Why the Differences?

The slaughter by the Islamofascists in Paris has led to a couple of thoughts.

The world (note the 40+ world leaders, absent anyone of note from the US) held a mass protest/march in Paris for the dozen or so killed there.  This was a proper, a fitting gesture.  Now, will this be yet another "We had a protest, what's the next problem to solve?" action?  Or, will the world finally wake up to the dangers posed by the radical Islamists?  Even if this is "a small fringe" of Islam, how many more people, innocent people, people exercising rights we embrace (regardless of the ugly nature of many of the Muhammad cartoons), people of different faiths must die?

I'm curious as to the outrage, at least of many people including those in the media, over Charlie Hebdo, but the opposite reaction to the film-maker of the Benghazi affair.  Freedom of expression must be protected in one case, but the poor guy out in Calif, who made a video nobody saw, had to be locked up by the government?  Heh Heh......  If this is what it takes to wake up people...but I don't think it will (see above about "the next problem to solve").

It was tragic that a dozen people died in Paris.  But Boko Haram just wiped out an entire village of 2,000!  Where is the mas protest/march there?  Hmmm......  I would think we know the headquarters, the main camp of Boko Haram.  If we do, there seems to be an easy solution to rid the world of these mass murderers.

And it was comical the other day to listen to some of the talking heads on the radio trying to explain away the bombing and murder of several Jews in a Kosher Jewish bakery in Paris.  Oh, they were falling all over themselves trying to dismiss the obvious.  "There's no evidence that Jews were being targeted."  Huh?  Oh, I guess many Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and maybe even atheists now frequent kosher bakeries.

I've had several chats with folks in recent days about current Muslim/Middle Eastern (and I suppose all) immigrants.  In years past, people came to the US (and I suppose other countries) to seek better lives for themselves and their families, assuming the new places afforded greater opportunities for better lives.  These past immigrants assimilated with their new surroundings, keeping some remnants of their past lives.  (And this is one of the things that have made the US so great--the international flavor of music, foods, ideas, etc.)  But the key was they didn't try to change the US (and other countries) into what the emigrants/immigrants left behind.  And, why would they?  Weren't they escaping what they thought was bad?  Weren't they trying to find something better?  Why keep the "bad?"  And what country, including the US, wouldn't welcome such people?  Now, it seems, when immigrants arrive here (or elsewhere), they seek to change the US to their own pasts.  One instance is the insistence of some on enforcing Shari'a law in their adopted countries, including the US, even though Shari'a law flies in the face of, say, American Constitutional jurisprudence.  And there are some Americans who support this!  That is very befuddling to me.  I suppose, in the end, if these supporters of Shari'a law aren't directly affected, they think they are doing some grand thing.

I wonder if all of these apologists, the Ivy-League educated wonks in gov't and on the boob tube and radio, for Islam would have fallen into this category, oh, about 80-some years ago.  "Oh, Hitler?  He's just trying to regain Germany's place in the family of European nations.  He's just a traditional statesman/politician.  You know, Versailles was so unfair."  Somehow I think many of them would have been apologists for Hitler, at least for a few years.  Isn't that frightening?

And I also wonder why so many of these arrogant elitists are so quick to pass value judgments on, say, the Tea Partiers, but are so very reluctant to do the same with the Islamofascists?  These include members of both parties.  I have some thoughts on that; not many are complimentary.

In that vein, I just finished a series of books on notable black Americans.  It was a good series.  But I was struck, again and again, how pernicious the US government was in treated blacks in this country.  And I wondered how many others who will read the books will pick up on this.  For instance, it wasn't just the federal gov't targeting blacks themselves, but it pressured whites to do the same.  Federal agents visited white employers, pressuring them not to employ "troublesome" blacks or to withhold contracts from them or to drag them endlessly before this committee and that committee.  Yet, I am the one who is paranoid?

And how about that girl, granted a teenager (17?), who has cancer, but doesn't want chemo treatments?  The state of Massachusetts, in cahoots with one set of doctors, has ordered the girl to be taken from her parents and put in a state-run facility.  (Another set of doctors, at a different hospital, opposes the first.)  There, against her will, she received the treatments.  Government should be there to do things that we can't do for ourselves.  It should not be trying to run our lives.