Saturday, July 01, 2006

Canada Day

Today is Canada Day, a celebration of the nation. There will be no fireworks bursting across the night sky. It is environmentally harmful. There is a danger of damage to property. There is the noise to consider. There is the problem of how to control the crowds who might gather on the beaches to watch the works. Flags, those are for the Americans. This is a day to celebrate the contributions of all peoples to the mosaic that is the cultural inheritance of this nation. Canada is a celebration of something, what I'm unsure of.


So, I'll take this day to celebrate William Faulkner. In WWI he joined the Royal Air Force in Canada. He was likely no more a Canadian patriot than other Americans who joined the RAF during the war. But Faulkner did join. He didn't flee his own, he went to those who would take him so he could do his part in the great struggle against the rising menace of German aggression in the world. As one young man he made a private decision and acted alone. He acted universally. He was in that sense all men acting for the good.

Today we do not have armies to join to fight against the evil in the world. We write. There will be no grand prizes and high speeches for us at the end of our day, but we will write the truth for the good, and there we will find there is no greater blessing than to have been alive for this effort. We don't flee our own but go where we can. Today we fly through the war in the aether.

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1918: Accepted by the Canadian Royal Air Force as cadet; reports to Recruits' Depot, Toronto, on July 9 and enters active service the next day

Posted to Cadet Wing in Long Branch on July 26, then to School of Military Aeronautics, Toronto, on Sept. 20

Discharged from RAF in December and returns to Oxford

http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/chronology.html
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When Faulkner delivered his Nobel Prize speech, no one could understand what he said — he stood too far from the microphone, and his Southern accent and rapid delivery made it even more difficult to understand what he was saying. But when they discovered what he said the next morning, the impact was tremendous. For years afterward, according to one scholar, Faulkner's speech would be recalled as the best speech ever given at a Nobel dinner. ****

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/chronology.html
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This Canada Day I celebrate William Faulkner. I celebrate the spirit of Man struggling against fear and darkness. The light bursting through the darkness and the the rocket's red glares, I celebrate bloggers. They are, each and all, from here and there, Canada today.
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A Call For Clear Thinking

In the essay below, Hirsi Ali asks people to think for themselves. What are the chances of success? People do not think for themselves if they are ideologues. Ideologues cannot think for themselves. That is why they are ideologues: they do not want to think for themselves; they want the comfort of having someone else thinking for them, deciding for them, telling them what to think. Today's ideologues, the dregs of the intellectual world, are the Left. They follow the same tired and stupid formulae to the extremes of stupidity that the logic of Irrationality lead them too. I give up on the Left. I think they are worthless and irredeemable. The leaders of the Left are not good people with some bad ideas or utopian dreams that don't really work in the world: they are evil people who should be, and one hopes will be, hanged as war criminals. Those who do not think clearly are not forgiven for their follies if their follies are criminal. Stupidity and ignorance and good intentions and fine feelings are not any legitimate excuse for criminality and murder.

This is a small part of Hirsi Ali's essay:
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There is an alternative to Islam's example
In her essay A Call For Clear Thinking, Ayaan Hirsi Ali urges her fellow Muslims to reject fundamentalism and to embrace the open society

THE CAGED VIRGIN
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become a widely admired and controversial political figure because of her attempts to free women from an oppressive Muslim culture. She survived years of death threats and furious denouncements after moving to the Netherlands, where she was elected an MP. Labelled an infidel, she has had to have permanent protection since 2002, when she described the Prophet Muhammad as a tyrant and pervert and Islam as a backward religion. She was threatened with deportation by the Dutch authorities after a dispute over her asylum application, and announced her intention of living in America.

Her bestselling collection of essays, The Caged Virgin, brings together some of her most passionate and compelling writing on a wide range of issues concerning Islam. Drawing on her own first-hand experience and cultural background, she assesses the role of women in Islam both in practice and in theory; the rights of the individual; fanaticism; and Western policies towards immigrant communities.

AFTER THE CARNAGE OF THE terrorist bombings in London on July 7, 2005, Tony Blair defined the situation as a battle of ideas. "Our values will long outlast theirs," he said, to the silent acquiescence of the world leaders who stood alongside him. "Whatever (the terrorists) do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world."

By defining this as a battle of values, Blair raised the question: which values are at stake? Those who love freedom know that the open society relies on a few key shared concepts. They believe that all humans are born free, are endowed with reason and have inalienable rights. These governments are checked by the rule of law, so that civil liberties are protected. They ensure freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, and ensure that men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, are entitled to equal treatment and protection under the law. And these governments have free-trade practices and an open market, and people may spend their recreational time as they wish.

The terrorists, and the Sharia-based societies to which they aspire, have an entirely different philosophical point of view. Societies that espouse the following of Sharia law, which is a code derived from a literalist reading of the Koran, are fundamentalist Islamists. They believe that people are born to serve Allah through a series of obligations that are prescribed in an ancient body of writings. These edicts vary from rituals of birth and funeral rites to the most intimate details of human life; they descend to the point of absurdity in matters such as how to blow your nose and with what foot to step into a bathroom. Humans in this philosophy must kill those among them who leave their faith, and are required to be hostile to people of other religions and ways of life. In their hostility, they are even sanctioned in the murder of innocent people. The edicts make no distinction between civilians and the military — anyone who does not share this faith is an infidel and can be marked for murder.

In this Sharia society women are subordinate to men. They must be confined to their houses, beaten if found disobedient, forced into marriage and hidden behind the veil. The hands of thieves are cut off and capital punishment is performed on crowded public squares in front of cheering crowds. The terrorists seek to impose this way of life not only in Islamic countries, but, as Blair said, on Western societies too.

The central figure in this struggle is not bin Laden, or Khomeini, or Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, or Sayyid Qutb (the Egyptian schools' inspector whose ideas fed the minds of those who flew the planes on 9/11), but Muhammad. A pre-medieval figure to whom these four men — along with all faithful Muslims in our modern world — look for guidance, Muhammad and his teachings offer a fundamental challenge to the West. Faithful Muslims — all faithful Muslims — believe that they must emulate this man, in principle and practical matters, under all circumstances. And so, before we embark on a battle of ideas, we will need to take a look at this figure, and his presence in the daily lives and homes of faithful Muslims today.

On reading the Koran and the traditional writings, it is apparent that Muhammad's life not only provides rules for the daily lives of Muslims, it also demonstrates the means by which his values can be imposed. Yet remnants from some of the earliest Korans in existence, dating from the 7th and 8th centuries, show small aberrations from the text that is now considered the standard Koran. Nonetheless, just as some fundamentalist Christians cannot understand that the Bible went through numerous changes, interpretations, and translations before it became the contemporary text now widely used, and consider it inerrant, many fundamentalist Muslims consider the Koran a perfect, timeless representation of the unchanging word of God.

To spread his visions and teachings, which he believed to be from God, and to consolidate his secular power, Muhammad built the House of Islam using military tactics that included mass killing, torture, targeted assassination, lying and the indiscriminate destruction of productive goods. This may be embarrassing, and even painful, for moderate Muslims to admit and to consider, but it is historical fact. And a close look at the propaganda produced by the terrorists reveals constant quotation of Muhammad's deeds and edicts to justify their actions and to call on other Muslims to support their cause.

In their thinking about radical Muslim terrorism most politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and other commentators have avoided the core issue of the debate, which is Muhammad's example. In order to win the hearts and minds of those millions of undecided Muslims, it is crucial to engage them in a process of clear thinking on how to evaluate the moral guidance of the man whose compass they follow. The advantage of this rational process is that it provides an alternative to the utopia as well as the hell promised by the terrorists. Indeed, the threat of Hell is the single most effective menace that the fundamentalists hold over the heads of young men and women in order to indoctrinate and intimidate them into violent action. Yet the literal translation of utopia is "not (a) place", from the Greek "ou", meaning not, or no, plus topos, meaning place. The dictionary defines a utopia as "an imaginary and indefinitely remote place". The true alternative to such an impossible place is the open society, democracy, which has already been empirically proven to work. The open society gives Muslims, as it gives Christians and Jews, the opportunity to liberate themselves from the ever-present menace of Hell. The extremists tell the young people that they must defend their faith, avenge insults against Muhammad and the holy word of God, the Koran. What is it exactly that they think they are defending? A call for clear thought on this important question should not be offensive, or hurtful, to Muslims. And yet many people in the West flinch from doing so. The communis opinio seems to hold that questioning or criticising a holy figure is not polite behaviour, somehow not done. This movement for cultural relativism within Western society betrays the basic values on which our open society is constructed. As thinking human beings, we should never censor our analytic thoughts; we should never censor our reason.

More: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-2249434,00.html
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Whether we think or not, we are responsible for our own lives and our actions therein. The Left, of course, denies that, assigning activities of the mind to environment and conditioning. That kind of dehumanisation suits them just fine in order that they may manage the people in some gnostic ritual of their version of a higher understanding. The Philosopher Kings will do your thinking for you, you not being able on your own, being in a state of false consciousness in a capitalist system, and so on. Probably most people are simply too busy to think things through based on sufficient fact gathering. But our intuitions and our common life experiences tell us the Left is psychotic and evil. Those who still subscribe to the Left fascism and promote murder are still responsible, regardless of their ideological template mouthings.

If you think clearly and think for yourself, then say so out loud in public. Most people will agree with you, you'll find. And those who don't are probably stupid or evil or maybe just too dunned with Left dhimmitude to know any better. But most people will tell you that murder is wrong. Talk to those people. Invite them out for conversation and coffee at your local library on Thursday evening. People rely on you to make their lives open up. They wait for you. The world of thinking people needs you.
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Friday, June 30, 2006

Blog Readers Breakdown

The post below is so true of our blogs that I felt I should post it here to show the clear evidence that we are indeed immensely popular after all.

Thanks to http://age-of-treason.blogspot.com/
(Smart, writes well, fun to read.)
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Pearls Before Swine hits a nerve. Very funny. In fact this blog has thousands of readers. Here's a breakdown:

27% - Leftists too apoplectic to post.
22% - Jihadis too busy planning next attack.
15% - Illegal aliens afraid posting will alert INS.
12% - Severe lexdysia.
10% - No internet connection.
7% - No computer.
4% - Illiterate.
2% - Deaf-mute.

And 1% who just don't care.
 posted by Tanstaafl at 6/20/2006 08:43:00 AM
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Thursday, June 29, 2006

Murdered for being alive.

Eliyahu Asheri.


Yitro Asheri: "Pray! Pray - because you are righteous and G-d desires your prayers."
http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=106259
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Thursday Meeting at VPL


We'll be looking for you to join us. We meet at VPL in the atrium from 7-9:oo pm. Please join us.
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Laugh? I thought I'd cry!

In a night-time blitz, Israeli troops seized eight Hamas cabinet ministers and nearly two dozen legislators of the governing Islamist group in operations across the West Bank, Palestinian security officials said.

Israeli security sources said 64 Hamas officials were taken into custody. Israel Radio said they included Deputy Prime Minister Naser al-Shaer.

"They are not bargaining chips for the return of the soldier. It was simply an operation against a terrorist organisation," an army spokeswoman said. "They will be investigated, brought before a judge to extend their detention and charge sheets will be prepared."
Israel arrests Hamas leaders
Reuters.uk, UK -
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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Speaking Truth to Dhimmis and Ourselves.

People think what other people think. Public opinion guides most people through their mental lives, and that leaves most people victims of the whims of the wicked and the wiles of the weird. Public opinion is a daemon that destroys lives without a thought at all. And yet we are nearly all susceptible to it, most not even aware that it devours us whole as we try to live lives of freedom and independence. We mostly do not have the time to think for ourselves. More than most people in history, we who are free to think for ourselves haven't got the ability to do so because we are too busy, and there is too much information to cope with even if we have many lifetimes. Rather than fret we lend ourselves to experts and authorities to tell us what is true and real. We depend on our intelligentsia. When they are dishonest, we are duped and helpless.

Below there are some quotations to clarify some of what goes wrong when we can't think for ourselves and when those who do so for us lie to us.

Orwell sums it up nicely, our modern time, in 1984. He describes our politically correct nightmare thus:

"Crime Stop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments... and of being bored and repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crime Stop, in short, means protective stupidity."

How many times have we stood in amazement as people say that "Islam means peace"? Why would people say such? We know ours is a world in which there is far too much information and far too little sense. We have the means to find out if we so choose, but the time is dear, the effort is exhausting, and there is the fear that if we do know things as they are in reality we will offend many who cling to the norm as given to them by the experts. We stop in mid-thought and say nothing but pleasant nothings in response to evil rubbish. what we say is too often sensibly stupid but politically correct. We have developed a trait across the Western World of being ridiculous. Not just the average busy person, even-- especially our intelligentsia:

"Absence of intelligent thinking in rulership is another of the universals and raises the question whether in modern states there is something about political and bureaucratic life that subdues the functioning of intellect in favor of 'working the levers' without regard to rational expectations. This would seem to be an on-going prospect."
Barbara Tuchman, March of Folly.

We meet on Thursday evenings in Vancouver, Canada at the public library in the atrium from 7-9:00 pm to discuss the nature of our societies and and our cultures and the nature of things regarding our lives as public beings. We discuss ways of restoring to common sense and basic reality our governments and societies. We have no illusions that we will do so alone or even as a large group. Our expectation is that by meeting publicly and by speaking in public about the tabu subjects of jihad and Left dhimmi fascism that we might give others the courage to speak openly about these concerns as well. For all of our business and our following of the masters of public opinion we aren't quite as stupid as the intelligentsia would believe. In fact, most people are quite well able to think for themselves and to arrive at reasonable solutions to problems all by themselves. And therein lies the problem. They arrive at sense alone and find themselves afraid to speak out due to pressures to conform to the public norms as they think they exist. People stop in mid-thought, fearing to continue to the conclusions they would arrive at if they pursued the inquiry of sense into Islam and Left fascism. And the rulership of our nations churn on and on mindlessly, the magicians at the top of that particular heap merely cranking the levers over and again. We meet to say "Hey, it's worthless and stupid and wrong, and we say so out loud in public." It is a terrifying thing for those who hear us.

The following three quotations come from a commentator at TCS, a weekday blog linked below. Each is a variation on the theme above. They are fun to read, and perhaps they'll make so plain the ideas of the wrong-headedness of conformity to the unquestioned norm that you will laugh out loud when some simpering dhimmi next time claims you are islamophobic or racist or what have you.

"All of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply because life is far too short for us to think through even a small fraction of the topics that we come across." -- Julian Simon

"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing." -- Autobiography of Mark Twain by Samuel Clemens

"It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic." -- Thomas Sowell
No Subject by RickGaber
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It's a sad fact that many people feel that it is too rude to contradict others. They suffer in silence and endure the most idiotic rubbish on Earth. We listen to fools claim that Palestinians are worth our time to think about them. We endure all kinds of crap regarding savages who murder and maim in the name of Islam, and we think we must remain silent because it seems to be the consensus that Muslims are victims of our energies. Oh, screw them. Muslims are garbage people destroyed by a fascist poligion to the point they're barely Human at all. The suffering of the Palestinian! People! makes me gag. Let them starve to death till there are no more of them. Who cares? And I say so in public. It's mean and unfair, and I don't care any more. Think about it. Why should anyone give a damn about those savages? Why would the Corrie family indulge their creepy little daughter to the point of sending her off to die in a dump? Let's be honest and say the Palestinians are trash people. Public opinion has elevated the Palestinians to the state of near sainthood. I don't care what most people think. We are free to think after examining the facts we have, and the facts are clear to anyone who isn't afraid to think them through. I've thought about it. Fuck the Palestinians. Fuck the Muslims.

I might be wrong about the worthlessness of Muslims in general. Maybe diversity is a good thing and the Palestinians are all victims of my evil ways. If so I'll sit at the library and listen to anyone who cares to discuss honestly the points on which I'm wrong. But if I'm not convinced that I am wrong I will continue to say in public that the Muslim world is garbage and that the poilgion of Islam is filth. One way or the other, honest thinkers are invited to join us at VPL Thursday evening in the atrium from 7-9pm.
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Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Potty Training.

Religion of Pieces sends along the first item for discussion in this day's post. Britain is gone potty. The people had to learn this kind of madness over the course of years to be so adeptly loony. If you're not nuts, then for God's sake, seek counseling. You can learn to be insane.
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The police are here, and they have some bad news for us. The bad news is that they are controlled by hippies. You, dear reader, had better get over it and lose that attitude or you might well find yourself facing some very strict corrective measures. None of that, now.
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Police offer terror suspects help

Liaison officers already help relatives of serious crime victims

Police family liaison officers are to be assigned to help relatives of terrorist suspects deal with the aftermath of an arrest or raid.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said the move could help reduce community tensions after high-profile anti-terrorist operations.

A dedicated team may include Muslim officers and community volunteers.

Acpo said the plans had been discussed for some time but were given fresh impetus by the recent Forest Gate raid.

It is established practice for a specially trained officer to help families of murder victims and serious crimes.

Police apology

They liaise between the family and investigation team, as well as dealing with media enquiries and court visits.

But Acpo says families of people arrested for terrorism offences should also have liaison officers because of the "major stigma" they suffered.

Earlier this month, brothers Abul Koyair, 20, and Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, were the subject of a anti-terror raid by police in Forest Gate, east London, in which the latter was shot.

The men spent several days in custody following the raid.

They were later released without charge.

Metropolitan Police's Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman later released a statement in which he apologised for the "hurt" officers may have caused the men.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5119548.stm
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One of England's finest writers, Thomas Hobbes, lived through and wrote about a time similar to ours, the English Civil War. It the aftermath, Hobbes turned his mind to civil society and its organisation. We've lost it. Our world is pre-Hobbesian, and we must get it back, the sense of law for people.

A terrible stylist and another of England's greatest thinkers, J.S. Mill wrote during yet another English revolution, the Industrial Revolution. He wrote on Liberty. Ours is a post-Millian world, and we must get it back, the sense of people for the law.

Today we have hippies running amok in the Halls of State. Below we have what might be mere historical trivia on the history of the police in England; but we should consider the importance ot their tasks and the evolution of their profession to see where we stand in relation to it as citizens. Are we coming to a confrontation with our forces of law and order, our courts and police to the point we will have to act ultra vires? When the police are hippies, what of the people and the civil society they are meant to protect?

When felonious action is self-assertion against oppression by an unjust state and when self-defence by a civil person is a felony, then where do the people stand? If legitimate citizenship is latent criminality, if citizenship is a priori oppression, then where do the people stand?
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The period from 1674 to 1834 witnessed the transformation of policing in London from a system reliant on private individuals and part-time officials for apprehending criminals to the development of salaried officials and semi-official "thief-takers", and eventually a modern professionalised police system. In the process the mechanisms by which the people tried at the Old Bailey were identified and apprehended was radically transformed, and ultimately brought under the control of the state.

The Role of Private Individuals Throughout the period 1674 to 1834 many victims of crime were able to identify the culprits and secure their arrest by contacting a constable or justice of the peace. Those who witnessed a felony had a legal obligation to arrest those responsible for the crime, and to notify a constable or justice of the peace if they heard that such a crime had taken place. Moreover, if summoned by a constable to join the "hue and cry", inhabitants were required to join in the pursuit of any escaping felon.

Although these legal obligations were rarely enforced during this period, Londoners continued to help apprehend suspected criminals. As the Proceedings frequently illustrate, cries of "stop thief!" or "murder!" from victims often successfully elicited assistance from passersby in preventing crimes or apprehending suspects. It seems likely, however, that this sense of individual responsibility for law enforcement was eroded over the century, as increasing numbers of men were paid to carry out this task. For example, victims paid 'thief-takers' to locate and apprehend suspects. The difficulties the authorities had in identifying and apprehending criminals led them, too, to offer rewards to thief-takers and others, and pardons to accomplices who were willing to turn in their partners, for activities which contributed to the conviction of the perpetrators of serious crimes. Increasingly, ordinary Londoners left the task of turning in criminals to groups of people who were motivated to do so by the prospect of financial or other rewards. [....]

The Metropolitan Police, 1829

In the first decades of the nineteenth century attempts to combat crime shifted back towards the prevention of crime, as opposed to the detection of criminals. New horse and foot patrols were introduced both at night and during the day, and these men were frequently referred to as "police". Efforts to rationalise and further extend London's system of policing, which date back to the mid-eighteenth century, were finally successful in 1829 with the passage of Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Act. This set up a centralised police force of 3,000 men under the control of the Home Secretary, with responsibility for policing the entire metropolitan area except the City of London. Uniformed and carrying truncheons, the new "Bobbies" (named after Peel) were expected to patrol the streets on prescribed beats, so frequently that there would be no opportunity to carry out crimes.

www.oldbaileyonline.org/.../crime/policing.html
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Mill writes of the legitimate democracy as protecting the right of the minority in the face of majority rule. The minority of voters in the West are civil. Too few. The minority are law-abiding and public. If their rights are violated by the majority unjustly, then the minority has a right and a duty to rebel against their oppression. Hobbes understands it, and so too does Mill. Only the hippies don't get it. The hippies and the vast majority of English voters.

We are subject to the laws of our lands even if some of those laws are illegitimate. We are subject to the laws even if they are all illegitimate. We are subject to the law because we choose privately to remain in the bounds of the land of law. So long as we have a right to leave or to change the laws by law, then we are bound. But there is a limit. the law never has a right to kill us, even if we are certainly guilty of heinous crimes. We have a right and duty to struggle for life regardless. That is the premier law of life. It transcends all others.
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Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), the son of a wealthy Lancashire mill owner, created in Ireland the model for policing systems in the rest of the British Isles. He later became a reforming Prime Minister and one of Britain's most important statesmen. His critical role in the development of policing has been immortalized by the common use of the names 'Bobbies' and 'Peelers' for the police.

www.psni.police.uk/.../pg_sir_robert_peel.htm
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We still have a right to vote in our lands. We still have a right to abandon them if we so choose. We have no legitimate right to take the law into our own hands until such time as we are faced with harm. We, like others in our lands's histories, face crises in our time. We must cope. We must seek counseling.

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