Guest post from Mark West of the Chattanooga Tea Party.

When Evil Visited Our City

It was another quiet, sunny day in beautiful Chattanooga, affectionally known as “Scenic City” Tennessee.  Just a few weeks earlier our city with such charm and character was voted “Best Town Ever” by hundreds of thousands of Americans.  And yet, on the morning of July 16 at 10:45  the peace in our city was tragically shattered in a sudden and violent manner.  In the moments that followed, our city was drawn into a worldwide battle between good and evil.  Previous to July 16, our sleepy neighborhoods, bustling shops, busy ballfields and overflowing restaurants seemed to insulate us from this enemy, which to date had been advancing in their one-sided war, with very little opposition.  

Our leaders, entrusted with the security of the world’s sole superpower, like too many Americans, have wished this evil away.  Many of our leaders at all levels, both federal and state, have refused to acknowledge the truth of the ideology known as “radical islam” or “islamic terrorism.” 

Ignoring a deadly virus in one’s body does not eliminate the certain death that virus will cause. Likewise, refusing to mouth the words “islamic terrorist” does not insulate innocent citizens from the evil that most certainly awaits them. 

Unfortunately my fellow Chattanoogans and I know the truth of this evil ideology.  We have seen it first hand.  We have witnessed the physical effects.  And tragically, there are four families whose lives have been forever changed with the reality that their beloved Marine will never return home.   

But, did this have to happen?  Could this virus evil have been stopped?  As importantly, will our state and national leaders once and for all place the lives of their citizens above their stubbornness and political correctness? 

We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf for some time to a point that folks around him stopped listening to him so that when the wolf finally showed up, there was no one to kill the wolf and save the boy. 

For many years now there have been many in our nation crying wolf.  The wolf is radical islam.  Here in Chattanooga our organization has been warning our community of this evil for years.  And our movement across Tennessee has been expressing a dire warning to our political leaders, both in Nashville as well as Washington.   

In 2013 a group of over 500 concerned Tennesseans met US Attorney Bill Killian in Manchester, TN to express our opposition to his veiled threat that if citizens expressed an “inappropriate” negative sentiment towards Islam that they could be charged and prosecuted.  For many of us, the extent of our comments was to assert that Islam is not a religion of peace, in opposition to what we’ve heard regurgitated since a few days after 9/11.  Truthfully, our assertion is backed up with irrefutable evidence at infinitum.  The meeting with Killian was a volatile gathering because of Killian’s antagonistic attitude towards citizens who, while perhaps unruly at times, believed that their cry of “wolf” was unquestionably justified. 

Fast forward to yesterday and we heard from the same US Attorney Bill Killian at a news conference in Chattanooga just a few hours after 4 marines were killed.  Ironically, or perhaps sadly, the warning by hundreds of citizens who cried “wolf” about the threat of radical islam was tragically validated when Killian admitted that Chattanooga was struck by domestic terrorism.  

There’s no jubilation in being right about a tragedy.  In fact, there is sadness, frustration and anger.  Too many of us are experiencing these emotions because once again the policies of our nation, guided by men like Killian, Governors, Congress and the Commander in Chief continue to result in dead Americans.  

Whether it’s the fourteen murdered and twenty-nine wounded by Nidal Hasan (which was falsely documented as “workplace violence”) or now our own four tragic deaths and several wounded in Chattanooga, these senseless deaths might have been prevented if we merely had a Commander in Chief and many other elected officials who would speak truth.  

Wishing a war or an enemy away will not cause them to dissipate.  Rather, such behavior only emboldens and enables terrorists like Abdulazeez.  Only an aggressive pursuit of our enemy with the intent of total victory will insure their destruction and secure the lives of our citizens. 

So, will this happen?  I can see only one way this will occur.  You and I must recommit ourselves to never, ever allow this to occur again.  We must remember the ache within our soul on July 16 at 10:45am.  We must never allow that pain to diminish or depart.  And with that understanding that this threat continues, we must step up today, tomorrow and the next day to demand truthfulness by our leaders in identifying our enemy and action by the same in pursuing those enemies to the gates of hell to defeat them… or else, evil will once again visit our community, our state, our nation.  

But then, it will be too late. 

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Mark West

Thought for Today

"Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not."

~~~~~ Daniel Pipes

Thought for Today

"Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force."

~~~~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Thought for Today

"A liberal mistrusts lessons bought with experience. For him, theory is all. He's the only man who would sit down on a red-hot stove twice. That makes well-meaning Democrats marks for shysters selling health-care 'reform,' global warming and appeasement of radical Islamists."

~~~~~ Wesley Pruden

Mark Steyn: Live Free or Die

This month's Imprimis from Hillsdale College features an essay adapted from a March, 2009 lecture by the indispensable Mark Steyn. For the title of his lecture, Mark used the famous motto of his adopted home state, "Live Free or Die."

Reading his lecture is a very sobering experience. As a native of Canada who has traveled widely all over the world, Mark has a greater appreciation of United States exceptionalism than most native-born Americans. He has seen first-hand the rapid decline of the once-great civilizations of Great Britain, France, Germany, and even, to a disturbing extent, Canada.

For several years now, Mark has been trying his considerable best to warn us that we, the last bastion of true freedom in the world, are headed down the exact same path as the formerly great powers of Europe. He sees us heading at breakneck speed for a cliff, and is attempting to warn us to change course before it is too late.

In his vitally important book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Mark discusses the disturbing demographic trends which, if unchecked, will leave us friendless and isolated in a hostile world. In this lecture, he points out that our new administration is trying its best to drive us over the same cliff over which our European and Canadian friends have already fallen.

Here's how he begins:

MY REMARKS are titled tonight after the words of General Stark, New Hampshire's great hero of the Revolutionary War: "Live free or die!" When I first moved to New Hampshire, where this appears on our license plates, I assumed General Stark had said it before some battle or other—a bit of red meat to rally the boys for the charge; a touch of the old Henry V-at-Agincourt routine. But I soon discovered that the general had made his famous statement decades after the war, in a letter regretting that he would be unable to attend a dinner. And in a curious way I found that even more impressive. In extreme circumstances, many people can rouse themselves to rediscover the primal impulses: The brave men on Flight 93 did. They took off on what they thought was a routine business trip, and, when they realized it wasn't, they went into General Stark mode and cried "Let's roll!" But it's harder to maintain the "Live free or die!" spirit when you're facing not an immediate crisis but just a slow, remorseless, incremental, unceasing ratchet effect. "Live free or die!" sounds like a battle cry: We'll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it's something far less dramatic: It's a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.

My book America Alone is often assumed to be about radical Islam, firebreathing imams, the excitable young men jumping up and down in the street doing the old "Death to the Great Satan" dance. It's not. It's about us. It's about a possibly terminal manifestation of an old civilizational temptation: Indolence, as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a republic. When I ran into trouble with the so-called "human rights" commissions up in Canada, it seemed bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of the alliance profess to be pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists; the other half are homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Even as the cheap bus 'n' truck road-tour version of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, it made no sense. But in fact what they have in common overrides their superficially more obvious incompatibilities: Both the secular Big Government progressives and political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential.

To read the rest, go here. You can also download the entire issue as a PDF here.

Mark Steyn: "Israel Today, the West Tomorrow"

In "Israel Today, the West Tomorrow," an essay appearing in the May, 2009 issue of Commentary Magazine, Mark Steyn brings us up to date on the dramatic changes occurring in the nations of Western Europe, and even in Canada. Here's how he begins this very disturbing article:

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, a group of just under 100 people—Londoners and a few visitors —took a guided tour of the old Jewish East End. They visited, among other sites of interest, the birthplace of my old chum Lionel Bart, the author of Oliver! Three generations of schoolchildren have grown up singing Bart’s lyric:

     Consider yourself
     At ’ome!
     Consider yourself
     One of the family!

Those few dozen London Jews considered themselves at ’ome. But they weren’t. Not any more. The tour was abruptly terminated when the group was pelted with stones, thrown by “youths”—or to be slightly less evasive, in the current euphemism of Fleet Street, “Asian” youths. “If you go any further, you’ll die,” they shouted, in between the flying rubble.

It seems that in response to relentless pressure from the increasingly bold and aggressive practitioners of the Religion of Peace, governments all over Europe and Canada are caving in and allowing violent mobs to commit egregious acts of anti-semitism, assault, and destruction of property. He describes one such incident, boldly and proudly videotaped by the perpetrators themselves, in which a sizable mob dressed in identical green "Boycott Israel" t-shirts invaded and trashed a Carrefour superstore in France. You can see the video for yourself (dialogue is in French) – watch it and draw your own conclusions.



While the mob stripped the store of every item with a connection to Israel and terrorized the shoppers, no one lifted a finger to stop them.

When (not if) such incidents begin to occur here in the US, our first line of defense is our local and state authorities. Most of them – certainly those here in Tennessee – are equal to the task. That's very fortunate, because if push comes to shove – as it already has in Great Britain and the countries of Western Europe – how likely is it that Barack Hussein Obama would take any action to stop them?

Mark's article is both urgent and important. Unfortunately, it's a harbinger of things to come in the US if we continue to follow along the same suicidal path as our British, Canadian, and European friends. It may well be too late for them. We still have a little time – but none to waste. From this point forward, we must begin to enforce our immigration laws in order to keep undesirable elements out of the country and deport those who already live among us. If we fail to do so, we will seal our own fate – and we will deserve it.

By all means go read the whole piece.