26 October 2006

When rape is inevitable, enjoy it.

I guess.

During the 1990 Texas gubernatorial race, Republican contender (against the late Ann Richards) Clayton Williams (for whom I grudgingly voted) cause a big stir by quipping to reporters about rain, “It's a lot like rape. As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

As someone who knows two women who have been raped, I find it difficult to employ any adjective that will adequately describe Williams’ assertion. But even so, it was difficult not to recall that episode while reading
this article at Brussels Journal.com.

It’s an article on the fact that people are emigrating from Europe faster than immigrants are coming in. (And we know who is immigrating there.) And the reason people are emigrating from Europe is that they love freedom, but they don’t want to fight for it. Henryk M. Broder, the article’s subject describes a debate he had with a woman he describes as a “stupid blonde woman author.” In the course of the debate this woman author “said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She [also] said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death.”

Difficult as it may be to believe, it gets worse:

In a recent op-ed piece in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard (23 October) the Dutch (gay and self-declared “humanist”) author Oscar Van den Boogaard refers to Broder’s interview. Van den Boogaard says that to him coping with the islamization of Europe is like “a process of mourning.” He is overwhelmed by a “feeling of sadness.” “I am not a warrior,” he says, “but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”

Good at enjoying freedom, but not so great at fighting for it. Explains a lot about why Europeans don’t like us:

Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe…is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit.

These are the people whom Democrats would have us emulate. At least now I have the answer to the question I’ve been asking of my liberal friends and relatives (i.e, If you like the way Europeans live then why don’t you move there?). That answer has really been starting me in the face for a long time. Oh, well.

Oh, Europe. Your Catholic Christian forebears fought long and hard (for over 700 years in Spain!) for the freedoms you have enjoyed for over a thousand years. They wasted their time and their blood, didn’t they? How those early Muslim invaders would love to have taken the continent from people such as you! Sure, it took them eight years to take Spain, but at least they had to fight for it! If only your ancestors had been a bit more willing to be raped! Why, today we’d be ignoring Charles the Mop instead of remembering
Charles the Hammer!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spain and other parts of Europe were under muslim rule for over 800 years. Europe came to renaissance period from dark period due to muslim invaders otherwise it was a crime to bathe in europe. The wonderful exotic culture of spain, italy ang greece and its food, architecture is directly inspired by muslim cultures. If it wasn't for muslims, all of europe would be eating nothing more than mashed potatoes. Check with the history books without having any bias in your head.

James Frank Solís said...

I'm going to dispute with you that the diet of Spain, Italy and Greece would have consisted of nothing but mashed potatoes before the Muslim invaders showed up. There no Muslims until the seventh century; and the Greco-Roman world, though on the wane, had more to eat than you credit them with having. During the 1st and 2d centuries, Italy, which had been producing mostly grains, was turning to the raising of sheep and cattle. Egypt and North Africa were the primary suppliers of bread. Presumably, someone was eating meat and bread, even before the benevolent Muslims showed up. It is also well known that inhabitants of the Mediterranean Basin used olive oil in the place of butter, which was being used by the Germanic tribes to the north. These things are well known and documented.

Spain, from where my ancestors came to South Texas in 1878, had civilization brought to it by the Romans and Carthagians. When the Muslims showed up in the 8th century, the Visigoths were ruling. None of this is to say that all of Europe was any sort of paradise. But it is to say that Europeans weren't cave men, hunter-gatherers. You could stand to check your own biases.

Be all that as it may, your bit of drivel does not address the point of the article at BrusselsJournal.com; nor does it address the point of my blog post. Some people just don't want to be ruled by dictators, no matter how benevolent and no matter what kind of wonderful diet their dictators bring with them. Many, if not most, of the Germanic tribes did not just roll over and accept Roman rule, now matter how benevolent the Romans told them their rule would be.

My Spanish (Asturian) ancestors, for reasons I suppose you'll never begin to understand, must have thought a diet of mashed potatoes would be preferrable to Moorish rule. My family's surname (apellido) was bestowed upon its first bearers during the reconquista, which began in just over a decade after the Moors arrived. They didn't want your benevolent Muslim rule.

Furthermore, all these wonderful things the Muslims invaders brought, were by and large already in extistence when the prophet began spreading his message. You speak of the renaissance. The renaissance was a return to Greco-Roman sources, which had been copied, preserved and discussed for centuries before prophet was even born. And when the Muslims started studying them and copying them they were able to do so because Christian monks in monasteries had been preserving them.

Furthermore, had the Muslims invaders not showed up, that renaissance would still have come. Those Greco-Roman sources has already made it is as far north as the Celtic monasteries of the Irish coast by the sixth or seventh centuries. And when those source returned to Europe, they were brought by Celtic monks.

I have read the hisory books without a bias in my head. You should give it a try yourself. I know what bit of civilization and intellectual sources the Muslims brought; but I also know who first civilized the nomadic eastern tribes from which the Muslims sprang, you arrogant ass. I know the barbarous state of what is now Western Europe. But I also know who made it a barbarous waste, after the Romans had begun the process of bringing Greco-Roman culture to Europe.

The issue of the article was freedom. On that issue, I don't think Muslims do as well as others. That was the point of the article and that was my point.

Good day.

John Arley Burns said...

"If you like the way Europeans live then why don’t you move there?"
I did.

James Frank Solís said...

Now that's what I'm talking about.

Anonymous said...

What a complete idiot that Anonymous guy...

1. Europeans eating nothing but potatoes if not for the Muslims? Right... The potato was of course completely unknown in Europe before the 16th century when the spaniards brought it from Peru. Not the Muslims no. Not so many muslims on the American continent (or in Spain) at the time.

2. It was never a crime to bathe in Europe. It is utter nonsense. Roman baths were wonders of the Ancient world with fancy hot water basins and underfloor heating etc.

In medieval times too people bathed a lot. They were not unclean. The closest you can get to substantiating that muslim prejudice was that public bathing houses were at one point shut down - because men and women would bathe together and drink a lot of wine and eat good food at the same time so it turned a bit too wild in the end. So they dropped the public baths for a while. But then people would bathe at home. It is an islamic myth that infidel europeans are/were unclean. Probably the myth originated because Christians eat pork and drink wine. So the muslims told stories about how "dirty" they were.

While islamic medicine and music contributed with some knowledge to Europe - for which we are grateful - it is nothing but a dark lie that medieval Europe was a primitive society. It was not in the renaissance but in the middle ages - without any help from muslims but a lot of help from monks nuns and priests - that institutions such as hospitals and universities were first created.

This is and was the legacy of christian Europe from which the entire world still benefits today.

Magnificent architecture was built - fabulous Gothic cathedrals. The romance novel - chivalry - lots of the moral ideals we still have. All out of Europe itself and Christianity.

And the renaissance was instigated by Greek scholars who fled from Constantinople when the muslims sacked it. They brought with them Plato's works and other literary treasures.

- Mary

About Me

James Frank Solís
Former soldier (USA). Graduate-level educated. Married 26 years. Texas ex-patriate. Ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
View my complete profile

Blog Archive