Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

History, Holidays & Observances on December 2

by Leave a Comment

A look at some of the history and holidays on December 2

Holidays & Observances on December 2

The Feast of St. Bibiana, a virgin martyr of the early Roman Church.  Legend has it that According to this legend, Bibiana was the daughter of a former prefect, Flavianus, who was banished by Julian the Apostate. Dafrosa, the wife of Flavianus, and his two daughters, Demetria and Bibiana, were also persecuted by Julian. Dafrosa and Demetria died a natural death and were buried by Bibiana in their own house; but Bibiana was scourged to death. Two days after her death a priest named John buried Bibiana near her mother and sister in her home, the house. A church in Rome, Santa Bibiana, was built over the house in the 3rd century and exists to this day.

 

Major Events on December 2

1763 – Dedication of the Touro Synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island.

The Touro Synagogue was, by a matter of weeks, the first synagogue in colonial America (the second being at the home of the largest Jewish population in the colonies, Charleston, SC).   Colonial America, and then early America, were among the few places that welcomed Jews with open arms.  No one made that more plain then George Washington who, on his 1790 tour of the colonies to lobby for the passage of the Bill of Rights, exchanged letters with the congregation of the Touro Synagogue.  After receiving a laudatory letter on August 17, 1790 from the synagogue’s warden, Moses Seixas, Washington responded with a now famous full throated embrace of religious tolerance:

Gentlemen:

While I received with much satisfaction your address replete with expressions of esteem, I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you that I shall always retain grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced on my visit to Newport from all classes of citizens.

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.

If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.

The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.

May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.

G. Washington

[Read more…]

Bill Maher almost gets it when it comes to terrorism

by 8 Comments

In fits and starts, Bill Maher is creeping towards an understanding that the enemy isn’t America when it comes to terrorism.  He’s unable to square the circle, though, because he’s so hung up on gun control.  That is, he’s incapable of appreciating that the best way for Americans to depend themselves is for them to be armed.  Anyway, I wrote the following post for Mr. Conservative, and I think it fits in well here:

Bill Maher has periodic outbursts of logic and reason that give one hope that he may yet figure out that his blind allegiance to the Democrat party is misguided. Friday, on his HBO show Real Time, Maher showed pictures of heavily armed police patrolling Boston streets and expressed concern that “This country is becoming a police state,” adding that he finds this trend “very troubling.”

(Read here about Maher’s unexpected defense of Christianity.)

Maher’s guests tried hard to downplay his concerns. For example, MSNBC contributor Robert Traynham said that what people saw wasn’t attributable to Boston but was, instead “a federal response after a horrific bombing.” Apparently Traynham was unclear on the fact that, when the feds go all “police state” on us, it’s even worse than if an individual city or state does.

Maher wasn’t deterred. Looking at the constitutionally improper house-to-house searches for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Watertown, Maher again said that this isn’t right:

To me that’s out of hand. I agree we shouldn’t have given this kid his Miranda rights because he probably had information. We wanted to take him alive . . . if you agree with that then what the cops did there was unprofessional. That’s called contagious fire.

***

He has information, he had information and he was just lying in the boat. They knew that. They put that grenade up there. He wasn’t moving. It’s ridiculous. It’s out of control.

Where Maher is unable to square the circle is with his belief that everything would be better without guns. On Friday’s show, he noted that, while American police go in with tanks, “the British police don’t even carry guns.” On another occasion, he insisted that “the Second Amendment is bullshit.”

Maher seems incapable of making the logical leap that says that, if the public also has some police power – the ability to protect itself against criminals and crazies – then the police themselves don’t have to be so heavily armed. Rather than facing the entire world alone, the police in an armed, civil society, have law-abiding citizens at their back, helping out.

Americans show a much greater understanding of the situation than Maher. According to polls, an overwhelming number of Americans want to be armed when there’s a manhunt going on. Rather than being victimized twice – first by the terrorist and then by the police – they want to be active participants in their own security. This is a civic awareness that’s completely contrary to the arrogant Big Government idea that only the police are capable of protecting Americans from criminals. There’s a word for citizens who won’t and can’t take care of themselves: Victims.

A little grab bag of things regarding Boston’s travails *UPDATED*

by 9 Comments

[UPDATE:  Thanks to Libby and John C, please scroll down to see two more great images.]

Tom Elia, who blogs at The New Editor, alerted me to this tweeted picture, which purportedly shows the rear bumper sticker on the car the Chechen brothers carjacked.  If you look carefully on the bumper’s right side….

Bumper sticker of jacked car in Boston

It’s a hokey old song, but I thought of it when I thought of the wave of first responders, in Boston, in Cambridge, in Watertown, and in West (Texas), who so willingly showed up when the calls came in:

And finally, on a slightly less mordant note, did you know that one of Sinatra’s later albums (1970) was called Watertown (apparently after a place in New York) and that it had a song of the some name? I don’t like the song, but it seems appropriate here:

UPDATES:

What coexist really means

Coexist as it should be

What will the people of Boston do now? Get mugged by reality or rationalize Muslim violence?

by 18 Comments

The day the bombing took place, I looked at the MO and thought it more likely than not to be a Muslim attack.  I stated:

There are two ways Boston can go.  It can be a liberal mugged by reality and get over its delusional belief that, if America will just do whatever the Islamists want, they will leave us alone, or it can go the way it went with gun control — enacting liberty-limiting laws that do nothing to prevent future tragedies, and allowing its native son, John Kerry, to grovel apologetically before the authors of this bloodshed.

That question remains.

The Chechen angle, however, throws in a twist that ought to have Bostonians thinking even harder than before.  Liberals could explain away a Middle Eastern Islamic attack by focusing on Palestinians, Iraq, or Afghanistan.  But how do you explain away two boys raised, mostly, in America, attending good schools, and having no connection whatsoever to the Middle East?  Is this the moment when some liberals begin to realize that Islam has issues?  Or will they once again rationalize this away as two crazy, murderous people who just coincidentally happen to have been Muslims, and who just coincidentally filled their Facebook pages with violent Muslim propaganda?

Good questions, and ones that only Bostonians and their liberal ilk around America can answer.

I’ll say only that, between (a) Kermit Gosnell’s mass murder spree, which the MSM ignored because of its anti-abortion connotations, and (b) the MSM’s repeated missteps regarding the Boston bombing (including their instant “Tea Party murderer” narrative), this has not been a good week for the mainstream media.  They, of course, will forgive themselves.  I’m just wondering if the American people will be stupid enough to forgive them too.

There’s an old saying:  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  But what in the world is left to say after you’ve been fooled a thousand times and keep going back for more? That goes beyond shame into realms of Darwinian stupidity.  If Americans forgive again, we deserve what we get.

Thoughts on the Boston Marathon bombing UPDATED

by 14 Comments

A twitter image showing a blood stained street in Boston

Because I’m now a semi-official journalist, I’ve been working hard to write up-to-the-minute posts about the horrible Boston Marathon bombing.  Here’s the latest Mr. Conservative post, which I was able to write following my Twitter feed.  It’s been substantially updated since I wrote it, so it’s (a) under Katie Kieffer’s name, since we worked on it together, and (b) it has a ton of graphic images, so click on it with care.  It’s really quite amazing how quickly news gets consolidated there.  I knew I was on to something when several reputable sources tweeted the same story.  It doesn’t mean it’s true — the media is often wrong — but it does mean that I wasn’t going off half-cocked based upon a single tweet.  The post isn’t all me.  Katie Kieffer, another conservative blogger contributed parts of it.  Because we were in a rush, you can probably see the seams between our two writing styles.

That was the news part.  Here, at Bookworm Room, is where I get to talk about this tragedy, as a tragedy.

I have absolutely no doubt but that this is an al Qaeda or al Qaeda-affiliate attack.  It has all the hallmarks — symbolic locations; crowded venues; multiple simultaneous explosions; and a Saudi national found, not at the scene, despite his shrapnel wounds, but quite far away.  Innocent men don’t run.  We’ll hear, of course, that it was his instant fear of Islamophobia that caused him to run from the scene despite his wounds, but that story just doesn’t seem very credible to me.

As I said in the Mr. Conservative post, I find it highly ironic that an Islamic attack — assuming that’s what this was — took place in Boston.  Boston is the bluest of the blue.  Moreover, the Boston Marathon is very much an upper middle class event, with liberal suburbanites from all over America running in it.  In terms of the “War against Islam,” Boston has shed its image as America’s patriotic heart and has thrown itself firmly behind a world view that says America is an international bully, using Islamophobia to drive the oil companies’ secret wars for oil.

There are two ways Boston can go.  It can be a liberal mugged by reality and get over its delusional belief that, if America will just do whatever the Islamists want, they will leave us alone, or it can go the way it went with gun control — enacting liberty-limiting laws that do nothing to prevent future tragedies, and allowing its native son, John Kerry, to grovel apologetically before the authors of this bloodshed.

My thoughts are with the people of Boston, as well as with those who were not of Boston, but got caught in the disaster.  I hope that tragedy leads them to smart decisions, not foolish ones.

Here are the President’s remarks from his post-bombing statement from the White House.  It says nothing:

Good afternoon, everybody.  Earlier today, I was briefed by my homeland security team on the events in Boston. We’re continuing to monitor and respond to the situation as it unfolds.  And I’ve directed the full resources of the federal government to help state and local authorities protect our people, increase security around the United States as necessary, and investigate what happened.

The American people will say a prayer for Boston tonight.  And Michelle and I send our deepest thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims in the wake of this senseless loss.

We don’t yet have all the answers.  But we do know that multiple people have been wounded, some gravely, in explosions at the Boston Marathon.

I’ve spoken to FBI Director Mueller and Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano, and they’re mobilizing the appropriate resources to investigate and to respond.

I’ve updated leaders of Congress in both parties, and we reaffirmed that on days like this there are no Republicans or Democrats — we are Americans, united in concern for our fellow citizens.

I’ve also spoken with Governor Patrick and Mayor Menino, and made it clear that they have every single federal resource necessary to care for the victims and counsel the families.  And above all, I made clear to them that all Americans stand with the people of Boston.

Boston police, firefighters, and first responders as well as the National Guard responded heroically, and continue to do so as we speak.  It’s a reminder that so many Americans serve and sacrifice on our behalf every single day, without regard to their own safety, in dangerous and difficult circumstances.  And we salute all those who assisted in responding so quickly and professionally to this tragedy.

We still do not know who did this or why.  And people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts.  But make no mistake — we will get to the bottom of this.  And we will find out who did this; we’ll find out why they did this.  Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice.

Today is a holiday in Massachusetts — Patriots’ Day.  It’s a day that celebrates the free and fiercely independent spirit that this great American city of Boston has reflected from the  earliest days of our nation.  And it’s a day that draws the world to Boston’s streets in a spirit of friendly competition.  Boston is a tough and resilient town.  So are its people.  I’m supremely confident that Bostonians will pull together, take care of each other, and move forward as one proud city.  And as they do, the American people will be with them every single step of the way.

You should anticipate that as we get more information, our teams will provide you briefings.  We’re still in the investigation stage at this point.  But I just want to reiterate we will find out who did this and we will hold them accountable.

Thank you very much.

UPDATE: Here’s your opportunity to compare today’s statement to the one Barack Obama made (complete with politically correct convolutions) the day after the Benghazi terrorist attack.

I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America’s commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.

I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya’s transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.

The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward.

Incidentally, that was also, technically, on American soil, although not as many were injured. (I’m also unclear on the precise death toll for today, so I can’t make a comparison.)