.”

Subway in Rome

In Rome four years ago I hired a guide to show us around the Eternal City. He pointed out endless fountains — repetitive, stone-carved, muscular nudes laying around displaying genitalia. We, especially my grandson and I, were more interested in historical sites like the Colosseum and the Vatican, but each day I would ask him his opinion of the graffiti we were seeing everywhere. “Oh, that’s art too,” he insisted. On the third day, we encountered old paintings under an archway defaced by someone with a spray can. Finally, he admitted, “That is sh*t!”

This pushed our guide over the edge

Guides are licensed by Italy’s government to comment only in certain ways, but our guide got so exasperated he finally ignored those constraints. Rome was bad, but Athens, Greece is by far the worst graffiti-ridden European city I’ve seen so far. It’s a rather ugly city anyway, apart from the Acropolis and a few other sites, and graffiti is epidemic. On that trip, I was part of a larger family group and didn’t want to rain on the parade by asking our guide about it — a lovely older woman named Dora. There was much less in the rest of Greece outside Athens which was amazingly beautiful.

Walking back from Acropolis in Athens

The graffiti I saw at Fort Williams was fresh. Park officials there are very diligent and I hope they will have either painted the stones or replaced them by the time I return next weekend. The City of Portland is attempting to alleviate their problem by advising property owners, but I’m sad to report that it seems to be losing the battle.

Nice to be home

Leaving Bay of Naples

One of the nicest things about exploring far-away places is coming back home to Maine. A week and a half is about my limit for traveling. After ten days comes a point of diminishing returns after which the excitement of seeing new places is eclipsed by the desire for home and familiar routines. Perhaps if I were younger I would enjoy it longer but, like many, I couldn’t afford to travel then and was way too busy with work and family to get away.

This was my fourth trip to the Mediterranean and I can see why western civilization originated there. Compared to northern Europe where my barbarian ancestors came from, the living is relatively easy. It seldom snows except in the high mountains. In late April there was still snow in the Pyrenees and in the Alps, but it very seldom snows at sea level where we spent most of our time.

Lobsters? Barcelona market

The markets were full of fruits, vegetables, fish, and meat. They grow year-round in most areas, unlike here in northern New England where farmers must rush to plant, tend, and harvest as much as they can between frosts, and where too much rain, too little rain, a late frost, or an early frost can wipe out everything. Then farmers have to wait a whole year before gambling on it all again. In the old days of subsistence farms, that could mean the difference between eating or starving.

Our ship/city

My small town of Lovell has barely over a thousand people, but there were four thousand passengers on our enormous cruise ship, not to mention fourteen hundred crew. It was a floating city with several restaurants, theaters, bars, a casino, and I don’t know how many staterooms. It pulled into bigger cities each night where it tied up near other huge, floating city-ships. Local guides waited next to tour busses each morning to show us all around their native habitat as we walked down the ramps.

Walled town in Tuscany

Clearly those guides loved their homelands as much as I love Maine and their pride was evident as we followed them around and they explained what we were seeing. One theme every guide mentioned was the need for security. Over there, they measure history by millennia whereas the history of North America is measured in centuries. Every place on earth is equally old, of course, but if history is defined as the written record of events, the record of the Mediterranean Basin goes back far longer. And, as Karl Marx observed: war is the locomotive of history. There’s been plenty of that throughout the region.

Being one of ten or fifteen people in each tour group, I mostly listened. Guides explained their cities were once fortified — surrounded by high walls and always expecting attacks. Traveling through interior Tuscany our guide pointed out hilltop villages surrounded by walls, each with a tower inside where someone was constantly scanning the countryside for invading armies or roaming hoards of bandits. Earlier there had been a long period of relative peace when the Roman Army was so strong it could protect its provinces from outside attack — The Pax Romana, or The Peace of Rome.

When Rome collapsed, Europe went into the Dark Ages — a period when no one was in charge for very long and various tribes battled for dominance. There were was no common law and few authorities to enforce it if there were. Life was tenuous and people didn’t travel much. They ventured into the countryside to tend crops and animals, but didn’t stray far from the fortress back to which they would flee if invaders appeared.

After the Dark Ages came the Pax Britannia during which England ruled the seas and few could challenge it — until the World Wars of the 20th century. Most of you reading this have grown up in a time and place during which there has been no invasion of hostile forces bent on rape and pillage. We have lived during the Pax Americana. No armies, no navies, no hoards of bandits have dared molest Americans because they knew they wouldn’t survive if they tried. We’ve been unusually fortunate to have lived peaceful lives here but how many of us realize that?

Monaco street

While most of Europe was made up of small kingdoms during the Middle Ages, or Dark Ages if you will, nearly all merged into nation states by the 20th century. One that remains is Monaco which we visited last Friday. It has been ruled by the same family since the 13th century and it’s a rich little principality of less than a square mile and over 38,000 people. It was preparing for the May 27th Grand Prix while we were there.

Naples fortification

It’s a nice place but much too crowded for me. I like Maine.

Is Paris Safe For Our High School Students?

Has radical Muslim terrorism made Paris too dangerous? That question was debated by the school board in Conway, New Hampshire a few weeks ago. The local Kennett High School French club went to Paris during an April terrorist attack. Two jihadis opened fire with assault rifles, killing a policeman and a tourist, and wounding another policeman.

“Kennett students were heading down the famed Champs-Elysee toward the Arc de Triomphe (pictured) when shots rang out,” reported the Conway Daily Sun. “Kennett High School senior Will Synnott planned on having an exciting April vacation during a student trip to France, but he didn't expect to be running for his life from a gun-toting terrorist.”

Mr. Synnott is a senior and, in spite of his exposure to terrorist murders, wants the student trips to continue. The Sun said he also wants “to discourage people from becoming bigoted against Muslims because of last Thursday's attack.” In that, he sounds like the European media or a European Union official. After every attack in every European country, they warn against “Islamophobia,” as if that were a bigger problem than jihadis raping and murdering Europeans nearly every day somewhere on the continent.

France has been in a national state of emergency for two-and-a-half years since January, 2015 when Muslim terrorists murdered twelve people for publishing pictures of Muhammed. Months later Muslim terrorists murdered 128 people in a series of Paris attacks with guns and bombs, and wounded many more. In Nice last summer, a Muslim terrorist drove a truck into a crowd killing eighty-six. There have been rapes, stabbings, and shootings too numerous to mention before the latest attack on the Champs-Elysee. There are “no-go zones” in Paris and across the country into which even the police don’t dare to go lest Muslim residents riot. In recent presidential debates, the liberal Macron said to the conservative Le Pen, “You are giving into their [Muslims’] trap of civil war.” As I write this on Tuesday, The UK Telegraph is reporting: “Paris' Gare du Nord train station was evacuated last night as armed police reportedly searched for three 'dangerous' terror suspects.”

Such is the new Europe under multiculturalism — the word to which liberals ascribe their notion that all cultures are equal. It became an official EU policy when that multinational body came into being. Conservative European leaders like Holland’s Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen who dare criticize passages in the Koran advocating the killing of Jews? They are prosecuted, but they continue to garner support nonetheless. In spite of European mainstream media’s constant drumbeat for multiculturalism, in spite of all the wonderful falafel restaurants that have opened across Europe, a growing percentage of ordinary Europeans are observing that millions of Muslim immigrants are not assimilating.

A critical mass of Muslim immigrants in Europe have no intention of becoming French, German, British, Dutch, or Swedish. What they want is to establish Sharia Law in their adopted countries. They want to make Europe Muslim. After centuries of trying by military invasion, they’ve changed tactics. Now they’re doing it through hijrah, or jihad by migration. In the late 20th and 21st centuries, this is coincident with a drastic decline in native European birthrates. The French, Germans, British, Swedish, Italians, Greeks, Spanish, etc. are simply not reproducing. Muslim immigrants are, however, and profusely. Demography is destiny and native Europe has essentially stopped reproducing, while Muslim immigrants multiply rapidly. Muslims are 7.5% of France’s population now. What will France and the rest of Europe be like in the next generation? The one after that?

Sexual assaults against European women skyrocket across Europe while governments forbid identification of perpetrators as Muslim immigrants. Media cooperates in the coverup. When for years young Muslims set hundreds of cars on fire in France during almost any given weekend, they’re called, simply, “youths,” not Muslims. Ordinary French are not fooled, but they fear being called racist or being prosecuted for speaking up. There’s no First Amendment in the EU Constitution. It is still in force in the USA though — except on college campuses.

Those pesky French "youths"at it again

Unlimited immigration was the biggest reason for the Brexit vote in the UK. British citizens wanted out of the EU and that sentiment is spreading across Europe. On Sunday, French voters elected a left-center president who promises to stimulate the moribund French economy. In spite of France’s never-ending state of emergency, he defeated the conservative candidate who promised to restrict Muslim immigration. Economics has trumped demographics for now. Meanwhile, France is being transformed.

If the purpose of sending American high school students to France is to provide them a taste of French culture as the “Religion of Peace” changes it, then yes, send them. But first, teach them to duck and cover.

Cognitive Dissonance in Europe

It had to be galling. Geert Wilders, a member of Dutch Parliament, was found guilty three months ago of “inciting discrimination against Dutch Moroccans” — the very people who have been trying to kill him since at least 2003. Newsweek reported that he has to go around, “wearing a bulletproof vest and being shuttled between safe houses to avoid assassination. ‘I’m not in prison,’ he says. ‘But I’m not free, either. You don’t have to pity me, but I haven’t had personal freedom now for 10 years. I can’t set one foot out of my house or anywhere in the world without security.’” 

The Wilders trial perfectly illustrates Europe’s state of cognitive dissonance. In many European Union countries, one is charged with “hate speech” for criticizing Muslims who are terrorizing the entire continent. France’s Marine Le Pen has also been charged in France, along with Brigitte Bardot.

Bardot and Le Pen

It was interesting to watch media spin last Wednesday’s Dutch election results as Geert Wilders’ PVV Party, which they always call “far right,” gained five seats (33%), yet he was “defeated.” Prime Minister Rutte’s VVD Party lost eight seats (-20%), but he won a “great victory.” Prime Minister Rutte’s governing partner in the ruling coalition, the Labour Party, lost nineteen seats (-75%). How is this a victory? Because Wilders didn’t thump him as badly as polls suggested he might.

Wilders is tall. I'm 5'10"

I met Geert Wilders seven years ago at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC. He was surrounded by large, shaven-headed, tough-looking, unsmiling, body guards with ear pieces who were constantly looking around at the rest of us in the hotel function room. He cannot go anywhere without them and it’ll be that way for the rest of his life. Why? Because he’s “far-right”? No, it’s because he has dared to criticize Islam, comparing the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf as both advocate slaughtering Jews. For that, Muslims put a fatwa on his head. That means Muslims are obligated to kill him whenever they get the chance.

Bodyguards check me out

He’s been living like this since he came to the defense of a fellow member of Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was a Somali immigrant. Hirsi Ali got off a plane in Holland rather than go on toward Canada where her family had arranged she be married to an aging relative. She was granted asylum and then got elected to Parliament. Hirsi Ali’s Muslim parents had forced her to undergo a genital mutilation procedure when she was a girl. 

Hirsi Ali and Wilders at The Hague

Together with filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (great-grandnephew of the famous painter) Hirsi Ali made a short film called “Submission” depicting Muslim treatment of women. For his effort, Van Gogh was shot and stabbed on the street in broad daylight by a Muslim immigrant. Pinned to his body with a knife was a note declaring that Hirsi Ali was next. In 2003, Muslims staged an hour-long grenade assault on a building in The Hague where Ali and Geert Wilders were working in an effort to kill both. In spite of all this, it’s still criminal to criticize the “Religion of Peace” in Europe.

Angela Merkel and other European leaders said the Dutch election last week was a “good day for democracy” and for Europe because Wilders wants to lead Holland out of the European Union. All across Europe, however, there’s rising opposition to the EU’s open-borders policy of accepting millions Muslim “refugees” in spite of what millions of native-born citizens want. That’s one of the factors propelling the rise other conservative leaders in France, Austria, Germany, Italy, and other EU countries.

Meanwhile, Turkey is threatening to release 15,000 more Muslim “refugees” a month to “blow the mind” of Europe. The Turkish foreign minister said, “Soon, religious wars will begin in Europe.” President Obama’s good buddy, President Erdogan of Turkey urged Muslims living in Europe to have at least five children. It’s part of the Islamic concept of hijrah, which Islam historian Robert Spencer calls “jihad by emigration.”

If you ask ordinary Dutch, French, German, and British people, they’d say the religious wars are already underway and have been for years. Every day there’s a stabbing, a rape, a bomb, a truck attack, or some other Muslim terrorist incident somewhere in Europe, yet Merkel alone let over a million Muslims into Germany just last year. She’s up for re-election in September.

The left in Europe has for decades been pushing for ever more centralized government through the EU and the UN — and for open borders. To pave the way, they’ve attempted to indoctrinate the populace with the multicultural myth that all cultures are equal. Dutch, French, British, German, or any other European culture is no better than Muslim culture. All should be able to live together in harmony. Ordinary Europeans, however, aren’t buying it.

Grassroots Rebellion

What the left sees as progress — a flood of diverse, multicultural, unassimilated migrants from Mexico, Central America, as well as the Muslim countries of Africa, and the Middle East, many other Americans see as the disintegration of America as they know it. They’re watching similar changes in Europe and worry that western civilization itself is unraveling. They elected a Republican majority in Congress to stem immigration and the enormous growth of the federal government, then watched that Congress capitulate to the president’s big-government, open-borders agenda. These Americans are not in the minority, but their view is scorned as racist and xenophobic by establishment leaders in government, in academia, in mainstream media, and in the entertainment industry, who consider themselves more enlightened.

They’re the people candidate Barack Hussein Obama spoke disdainfully of when addressing elite donors in Marin County, California back in March, 2008: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

These Americans are rebelling now against what they see as an elite establishment coalition. As they watch the West decline, they’re realizing the leaders they elected, as well as the media who report on them, seem okay with the transformation of American that so worries them. So far the rebellion is political with Republican support for candidates they perceive as outsiders. Donald Trump/Ted Cruz Republicans believe big business and big government are symbiotic and prefer a smaller, decentralized government with more power returning to states. Others see no important differences between the two major parties and call for a third.

Their concern is exacerbated by increases in radical Islamic terrorism in both Europe and the United States that governments seem unable to deal with effectively. (Just Monday, however, the UK officially labeled the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization — breaking with Obama who praises the MB.) A recent essay by historian of Islam Raymond Ibrahim sees Islamists rushing into a vacuum created by western decline in Europe and in the United States. Ibrahim calls the unraveling described above as the West becoming a self-hating civilization, and he takes a long view: 

“Once upon a time, the Islamic world was a super power and its jihad an irresistible force to be reckoned with. Over two centuries ago, however, a rising Europe—which had experienced over one millennium of jihadi conquests and atrocities—defeated and defanged Islam. As Islam retreated into obscurity, the post-Christian West slowly came into being. Islam didn’t change, but the West did: Muslims still venerate their heritage and religion—which impels them to jihad against the Western “infidel”—whereas the West learned to despise its heritage and religion, causing it to be an unwitting ally of the jihad.”

Ibrahim scoffed at President Obama when he: “counseled Americans to get off their ‘high horse’ and remember that their Christian ancestors have been guilty of similar if not worse atrocities. That he had to go back almost a thousand years for examples by referencing the crusades and inquisition—both of which have been completely distorted by the warped postmodern worldview, including by portraying imperialist Muslims as victims—did not matter to America’s leader.”

Many Americans have a limited understanding of historical Islam and don’t detect Obama’s distortion. Some do. Others just sense that his explanation is hokey.

The horrors ISIS and other radical Islamist groups are perpetrating today have been more the rule than the exception over the 1400 years of Islamic imperialism. We’re seeing is its resurgence enabled by the retreat of a breast-beating, mea culpa western establishment trying to do penance — Europeans for their colonial past, Americans for using their powerful military to curtail communist expansion and keep oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf.

Though establishment leaders play down resurgent Islam’s threat and trumpet “Islamophobia,” fewer Americans are buying it. They’re fed up with the flood of illegals from our south seeking “aslyum” as well as others from Africa and the Middle East who may or may not be refugees. Our establishment elite portrays both as oppressed, brown-skinned victims of Western imperialism. More Americans are seeing them as foreigners looking to get on the welfare gravy train and drive up the national debt, or, at best, as unskilled laborers who would take jobs away from them and drive down their wages. They also know thousands of illegals from our south have committed serious crimes and they question whether others from Muslim countries will assimilate as Americans.

They see both Democrats and Republicans belonging to the elite establishment and maintaining the status quo and they want to change course. I hope that comes through the ballot box and worry about what may happen if it doesn’t.

Aggressive Ignorance

After last Friday, young people in Paris know what aggression is. Young people at the University of Missouri, at Yale, and at the University of Southern Maine, however, do not. Student “leaders” at Mizzou (what people are calling the University of Missouri these days) certainly do not, but think they do. They’re whining because their fifteen minutes of fame was cut short by radical Islamist massacres in Paris. Nobody is listening to their petulant demands for “safe spaces” anymore. Instead, people are wondering if there really is any such thing as “multiculturalism” and can we actually “COEXIST” with a culture like Islam, many of whose followers kill us every chance they get.

Once I thought everyone understood aggression but I was wrong. I grew up in suburban Boston, not a dangerous place, but every boy in the neighborhood knew what aggression was. When someone punched you in the head, that was aggression. If someone called you names, that was just an annoyance. Every boy had been punched at one time or another and learned how to handle it. There were two choices: fight back or turn the other cheek. Everyone knew who the fighters were — punch them and they punch back. We all knew who the meek were too, the ones willing to suffer humiliation whenever a bully felt like dishing it out. Some of us protected them when we could. Others of us were indifferent and let it happen. I assumed it was that way everywhere.

It was a different world in college. There I met guys who had never been in a fight. They’d never been punched, they said, nor had they ever punched anyone. I know because I asked them. They were nice enough guys, but I didn’t understand them, not on a basic male level. They spawned today’s metrosexuals and pajama boys — the wussy students on campuses who worry about “microaggressions" and “safe places.” They have anxiety attacks in the presence of politically-incorrect Halloween costumes or climate-change deniers. They need “trigger warnings” before anyone questions global warming or whether it’s possible for a man to change into a woman, or dares to use the words “Islam” and “terrorism” in the same sentence lest they go into a swoon.

Compare these students with the heroic young Americans who charged a radical Muslim terrorist with a loaded AK-47 on a French train back in August. Who are you proud of? Which kind of young person do you want more of? Please realize that we’re getting more whiners and fewer heroes because your tax dollars are going to the former and not the latter.

Even more timid than America’s sissified students are their professors and administrators. They meekly submit their resignations at the very suggestion they may not be “doing enough” to protect the hothouse flowers that make up the student body at their campuses. They fawn over Bowdoin College’s Deray McKesson as he lectures at Yale defending looting as a righteous tactic. McKesson lectures at Bowdoin also on “Black Lives Matter,” never mentioning how he’s funded by George Soros and other Democrat fat cats for his anarchist activities. McKesson even gets personal invitations from Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, as well as Valerie Jarrett.

Now these progressive professors and college administrators are quaking in their Birkenstocks as petulant students demand their resignations. “What have we wrought?” they ask themselves. The same question is in the minds of Democrat presidential candidates who get shouted off their campaign stages by “Black Lives Matter” activists when they dare suggest that all lives matter.

The same question is being asked by European leaders whose citizens are in open rebellion against European Union policy that allows armies of Muslim “refugees” into their countries and then supports them on welfare for generations. So far, anyone who has publicly spoken against the policy is charged with hate crimes. According to brietbart.com, “Dutch police have announced they will be prosecuting democratically-elected house of representatives member Geert Wilders for asking his voters whether they wanted to see fewer Moroccans or not in [Holland].” In France “[Actress Brigitte] Bardot was convicted for ‘decrying the loss of French identity and tradition due to the “multiplication of mosques while our church bells fall silent for want of priests.’” Also charged with hate crimes was Marine Le Pen, a member of European Parliament, for daring to compare Muslims to Nazis.

After last Friday, progressives in Europe and America have to be asking themselves: “What have we wrought?” Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about microaggression now that Islamist aggression can no longer be ignored. Maybe multiculturalism is a pipe dream. Maybe we can’t COEXIST. Maybe Marco Rubio is right when he claims we’re in a “Clash of Civilizations.”