Below is an editorial from Sunday's edition of a Florida newspaper
located in Florida's panhandle. Someone who reads this paper thought
that the editorial was worth a wider distribution and retyped it to send
out over the Internet.
Phil Lucas, the paper's Executive Editor, wrote this article published
in The News Herald, Panama City, Florida, Sunday April 4, 2004. His
email address is
plucas@pcnh.com. The News Herald web site is found at
http://www.newsherald.com/
Up Against Fanaticism
By Phil Lucas, Executive Editor, Panama City New Herald
If straight talk of savagery offends you, if you believe in ethnic and
gender diversity but not diversity of thought or if you think there is
an acceptable gray area between good and evil, then turn to the funny
pages, and take the children, too. This piece is not for you.
We published pictures Thursday of burnt American corpses hanging from
an Iraqi bridge behind a mob of grinning Muslims. Some readers didn't
like it.
Mothers said it frightened their children. A woman who works with
Muslim physicians thought it might offend or endanger them.
Well, we sure don't want to frighten, offend or endanger anybody, do
we? That's just too much diversity to handle. I mean, somebody might
get hurt.
We could fill the newspaper every morning with mobs of fanatical
Muslims. They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the
planet: France,Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India,
Tunisia, Somalia,etc. etc. etc. Can anybody name three ongoing world
conflicts in which Muslims are not involved? Today, where there is war,
there are fanatical Muslims.
We might quibble about who started what conflicts, but look at the
sheer number of them.
One thing is sure. Muslim killers started the one we are in now when
they slaughtered more that 3,000 people, including fellow Muslims, in
New York City.
Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state and reckless
appeaser who helped get us into this mess, said last week Muslims still
resent the Crusades. Well, Madam Albright, if Westerners were not such
a forgiving people, we might resent them too.
Let's recap the Crusades. Muslims invaded Europe, and when they
reached sufficient numbers, they imposed their intolerant religion upon
Westerners by force. Christian monarchs drove them back and took the
battle to their homeland. The fight lasted a couple of centuries, and
we bottled them up for 1,000 years.
Now, a millennium later, Muslims have expanded forth again. Ask
France. Ask England. Ask Manhattan. Two-and-a-half years ago fanatical
Muslims laid siege to us. We woke up to the obvious. Our president
announced it would be a very long war, then took the battle to the
Islamic homeland. Sound Familiar?
Let's consider the concept of a "long war.! " Last time it was 200
years, give or take. Anybody catch Lord of the Rings? You know, the
good part, the part that wasn't fiction, the part that drew us to the
books and movies because it was the truest part: the titanic struggle
between good and evil, between freedom and enslavement, between the
individual and the state, between the celebration of life and the
worshipping of death.
That's the fight we are in, and it never ends. It just has peaks and
valleys.
There may be a silent majority of peaceful Muslims - some live here -
but that did not save 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the
million gassed and butchered in the Middle East, the tens of thousands
slain in Easter Europe and Asia, the hundreds blown to bits in the West
Bank and Spain, or the four Americans shot, burned and hung like sausage
over the Euphrates as a fanatical minority of Muslims did the joyful
dance of death.
Maybe we are so tolerant, we are so bent on "diversity," we are so
nonjudgmental, we are so wrapped up in our six-packs and ballgames that
our brains have drained to our bulbous behinds. Maybe we're so addled
on Ritalin we wouldn't know which end of a gun to hold. Maybe we need a
new drug advertised on TV every three minutes, one that would help us
grow a backbone.
It doesn't take a Darwin to figure out that in this world the
smartest,the fastest, the strongest, and the most committed always win.
No exceptions.
Look at your spouse and children. Look at yourself in the mirror.
Then look at the pictures from the paper last Thursday. You better look
at them. Those are the people out to kill you.
Who do you think will win? You? Or them? Think you can take your
ball and go home and they will leave you alone? Read a little history.
Start with last week, last month, last year, and every other year back
for half a century. Then go back a thousand years. Nobody hides from
this fight.
Like it or not, that's the way it was and that's the way it is.
But many Americans don't get it.
That's why we published those pictures.
If they jarred you off the sofa, if they offended you, if they scared
your children and sent you into a rage at mass murderers or heartless
editors, then I say, it's a start.
Straight talk about muslims
