Showing posts with label natural law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label natural law. Show all posts

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Individualism vs. Collectivism: No Compromise Possible

Collectivism does not cause the group to focus on the group. It is, in the end, only done through physical force by those who choose to make the individual focus on the group----or suffer the consequences. Voluntary cooperation with a group, or voluntary assistance to a group, is not collectivism. Collectivism is the generic term that includes, but is not limited to, Marxism, Socialism, and Communism.

You therefore do not "balance out" your right to be an individual, with the force behind a collective.


"There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction." [1]


Why is it a compromise of basic principles to "balance out" individualism with collectivism?


"Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members." [2]


Individualism goes back to the Protestant Revolution; but politically, individualism and "individual sovereignty" go back to the Enlightenment, derived from the concept of "natural rights" which collectivism denies.


"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..."
http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm
 



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Monday, March 1, 2010

Why Is There Something Instead of Nothing?



It's really simple, but not simple to always understand.

If "nothing" existed, then "something" would exist--namely, "nothing".

If "nothing" had no existence, by definition "existence" would have existence and anything that has "existence" absolutely exists. That would not be "nothing".

"Nothingness" cannot "exist". It also cannot not exist. If it did "not not exist", the double negative means something would exist, and it can't be "nothingness".

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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Reason and Perfection

The Question: Why is man rational? What makes us different from other animals?

The Answer:
In Greek philosophy of "natural law" (physics) there was a term no longer used: perfection. This doesn't have the same meaning as the word we use.

In a sense, the Greeks understood evolution, because the First Science was metaphysics, which is about "Being" and "Becoming." http://www.tompotter.us/being.html
http://www.albany.edu/~rn774/fall96/phil…

"The things of this world are or exist only so far as they participate in the being of the eternal ideas, or so far as man in his creative capacity of craftsman, artist, and especially lawmaker copies these ideas. Here teleological thinking enters the scene. In the concept which gropes after and apprehends the essence or the idea of the thing there is contained at the same time also its end, the completion or perfection of the idea of the thing.

"The essences of things, which are exemplifications of the ideas conceived by the divine intellect, constitute at the same time the end or goal of the things themselves. The perfection or fulfillment of the things is their essence: formal cause and end are one (causa finalis is ultimately identical with causa formalis)." http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_s…

So, in evolution (becoming) all things tend toward the perfection of the idea naturally inherent in the subject that has "being". What it evolves into (the act of "becoming") can be described as the acorn that can become nothing but an oak. It can't become a donkey or a pine tree.
In the essence of the "being" of the thing called "mind", there is the evolution into what it can only become, like the acorn into an oak.

Other natural forces could have prevented it, as they prevented the dinosaurs from remaining on earth. Something natural could have wiped out all life on earth, or all life containing "mind".
But that didn't happen. So the mind had to evolve from the simplest forms, to its "perfect" form. That would appear to be "rationality." The chimp is said to be closest to man in this respect but is 400,000 years behind us. Perhaps in another 400,000 years we will discover whether "rationality", in the act of "becoming", will find a new perfection.


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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Bye, Bye, American Pie, As It Grinds to a Halt


Natural law as it applies to Mankind requires that men respect the boundaries of freedom that do not make economic or social slaves of others.
"Barack Obama made fifteen references to 'pie' in 100 seconds of a speech -- all about dividing up the pie of the American economy [while] his audience laughed and chanted, 'Pie! Pie!' to show how hungry they were. In one fell swoop Obama gave away the rapacity of socialism.

"Or as Michelle O explained, "The truth is, [ ] someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." James Lewis American Thinker

Lewis makes a compelling case about how, while "The Left likes to preen itself with the word ‘progressive,' [ ] it is actually the most regressive political strategy in history."

As I wrote in Monday's Academy Blogger, numerous states are currently declaring sovereignty from the Federal government.

For those not familiar with this concept, it has nothing to do with secession from the Union. It has everything to do with the Tenth Amendment, which states:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"...


This means specifically and categorically that the Constitution was, as we know from history, created by the States to unite them under a Federalist system. What we have had for more than a hundred years is not Federalism, but Nationalism as inadvertantly conceived, in great part, from the creation of the "citizen of the United States" by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This means the roles were reversed, whereby the States became agents of the national government. The States did not accept this during the debates over the design of the Union, did not write the Constitution to be National rather than Federal, and would not have signed it that way because the States intended to keep power from being centralized in D.C., which is the definition of a national government: centralization of power.

What in the Federal Constitution gives the President, the Congress, the Courts when they side with nationalism, Michelle O. and all others who think like her, to accept the Marxist decree, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need?"

That is precisely what our First Lady said, and precisely what she meant. She meant what she said. So did the President when he made his "pie" speech; so did the crowd chanting, "Pie! Pie!"

"Socialism is rapaciously greedy -- that's what endless envy warfare comes down to. [ ] That is why everything is grist for the mill of Obama Marxism. Old-time Marxism just pitted the poor against the rich--[but] Odacity is voracious because there's never enough free pie. It's the pie supply that grinds to a halt," says Lewis in the Thinker.

The Obamas are not asking people to altruistically give up a portion of their own pies so that government may decide who it wishes to give it to; it is economically much worse and morally more evil than that. The Obamas are telling people that the government will take as much of the pie as they deem necessary in order to redistribute it to those they deem worthy or needy enough of receiving our stolen goods.

The States are tired of being "demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government...[ ] many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; yet a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States..." [condensed from the Michigan "Journal of the House of Representatives]

And yet, States are clamoring right now for the $40 billion removed (as of this writing) from the $815 billion (as of this writing) "stimulus" bill, which 200+ economists disagree will properly "stimulate".

To solve the problem of there never being enough pie, we must begin to recognize, as historically we used to do, at least two truths:
1) the pie belongs to those who made it, but they must voluntarily, capitalistically, re-distribute some of it--to those who can help them make the pie larger. When they capitalistically redistribute, the pie gets larger, and no one must altrusitically give some away, nor be forced at the point of the government's gun to have it taken from his/her politically dead, cold fingers. And
2) nature's evolution of man did not create him to be a rapacious beast toward the fellows of his own species. Natural rights are not to be compromised for the purposes of nationalism.

Natural law as it applies to Mankind requires that men respect the boundaries of freedom that do not make economic or social slaves of others. Everything the Left, and much of the Right, stands for anymore is a breach of that boundary.

That is why the Obama administration understands that a populist uprising will fill the streets of America will protests against these invasions of our Constitutional liberties--just as the streets of other nations are beginning to fill with protests.

"Seems to me that in tough economic times you can expect to see civil unrest, rioting and even armed resistance. The Federal government saw fit to recall soldiers from Iraq to post them on American soil waiting to be deployed to quell disorder..." Circle of 13

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Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Identify Natural Law with Capitalism

Learn to Identify Natural Law and Ethics:

Begin with Capitalism

Naturalist ethics could not have devised such a convoluted law as that "fathers' rights" law in one state that makes a man claim responsibility for a pregnancy before the pregnancy is known about, let alone confirmed--if he wants any rights. [see Natural Law continued ]

But before we understand why, we must understand why Capitalism is the foundation for a natural rights philosophy, given that capital does indeed exist. Capital did not always exist. Capitalism is a fairly recent development in the economic underpinnings of man's affairs.

Under primitive bartering civilizations, property used for barter must be given the same consideration as Capital in our world. In our world, Capital is the barterable chicken, the service of shoeing a horse, the dozen eggs, or the handmade implement that would be the subject of barter. Capital is property just like a cow.

Underlying all other rights is the right to property: first, to the property of one's own being; secondly to the values that may be produced by one's own being. The property of one's own being involves and includes individual sovereignty, where sovereignty is defined as "indigenous" http://folklife.si.edu/resources/center/cultural_policy/pdf/RobAlbrofellow.pdf ; "substantive ("inherent and inalienable") [Locke] http://patriotpost.us/histdocs/naturallaw.htm ; or as "that state in which an individual would find him/herself if he/she was the only individual in existence."

That "state" is as natural as it gets. But in such a state, as a matter of fact until only a few short hundreds of years ago, capital was not even a consideration. But once its existence became a fact, became known, and its holders knew its value as intangible assets, its ownership had to be accepted as indigenous and substantive, inherent, and inalienable as the ownership of one's own being. The reason for this is because capital is the creation of the being of individual humans.

Capital as wealth is created, in the same manner that art is created, as a meal is created, as a home is created--by the mind and hands of men.

Ownership of one's own being is designated as 'individual sovereignty," and "was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.; http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm Today, people scoff at the notion, presuming what modern education teaches, lacking as it is in its original "liberal" roots: that only nations can have sovereignty. Even the sovereignty of each American State is being whittled away by national sovereignty. "Liberal" education in its original roots led Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau and others to consider and endorse at least the concept of "common sovereignty," derived from the "consent of the governed." It took the Americans to understand that what becomes "common" must have its roots in individualism first. No individual can contribute to what becomes "common" unless he or she first owns it in order to relinquish it up to the "common sovereignty."

Individual sovereignty is still is the common assumption today, among naturalists. Kelly Ross goes on to say, "If 'to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men,' this can only mean that something, from which people must be protected, threatens the exercise of rights to 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.'" Governments instituted through the consent of the governed get their powers only from those powers the citizens are willing to give to it. They cannot give to it what they, themselves, do not posses.

"The relationships between federalist political structure and the sovereignty of the individual," writes James M. Buchanan, "must be carefully examined, particularly in terms of the implications for current discussions in Europe, Mexico, and the United States." http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj15n2-3-8.html

"The explicit claim is that the individual is the sovereign unit in society; his natural state is freedom from and equality with all other individuals; this is the natural order of things." Joseph J. Ellis; "American Sphinx,The Character of Thomas Jefferson"

An extremely radical but acceptable view for millions, especially for Americans, runs in the Objectivist line of thinking, as with these quotes from "Objectivism and Thomas Jefferson; 6. The Non-Initiation of Force" : http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/otj60.htm


"As a corollary to an individualist society, it is necessary that a nation not have the right or power to compel actions [such as conscription], even for its own survival. Were that right allowed, a nation of people would be permitted collectively to identify duties and responsibilities that individuals owed to the common good and then could compel with force if necessary unwilling citizens. To permit that would be inconsistent with the form of individualism in which individual rights actually mean that no human authority can compel an individual to do anything other than to desist from initiating force against another individual. Therefore, the 'non-initiation of force' is a necessary part of the philosophy of individualism." [ibid]

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson;" thus:

see Natural Law: Begin with Capitalism for continuation





Join the Financial Bailout Debate

What if you could sit side by side with a Cato scholar at a debate forum and offer suggestions on topics like the financial bailout plan, health care, national security and education?
The Cato Institute is participating in a debate series hosted by a new interactive site,
Google Knol. The debates on Knol are meant to offer a variety of in-depth opinions from experts, and afford visitors the opportunity to engage scholars on the ideas that are posted. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/10/07/join-the-financial-bailout-debate/



Gmail Goggles: Joke or brilliant self-censorship tool?

The folks at Gmail have developed a number of optional add-ons for their flagship e-mail program. Some let you improve your productivity. Others give you new ways to organize message. And now there's one designed to prevent you from sending inappropriate e-mails when you're drunk. http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/10/gmail-goggles-joke-or-brillian.html



If our wildest dreams became reality

"It is not just those who built the QE2 who look on the ship with a special fondness. In an odd way, it is as though the boat manages to unite the classes, even though it represents what divides them. One reason it can do this is that the cruise ship has for a long time been the ultimate symbol of luxury, but at the same time it is something that most people could aspire to enjoy as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. People started work or got married with dreams of setting sail on a cruise for their retirement or ruby wedding anniversary, and often that's just what they did." http://julianbaggini.blogspot.com/2008/10/if-our-wildest-dreams-became-reality.html



Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Natural Law

Naturalist Ethics, Natural Law

by Curtis Edward Clark
The Academy's accepted general description of ethics is: "that study (also referred to as moral philosophy) or discipline which concerns itself with judgments of approval and disapproval, judgments as to the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, virtue or vice, desirability or wisdom of actions, dispositions, ends, objects, or states of affairs."

It is my favorite description because it covers--in general--everything ethics is concerned with. The "Dictionary of Philosophy," (Runes; Ed.) goes on, in much longer detail as to what all those sub-descriptions mean, and how different philosophers have dealt with it, etc.

Ethics is a "study" or a "discipline," as it says above, but before it ever came to be studied in any academy in Ancient Greece, it was an informal idea for tens of thousands of years, as primitive men tried to live side by side with rules that had value for the tribe or community. But as a branch of philosophy, it could not be formalized until philosophy itself was discovered and formalized.

"[M]etaethics [is] a removed, or bird's eye view of the entire project of ethics [,] as the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts...Two issues, though, are prominent: (1) metaphysical issues concerning whether morality exists independently of humans, and (2) psychological issues concerning the underlying mental basis of our moral judgments and conduct." "The Internet Enclyclopedia of Philosophy"; http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/ethics.htm

Formalized ethics is what we find in the fields of professions such as medicine and law:

"Most professions have highly detailed and enforceable codes for their respective memberships. In some cases these are spoken of as 'professional ethics.'

"Though law often embodies ethical principals, law and ethics are far from co-extensive. Many acts that would be widely condemned as unethical are not prohibited by law -- lying or betraying the confidence of a friend, for example. And the contrary is true as well. In much that the law does it is not simply codifying ethical norms." Cornell University Law School http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/ethics
Natural Law continued
including:
How Do We Learn to Identify Natural Law and Ethics?

Financial Crisis and Recession

"The severe financial crisis and resulting worldwide economic recession we have been forecasting for years are finally unleashing their fury. In fact, the reckless policy of artificial credit expansion that central banks (led by the American Federal Reserve) have permitted and orchestrated over the last fifteen years could not have ended in any other way."
Daily Article by Ludwig von Mises Institute http://mises.org/story/3138
"Barack Obama currently has the following health-care ad in the field. [for the vid and complete article: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/10/06/false-or-misleading-in-every-particular/ It’s an effort to make Obama’s health plan appear moderate. That’s quite a trick, considering the plan might give Washington more control over the health-care sector than the Clinton health plan. So pretty much the only way they could create the appearance of moderation was to write a script that is false or misleading in every particular.
The ad begins:

"Health care reform. Two extremes. On one end, government-run health care, higher taxes. On the other, insurance companies, without rules, denying coverage. Barack Obama says both extremes are wrong.

"Those are not opposing extremes. In fact, Obama pursues government-run health care, higher taxes, and insurance companies denying coverage, all at once." Cato-at-liberty
for buyers of certain electric cars, including Chevy Volt
"As Congress rushed to throw every conceivable bribe"sweetener" into the second version of the bailout bill in order to drum up enough votes to get it passed, apparently one of the goodies to make it in was a $7,500 tax credit for buyers of some plug-in cars, including the upcoming Chevy Volt.

But in order to qualify for even a smaller credit, the electric vehicles must have at least a 4 kWh battery, and that eliminates the Toyota Prius, which led Toyota to oppose the credit:
"In Brookville, Pennsylvania, there is a conflict between the First Apostles Doctrine Church and the municipal government because the church wants to provide shelter for the homeless but the government wants the church to abide by local zoning regulations. No one disputes the value in helping the homeless, but government officials do insist that acting in the name of Jesus isn't a sufficient justification for simply ignoring the law."
"Advertising can be philosophically annoying. I don’t just mean ads which contain obvious lies (Carlsburg — probably the best beer in the world), trivial truths (There’s only one Coca-Cola), irrelevancies (Waaassuuuuup!), or fallacious thinking (If I can lose weight, you can too). I mean adverts which wander into philosophical territory before jumping up and down. Happiness is not a cigar called Hamlet. The pharmacy Boots has finally stopped using the slogan ‘Boots — ideas for life’. Boots does not provide one with ideas for life.
"These sorts of adverts can be mildly irritating, but I lost my composure when I read Starbuck’s claim that it offers ‘100% ethically traded coffee’. Really? A bit of unscientific googling reveals a lot, but doesn’t an ethical trade require all sorts of things Starbucks probably doesn’t (maybe cannot) provide."



Note:
I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The Last Nail in the American Fascist Takeover

You Are Losing the Right to Challenge Fed Policy In the Courts of America
Naturalism is a way of thinking, an epistemic "modus operandi." Alone, it is not a strict philosophical system, as is evident by the many variation of naturalism. But the one thing all variations have is the justification for seeing natural laws in all things, and humans are no exception. We too operate by natural law, but natural law for humans is more than following our biological and environmental influences to their ends.

Natural law for humans is following reason and free will to its natural ends, overcoming where necessary the influences of biology and environment, and whatever else may not be of the will and/or of reason.

Economics is necessary to human nature. The first person in history to exchange in barter one thing for another created the field of economics, and it had to happen. It was only a matter of time before money had to be created, because bartering means you must have possession of the item that someone else wants in order to get what he wants. Money, when its standard is accepted, is much easier to carry in your pocket or purse than a chicken.

Capitalism is the economic form proper to naturalism because it requires no coercion, works automatically when left alone, and creates wealth which is distributed within a civilization by the simple means of: "He who has capital exchanges it for material or services owned or provided by someone else, of which material or services he needs or desires, but does not purchase for altruistic ends."

Rational egoism, not altruism, is naturalistic human nature in the field of psychology. Capitalism is the naturalistic psychological desire on the part of egoism to want to be fair in economics. Any form of economics that is not laissez faire is less than the fairness demanded by rational egoism. That automatically defines capitalism as the rational psychology of dealing fairly with other humans in the field of economics.

The following is not fair:
Not only has the U.S Treasury Department "included foreign banks into this crazy scheme [to save Wall Street] but they've also included this gem in section 8:
'Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are
non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.'"

By what Article of the Constitution is the Congress permitted to extend to any function of the Federal Government the unsupervised authority, unreviewable by any Court in the land, to act in the manner of a fascist regime and dictate all the the elements of economics by which an economy must operate?


Bush and Paulson are acting in the manner of fascist economic tyrants. Do you think "fascist" is over-reaching or reactionary? Here is the definition:
"In economics, fascism [is] seen as a third way between laissez-faire capitalism and communism. Fascist thought acknowledge[s] the roles of private property and the profit motive as legitimate incentives for productivity—provided that they did not conflict with the interests of the state." [italics added] http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html


To that I should add a huge exclamation point, but by adding it I am admitting my dismay that anyone could think such economic "middle ground" "acknowledges the role of private property." It certainly does not. If private property was properly acknowledged, such legislation would not put a gun in the hands of Paulson and his department.

Why do I say the Treasury Department and the Fed would have guns in their hands? Because "the word fascism comes from the Latin fasces, meaning a bundle of rods with an axe in it."

This "bundle of rods with an axe in it" was used to initiate force against other persons, specifically for the purpose of preventing dissention and for bringing the form of "order" that was desired and acceptable to those wielding the fasces.

Mirriam-Webster Online defines fascism as "a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control" and indicates "instances of army fascism and brutality."
Still another source says of fascism that it "rejects the liberal doctrines of individual autonomy and rights, political pluralism, and representative government..." [italics added.] http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/whatfasc.html

This rejection of individual sovereignty with its inherent rights to act in its own best regard by the just qualities of non-coercive capitalism, this rejection of political pluralism and representative government, is the complete description of the epistemic roots of fascism.
While that description does not cover all the methods used to implement such rejection, the wielding of a fasces in the ancient world is replaced by the gun in our world. Who ever thinks he will operate outside the sphere of total government control is he who will not be prosecuted but summarily fined or jailed without any recourse to the courts.

The only honest appraisal I found of what is going on epistemically was from a left-wing blogger who wrote:
"Even if nothing good comes out of the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion intervention in the mortgage crisis, maybe we can get U.S. economic leaders to stop pretending they're capitalists. Capitalists who expect the government to bail them out when the economic roller-coaster they've been pillaging runs off the track, as it inevitably must, are not capitalists -- they're beggars looking for a handout from the same hand they've been biting for years. That the supposedly laissez-faire Bush administration has to ask Congress to rescue the financial system is a humiliation and a repudiation of decades of Republican Party economics. Where were the market 'corrections' to prevent the meltdown?" [italics added] http://viewsfromtheleftcoast.blogspot.com/

The dog-eat-dog lobbyists have finally gotten what they deserved. But the American public deserved better. The American public deserved the protection of the government against such dog-eat-dog lobbying and policies and legislation and court reviews.

Now it seems, if this legislation before Congress is passed with Section 8 intact, [see above] then no court in the land will have the jurisdiction to arbitrate and judge this new economic fascism. The American people will have lost, capitalism will have lost, justice will have lost, and we might as well all go out and get our own fasces and use them against the government officials who use them against us.

As I recall, self-protection is still a right in this country.

For another perspective on this subject, titled:
Welcome to the final stages of the coup...
Please click on the linked title above.

Yesterday's Academy Post Turns Into Today's American Headline: "The Jihad Prevention Act"

Sharia Law in Britannia

"Dear Curtis, Last week we learned that Islamic sharia law is now being followed in numerous cities in Great Britain, enforced by sharia courts. News reports indicate as many as 100 cases have been heard in such courts. Thus continues the tragic saga of Great Britain’s capitulation to militant Islam. The good news is that here in America the threat of sharia law is gradually getting the attention of more and more elected representatives. The latest illustration of this is the report below, carried on the “Muslims Against Sharia” website, that Congressman Tom Tancredo has proposed legislation called the “Jihad Prevention Act.” However, because Congress is trying to wrap up its business for this year, coupled with the fact that it is trying to grapple with the financial sector meltdown, it is a virtual certainty that Congress will not take up Tancredo’s legislation this year. But every time someone like Congressman Tancredo introduces legislation, or Congresswoman Sue Myrick puts forth a plan to “wake up America” to the threat of radical Islam, progress is being made. Progress is being made!" http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/learn/recent-news

Tancredo Proposes Anti-Sharia Measure in Wake of U.K. Certification of Islamic Courts “Jihad Prevention Act” would deny U.S. visas to advocates of ‘Sharia’ law, expel Islamists already here WASHINGTON, DC – Amid disturbing revelations that the verdicts of Islamic Sharia courts are now legally binding in civil cases in the United Kingdom, U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) moved quickly today to introduce legislation designed to protect the United States from a similar fate. According to recent news reports, a new network of Sharia courts in a half-dozen major cities in the U.K. have been empowered under British law to adjudicate a wide variety of legal cases ranging from divorces and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

“This is a case where truth is truly stranger than fiction,” said Tancredo. “Today the British people are learning a hard lesson about the consequences of massive, unrestricted immigration.” Sharia law, favored by Muslim extremists around the world, often calls for brutal punishment – such as the stoning of women who are accused of adultery or have children out of wedlock, cutting off the hands of petty thieves and lashings for the casual consumption of alcohol. Under Sharia law, a woman is often required to provide numerous witnesses to prove rape allegations against an assailant – a near impossible task.

“When you have an immigration policy that allows for the importation of millions of radical Muslims, you are also importing their radical ideology – an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the foundations of western democracy – such as gender equality, pluralism, and individual liberty,” said Tancredo. “The best way to safeguard America against the importation of the destructive effects of this poisonous ideology is to prevent its purveyors from coming here in the first place.”

Tancredo’s bill, dubbed the “Jihad Prevention Act,” would bar the entry of foreign nationals who advocate Sharia law. In addition, the legislation would make the advocacy of Sharia law by radical Muslims already in the United States a deportable offense. Tancredo pointed to the results of a recent poll conducted by the Centre for Social Cohesion as evidence that the U.S. should act to prevent the situation in Great Britain from replicating itself here in the United States. The poll found that some 40 percent of Muslim students in the United Kingdom support the introduction of Sharia law there, and 33 percent support the imposition of an Islamic Sharia-based government worldwide.

“We need to send a clear message that the only law we recognize here in America is the U.S. Constitution and the laws passed by our democratically elected representatives,” concluded Tancredo. “If you aren’t comfortable with that concept, you aren’t welcome in the United States.”

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