The Bookworm Beat (9/16/14) — Clearing the Spindle Part 1, and Open Thread

Woman writingI’m working away at my inbox backlog, and have lined up the first batch of interesting things I’d love to share with you.

ISIS’s dangerous appeal to disaffected Westerners, Muslim and non-Muslim alike

Both Daniel Greenfield and Caroline Glick warn that there’s something very unusual and extremely dangerous about ISIS: It appeals to the formerly nice, and currently disaffected, Muslim living next door — or to the equally disaffected non-Muslm who’s looking for a combination of meaning and power in his (or her) life.

And here’s something interesting for you to chew on: You’re not the only one noticing that many of the non-Muslim’s taking up the standard of radical Islam are red-haired. When I was growing up, red hair was just another hair color. In today’s world, redheads are the new n*****. For reasons that are unclear to me, they are picked on something awful, and it’s entirely possible that radical Islam provides them with the ultimate revenge.

Obamacare policies worse than pre-Obamacare policies

In addition to forcing people to buy insurance, Obamacare also insists that, even if they want a Ford, they must buy a Rolls Royce. Except that it turns out that what people are really being forced to buy are the Rolls Royce equivalents of Potemkin Villages. You see, it turns out that, as any free market supporter could have told Obama, policies obtained on the open market, rather than on the government-controlled market, had a tendency to be cheaper, more readily available, and with greater options that could be better tailored to an individual’s needs.

(The car reference in the above paragraph comes from a Soviet-era joke:

Man One: Come the revolution, we’ll all be driving Rolls Royces.
Man Two: But I don’t want to drive a Rolls Royce.
Man One: Come the revolution, you’ll have to.)

Should private employers be forced to accommodate religious beliefs?

The government is getting involved in the case of a Seventh-day Adventist who claims he was fired from Dunkin’ Donuts for refusing to take a Friday night (i.e., Sabbath) shift. While I believe that the First Amendment means that the government cannot unreasonably impose itself on people’s religious practices, I do not believe that the government should be forcing private businesses to accommodate those practices. For one thing, once you start doing that, you’ve opened the tent to that camel’s nose, and you suddenly have the government siding with one private party (a Seventh-day Adventist, a Muslim, an Orthodox Jew) in a religious dispute with another private party which is, in and of itself, a wrongful interference in religion. For another thing, no one ever said that committing oneself seriously to religion wasn’t going to entail some sacrifice — but it should be your sacrifice, not your employer’s.

Michigan government makes Arabs feel at home

Here’s an excerpt from a post you might find interesting about the inroads Muslim immigrants have made in Michigan:

Muslim men are allowed to have as many as 4 wives. Many Muslims have immigrated into the U.S. And brought their 2-3-or 4 wives with them, but the U.S. does not allow multi marriages, so the man lists one wife as his, and signs the other 2 or 3 up as extended family on welfare and other free Government programs!

[snip]

So now in Michigan when you call the Public Assistance office you are told to “Press 1 for English. Press 2 for Spanish, or Press 3 for Arabic”! CHECK IT OUT YOURSELF – Here is the number 1-888-678-8914.

Looking for a good income? Sign up for welfare.

Longtime readers are all familiar with a story I heard when I lived in England in 1981. A friend of mine spent the summer before university doing the worst kind of scut work at the local zoo, everything from driving the little train filled with screaming children to cleaning out the elephant and lion enclosures. His sister, meanwhile, spent the summer on the dole, watching telly and swanning about with her friends. At summer’s end, she had more money that he did.

Add thirty years, and my story about England in 1981 is the story of America in 2014: welfare is the best entry-level job there is. And let me just add, looking at Britain today, we know how well going down that road turned out.

MSNBC once again tries to re-write history

Eugenics in the 20th century was a purely Leftist phenomenon, from Sanger, to H.G. Wells, to (yes) Hitler. MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, while rightly decrying it, seems a little unclear on its Leftist roots. This is not a big story, because no one today would be rocked by a headline screaming “MSNBC host is stupid and uninformed.” I include it here only as a reminder that we have to be vigilant at all times against the Left’s habit of perverting America’s past in order to control her future.

A quiz for you about life in the Roaring 20s

During the Roaring 20s, the papers seemed to carry stories daily about gangland style killings. Mobsters and related bootleggers killed each other with picturesque relish, a killing spree that seemed to culminate with the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. So here’s a quiz for you: During the 1920s, when guns were legal, was Chicago more or less violent than it is today, when guns are pretty much outlawed? Think you know? Check your answer here.

Fun and informative items at the Watcher’s Council website

There are a couple of posts I recommend to your attention at the Watcher’s Council. First, you can read an excellent forum about the response that Council members and their august friends (including Seraphic Secret) had to President Obama’s ISIS speech. Second, you can see the names of the weasels that Council members have nominated as the weasel of the week.

Yes, the UN is unfair to Israel

You and I already know the answer to the rhetorical question Anne Bayefsky asks, which is whether the UN is unfair to Israel. However, because Anne is temperate and informative, this is a good video to spread to your social media friends who may not know the correct answer.