2006 Election Recap and Analysis

(Scroll down below for continuing updates)

Now that Tuesday's key contests have all concluded, it's time to recap the 2006 election and analyze its implications on America, the political parties, local issues, foreign policy, and elsewhere.

The short version: The election was bad for Republicanism, but (perhaps surprisingly) good for conservatism. Domestic and foreign policy results are highly mixed.

Expect a far longer version shortly; things have been very busy here at TheSolidSurfer.com, but a full analysis is in the works, and we hope you will find it well worth the wait.

Stay tuned over the weekend...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update (11/14): Apologies again for the downtime. Just when things finally became less busy, my computer's hard drive conked out and Internet access became quite limited. However, it should be ready at the shop later today, which means that posts on this site should again be up and running! Thanks for your patience.

-TheSolidSurfer.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update (11/15): Computer is back! Now it's just a matter of reinstalling everything and we're ready to go! (As you can probably guess, I'm typing this message from another machine.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update (11/16): Finally! Everything is set up, reinstalled, and working properly. TheSolidSurfer.com is back up and running, and this should (hopefully) be the last update in this series. Tonight, it should be onto regular posting once again, both current events and the last week's huge backlog (including election coverage and analysis). Looking forward to returning!

Comments

[Rastaman]

Election recap: Unknown, untested persons running as Democrats were voted in, in place of known and tested Republicans who were voted out. Reason: Six years of Republicans rubber-stamping everything George Bush wanted, six years of listening to them attack and insult anyone calling themselves a Democrat (half the U.S. population, how stupid can you get), six years of them doing zero to stop the illegal alien invasion, nearly five years of watching an arrogant old man (Rumsfeld) refuse to listen to any of a large number of intelligent, well trained and tested generals while the Iraq war goes to crap. Six years of increasing corruption in government. Six years of ballooning borrowing and spending and giving us a National Debt which can never be repaid. Nice work, guys.

Now we have Democratically controlled Houses that will probably prove to be disastrously liberal and finish the wrecking job that Bush and his Gang started. Just great.

We must have deserved this lousy representation, because we voted for it. I think the American public is too lazy anymore to make the effort to know the candidates. Everything is surface, no depth, no insight, no real caring. I mean Hey! If they're running for office, they must be okay, right? I don't have the time. I can't be bothered with it. Our government is strong, it all evens out. I like his smile.
She says she's for/against this/that. Good enough for me.

Rastaman
www.islamanazi.com

[Ernesto Ribeiro]

The Rape of Europe

From the desk of Paul Belien on Wed, 2006-10-25 20:57

The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: “We are watching the world of yesterday.”

Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. “I am too old,” he said. However, he urged young people to get out and “move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable.”

Many Germans and Dutch, apparently, did not wait for Broder’s advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, like Henryk Broder, that Europe is becoming Islamic. Just consider the demographics. The number of Muslims in contemporary Europe is estimated to be 50 million. It is expected to double in twenty years. By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families. Today Mohammed is already the most popular name for new-born boys in Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other major European cities.

Broder is convinced that the Europeans are not willing to oppose islamization. “The dominant ethos,” he told De Volkskrant, “is perfectly voiced by the stupid blonde woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death.”

In a recent op-ed piece in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard (23 October) the Dutch (gay and self-declared “humanist”) author Oscar Van den Boogaard refers to Broder’s interview. Van den Boogaard says that to him coping with the islamization of Europe is like “a process of mourning.” He is overwhelmed by a “feeling of sadness.” “I am not a warrior,” he says, “but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”

As Tom Bethell wrote in this month’s American Spectator: “Just at the most basic level of demography the secular-humanist option is not working.” But there is more to it than the fact that non-religious people tend not to have as many children as religious people, because many of them prefer to “enjoy” freedom rather than renounce it for the sake of children. Secularists, it seems to me, are also less keen on fighting. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, this life is the only thing they have to lose. Hence they will rather accept submission than fight. Like the German feminist Broder referred to, they prefer to be raped than to resist.

“If faith collapses, civilization goes with it,” says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means “submission” and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it.

Some of the people I meet in the U.S. are particularly worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. They are correct when they fear that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit.

This is why they have come to hate Israel and America so much, and the small band of European “islamophobes” who dare to talk about what they see happening around them. West Europeans have to choose between submission (islam) or death. I fear, like Broder, that they have chosen submission – just like in former days when they preferred to be red rather than dead.

[Solid Surfer]

Rastaman - I agree; Republicans lost the election because over the past few years, they stopped governing like traditional Republicans and instead got caught up in scandals, big government, and internal gridlock. I wouldn't blame Rumsfeld so much for Iraq though; the real problem, as I see it, is that U.S. policies as a whole have been way too tolerant to the terrorists there. The way to win is to stop coddling them, even to the slightest degree, and to completely defeat them.

[Solid Surfer]

Ernesto, thanks for the article. I'm more confident about Europe than the author is, though. His claim of 50 million Muslims on the continent is probably technically true, but he leaves out an important context - only about 10 to 15 million of them are in Western Europe and/or are recent immigrants from Muslim countries. The rest, about 30-35 million, are "native" Muslims in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the western tip of Turkey, who mostly don't practice their religion as a lingering effect of the Communism that ruled their families for decades. Of the 50 million Muslims, I'd estimate that at most only 20 million actually practice it and consider it their core identity.

In addition, not all Europeans will just give up. Of course some will, but not all. 20-30% of the continent's population are still practicing Christians (more in the East than in the West), and I'll bet they'd stick it out. Some secular people will too.

That said, Europe still faces a serious problem with demographics and Islam. But I don't think the Europeans will just roll over and give up by any means. The problem for them is that unless they take action now, things will probably get much worse before they get better.