April 23, 2016
Failing to Learn from History
By Amil Imani
Is it a case of ordained fate we cannot escape or is it that "We the People" are too dense to learn from our mistakes? Paging through humanity's history, time and again we find numerous instances of costly historical errors where people ignore facts and reason by entrusting their lives to a "savior." And time and again, we have ended up paying the price for our folly. If we are not genetically doomed to make these ruinous mistakes --which I am certain we are not -- then do we commit them out of wishful thinking, laziness, desperation, or some combination of the three?
History has warned us of three kinds of people: charlatans, demagogues, and politicians. And more often than not, someone will rise up who is all three of these characters wrapped into one. Our liberty is our most precious possession. Many will aim to rob us of it and, by so doing, add to their own power, while trying to force us to become robots.
Desperate situations spawn desperate measures. Not having learned the lessons of history, many people will turn to charlatans, demagogues, and politicians with dire consequences. Just a few old and recent cases of this tragic misstep should warn us not to be victimized in the future by frauds.
From the primitive land of the Arabian Peninsula of over 14 centuries ago arose Muhammad, an illiterate hired hand of a rich widow Khadija, claiming that he was the bearer of a perfect life prescription from God -- the Quran. He claimed humanity could do no better than to follow its precepts as well as to emulate Muhammad’s own life example for a guarantee of bliss and salvation. In exchange for this, people must embrace Islam -- surrender -- by surrendering their liberty to Muhammad.
To this day, in places where Islam rules, many books are banned, newspapers and magazines are systematically either censored or shut down, and other non-print media are methodically blocked. Liberty, deeply cherished by democracies, is replaced by submission -- unquestioning obedience and adherence to the dictates and precepts of the all-knowing and all-wise Allah.
In no time at all, the savages of Arabia, won over by the allure of the win-win promise of Muhammad -- you kill and you get the booty from your victims in this world; you get killed and your abode will be the unimaginably glorious sensuous paradise of Allah -- sword-in-hand, sallied forth to lands near and far.
From the “civilized” land of Germany arose a syphilitic lout who called on the German people to surrender their liberty to him in exchange for a surefire solution to all their economic and social ills. He successfully portrayed the Jews as the main cause of the nation’s suffering. Before long, the masses of gullible easy-solution seekers formed long lines in towns and villages of the land, tripping over each other in their eagerness to surrender their liberty to the savior Führer.
The German people blindly subscribed to the Nazi promises of economic revival, restoration of German pride, and the establishment of supremacy for the Aryan race. In a blink, hordes of rabid Brownshirts fanned the length and the breadth of the land, hunting the Jews. The fire of anti-Jew mania quickly expanded to devour Gypsies, non-Christians in general, the physically or mentally handicapped, homosexuals and more.
The genocidal Hitler found it expedient to overlook some of the “despicable” Semitic people -- the Arabs -- by affording the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a fellow Jew-hater, a most effusive welcome to Germany. To fool a majority of the people for a considerable period might be fatal. Hitler needed only a few years to ruin Germany.
There is hardly a need to document the horrors of the Nazi episode here, where a charlatan managed to hoodwink a nation, rob the people of their liberty and cause so much death and destruction.
It is unthinkable that an ancient nation -- Iran -- with a distinguished history, allowed a high order demagogue, Ayatollah Khomeini, to rally the people against the Shah with promises of rule for the people and justice for all. The long-suffering Iranians of all strata readily surrendered their liberty to the turbaned bigot and his gang of murdering sycophants.
In Iran, wishful thinking people saw the “holy man of Allah” as an answer to their prayers. The fanatic Muslims perceived him as the one who would revive the flagging fortunes of the faith of Muhammad and pave the way for the much-anticipated advent of the Saheb-ul-Zaman (the Lord of the Age.)
Gullibility was not limited to the Iranians who swelled the ranks of the fraud. On the other side of the world, the President of the United States of America -- Jimmy “lust in my heart” Carter -- saw Khomeini as a saint and a savior. Carter provided the crucial support to the man whose greatest claim to the rank of the Grand Ayatollah was his lengthy dissertation on matters concerning sexual intercourse with animals.
No sooner had this fraud of Allah ascended to power than the Iranians of all strata began to pay the price -- tens of thousands with their own lives -- for the folly of letting the three-in-one Ayatollah make decisions for them, the three-in-one that we had been warned about.
For over thirty-eight years, the Iranian people have been paying for the tragedy that has befallen them. And that’s not where it ends. Khomeinism is the fire that is spreading beyond the borders of Iran. Khomeinism is a recent violent version of Islam’s Shiism. Islam means surrender. Surrender to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by Mohammad.
In the land of the free and home of the brave, a Prince Charming rose up in the person of Barrack Hussein Obama, promising “A Change We Can Believe In.” Waves of the populace sang the song with him, “Yes We Can.” The skill to arouse the public to frenzy does not make one a worthy leader, nor should one automatically assume that his policies will equal prosperity or liberty.
In the year 2007, in a climate of insanity, the people of the land called America, having been deceived by a deceptive Marxisant that would exalt himself as their protector and provider, chose a charismatic, soft speaking “prophet" as their savior, and some people even called him “The Messiah.” He emerged from the fog with a message that had no meaning, yet he was able to spellbind people by telling them he was sent to save us from ourselves with hope and change.
Many Americans forgot that anyone who claims special privileges and status for himself, makes outlandish promises and threats, pits one people against another, fill the bill of three-in-one. The most dangerous person of all is anyone who persuades you to give up your liberty in exchange for your security. And we all have heard the cliché “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.”
In the year 2016, a billionaire businessman, Donald Trump, a sudden convert to the Republican Party, is undergoing a meteoric rise in his battle to capture the party's nomination for the Presidency of the United States, a truly mystifying accomplishment for him and has promised, he will “Make America Great Again,” if you elect him as an undisputed leader. Many Americans who felt deceived by the “Washington cartel”, lobbyists and establishment Republicans, joined the waves of loyal and dedicated devotees and sang his songs without paying any attention to his dark past. Trump unjustifiably has lashed out at a number of people with harsh and often extremely odd personal attacks.
Trump endlessly touts himself as brilliant. He keeps repeating that he went to the Wharton School of Business, he has noted several times. "I'm, like, a really smart person.” Apparently teaching spelling was not part of the Wharton curriculum. Despite Trump’s repeated mention of Wharton, his own classmates barely remember him, and he even portrays the school’s high-flung reputation as overwrought in his 1986 book, Trump: The Art of the Deal.
Now that he has tasted success in getting his way in the financial world, he wants the ultimate prize: the presidency of the greatest country in the world. He is brash enough to see it just as another deal-making venture. Hence, he is using the same old strategy that has made him a financial juggernaut to attain his goal: say and do anything. And it is working.
Intellectually authentic and stern people do not reason or behave in this way. Do we really want to put all Americans, and even the whole world, in great peril by giving an egotistic and unstable man the code to our nuclear devices? America is the stronghold of freedom. The peace of our universe hangs on the power of America, and its fragility renders into the success of terrorism and success of rogue nations. America is at a crucial moment in its history. We cannot think of any tragedy greater than putting a man with a compulsive behavior disorder in control of the world’s most powerful military machine.
Let us learn from our past mistakes. The “change you can believe in,” trumpeted by another “savior,” has turned out to be the change we need to change. And we have the opportunity to do so, at the RNC convention and on November 8th.
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