TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE

Richard Dawkins

Today on CNN, on his "GPS" show, Fareed Zakaria interviewed Richard Dawkins on the subject of the current Republican candidates for president and the fact that none has publicly espoused a belief in the theory of evolution.  Dawkins says that this is "disgraceful", since evolution "is a fact".  Zakaria virtually fawned over Dawkins, who is a vociferous atheist.

When I compare Dawkins with his philosophical nemesis, Stephen Meyer, I experience emotional reactions. I can't put a finger on what distinguishes these two men from each other, but I would gladly go on a two-week vacation with Meyer, and I wish Dawkins would disappear.

Evolutionists like to re-classify Intelligent Design proponents as "creationists" so as to demean their ideas as being religious dogma.  Dawkins is a professor of evolutionary biology at Oxford.  He goes to and fro in the world preaching that evolution is not a theory but a fact of science.  98% of professional scientists agree with Dawkins.

Stephen C. Meyer

In his book Signature in the Cell Stephen Meyer (a philosopher of science) reminds us that there are two types of science. To paraphrase Meyer, here they are:

     1.  Empirical, testable science
     2.  Historical, evidentiary science

The first type involves scientific principles that can be demonstrated through experimentation.  If I start a fire under a pot of water, it will usually cause the water to boil.  You can't argue with this tested outcome because the evidence is incontrovertible.  If I let go of my glass of milk, gravity will pull it to the floor (pretty much every time).

The second type of science is the type practiced by forensic homicide detectives, paleontologists, archaeologists, and cosmologists.  They look at current situations and make inferences based on the the best available historical evidence.  When there is a bloody shoe print on the ground outside a house - matching the size-13 Bruno Magli shoes owned solely by O.J. Simpson, it is reasonable to conclude that O.J. stepped in the blood.  No one saw the murder (or the dinosaur).  No (living) person saw the birth of our galaxy or the arrival of the trilobytes on earth.

Cosmologists observe that there are radio waves pervasively distributed throughout our universe.  Many of them now speculate that the radio waves are a by-product of a "Big Bang". Some disagree.  None of us can go back in time to observe whether our universe was started by an immense momentary explosion or by the act of a benevolent God (or Gods) or by BOTH.  We are confined to examining the currently available data and evidence, and theorizing about what could have caused it to come about.  Dawkins is no exception.

Richard Dawkins insists that there is evidence of evolution so compelling that the only conclusion that sensible, sane people can come to is that we living creatures developed gradually over millions of years through slow microscopic genetic changes.  Problem is - Dawkins and his fellow believers have never produced "scientific" evidence OF EITHER KIND that shows that this is true.  Now, Stephen Meyer and I will be the first to admit that neither has the Intelligent Design community produced any evidence that God designed all the many living creatures slithering about our planet.  So perhaps it is a tie! 

We can't "test" the existence of God, and we can't "test" evolutionary change (especially if it takes as long as Dawkins insists).  All we can do is look at the information, data, material, evidence and conditions that are observable today and come up with the best scientific inference based on the available historical evidence.

If I go outside and notice that my neighbor's driveway is wet, I might conclude that it recently rained.  Yet if my own driveway is not wet, I might posit that he hosed his driveway instead.  If I happen upon a poem, I can conclude nothing but that someone penned it.  Poems don't write themselves.

If I get a microscope and look inside the external membrane of a living cell, I find numerous functioning organelles and departments - sanitation, reproduction, transportation, alimentation, defense, repair, and more.  This vast, microscopic biological universe is so complex that I find it hard to believe that it came about by chance or by gradual, undirected metamorphosis.

Without direction or intervention, EVERYTHING in the universe tends toward chaos, entropy.  Richard Dawkins knows this, but still he goes about preaching that the immeasurable complexities of life on this earth sprang into existence by the collision of organic compounds in the pre-biotic soup and then waxed ever more complex without direction or purpose. 

Scientists recently performed experiments on fruit flies by interfering a little with the early reproductive process.  They found that even slight disturbances in the DNA coding resulted in horrific mutations - legs growing out of heads, and worse.  Dawkins knows that if you tamper with genetic data, the resulting offspring are distorted and sterile.  Successful genetic changes cannot come about EXCEPT through the ADDITION of new DNA code - new information, new script.  New data cannot come about unless it is written.  New computer programs don't arise unless someone codes them.  House plans don't design themselves.  DNA blueprints and epigenetic data don't poof into existence spontaneously, and we have no evidence ANYWHERE that shows how one species of critter suddenly OR GRADUALLY morphed into a different critter.

I am reminded of Korihor and Nehor (look them up!) in the Book of Mormon, and how they went about preaching that people who believed in God were deceived by fantastical myths.  Korihor was eventually forced to admit that the devil had persuaded him to preach lies to the people, and he knew the truth.

I believe that Richard Dawkins is a modern-day Korihor.  There is surely a hidden reason why he goes about so smugly mocking believers in God, and insisting that his ideas about evolution are somehow "science".  When you challenge Darwinian evolutionists, they speak about evolutionary change in terms of, "We think it happened like this", "It may have happened like this", and so on.  Their speculation is bereft of proof and bereft of conviction.  They have to force themselves to believe and parrot it because their careers or guilt depend on it.

I recently read both of Stephen Meyer's books, and for me it is hard not to believe in a loving God after reading them.  Meyer doesn't preach religion, but he proves convincingly that life on this earth could not have come about accidentally and arbitrarily.  If you want a brief glimpse of Meyer's inspiration and brilliance, watch this YOUTUBE video of one of his lectures:

Centre for Intelligent Design Lecture 2011 by Stephen Meyer on 'Signature in the Cell'.

Mass Murderer Admitted to University

Today the news announced that Anders Breivik was admitted to the Political Science program at Norway's University of Oslo.  Read this article.

I was reluctant to include this terrorist's photo in this post.  He massacred 77 people in Norway in 2011.  His victims were innocent.

I understand that Norway's prison inmates are permitted to pursue further education.  Breivik is 36 and has 21 years of his sentence left.  He plans to write books.

At age 57 (or sooner), he will be released and have the opportunity to massacre more people.

I don't know what has happened to the minds of the good Israelite people of Scandinavia.  I think they don't understand the plan of salvation.

In the days of Brigham Young, some Mormons who had committed adultery were executed for it.  I can't say that I completely disagree with that policy.  This life is brief.  Execution isn't only about vengeance, punishment or deterrence - it is about ATONEMENT.  If I had massacred 77 people (or even ONE!), I know I would think it right for me to DIE.  You cannot further your repentance for such a deed by hanging around here in mortality.  Better to be dispatched swiftly to the other side so that you can start the buffeting process and find a pathway back to eternal peace (of some sort).

It is a stunning insult to the families of the victims to have this goon walking the planet and taking college courses.  It is a distortion of Norway's moral character.

Am I wrong?  I think the problem is that our God has needed to keep his distance from us for a while, and thus we have all lost our grip on universal absolute principles.  God's goal is to maximize the eternal joy of all of His children.  Why did He send His Only-Begotten to die at the hands of the Edomites and Romans?  Was this an act of brutal cruelty on His part?  Have we lost our understanding of the scales of justice and mercy?  We have not treated Anders Breivik with mercy, and his victims and their families were deprived of justice.

Thank God for the remediation process still to come.

House of Cards

MAP of GREECE

I'm still puzzling over this Greek default situation.  One observer commented that the European Union has mercilessly hectored and bullied Greece since its last bailout, and that the Greeks have every reason to resent the EU and would be better off abandoning the EURO and getting back to business on their own.

Either way, Greece's government debt is at 160% of its GDP, so it isn't likely to get caught up any time soon.  I guess we should all rejoice that our U.S. government debt is only at 106% of our GDP.

I know that Portugal, Cyprus, Spain, Ireland, and some other struggling countries have had recent brushes with IMF debt pressure and austerity measures.  Greece is not alone - it has simply not done as well as the others in getting its fiscal sloppiness rectified.

Today the news machinery suggests that the IMF is working hard to extend to Greece another bailout (despite Germany's protests).  Greeks have to vote again now to implement new austerity measures that are stricter than the ones they rejected last week.  Banks are still closed.  This is what happens when you get close to foreclosure.  The friction gets more intense, and things get testy.

I don't know the mind of the IMF, but I'm guessing that it wants to keep Greece in the EU fold - if only to keep up appearances.  I mean - if Greece gives the IMF the finger, what's to keep Portugal or Ireland from doing the same thing?

All of the major Western nations filed bankruptcy in the early 1930s.  This was the key step in granting these private banks control and receivership over the nations.  We don't have any gold, so we could only repay the banks with paper (or electronic) notes, and the banks have no use for that.  After all, they print and conjure money out of thin air already.  The U.S. will never, and can never, repay its $19 trillion dollar national debt - in fact, it is forbidden to do so.  I suspect the same is true for all the other debtor nations.  It is interesting that North Korea is understood to have no public debt.

Reportedly, China is our largest creditor.  I find it amusing that China had to borrow $Trillions so that it could lend that money to us.  The EU rules say that no EU nation is permitted to absorb another EU nation's debt, so who is it that is doing the lending?  Who is it that has the money to lend?  Who is it that has the gold reserves against which to lend out the paper or electronic money?  In our country, the entity that magics the money is the private bank we call the "Federal Reserve".  It's all phony money because our national Treasury is empty (plundered).  If we had $19 Trillion dollars in gold (in Fort Knox ??) we might use it to pay off the debt and stop the inexorable daily $Billion dollar interest payment drain on our economy.

What the nations fail to understand is that when you borrow ten dollars, you must pay back eleven. For a great explanation - read this article. When everyone borrows as much money as there is available, then everyone is running around scrambling to find the eleventh dollar, and there aren't enough eleventh dollars.  Then the bank comes calling to take your collateral, unless there is motivation to keep the game going a little longer.  In that case, the bank prints more money (see Bernanke's Quantitative Easing - I, II and III ). 

If all the developed nations have debt burdens that it could take decades (if ever) for them to pay back, why don't those nations team up and tell the mysterious private lender guys that they simply aren't going to pay up? - then all those nations would be wealthier overnight (and permanently).  I have to assume that the politicians and monarchs are "in bed" with the banking folks, so they aren't going to stand up to them and put a stop to this game.  Then you ask - why would the banks want to do this - they don't need our gold (since they have it already)?  They don't need our taxes, or paper money, or electronic credit card repayments? 

There has to be some sort of plan or agenda.  What is it?  I venture to say that (as in previous foreclosures and regicides) the international bankers plan a global overthrow.  When bankers overthrow a government (see Bolshevik Revolution 1917), they change the governing system.  They neutralize the old leadership and institute a new regime (usually a brutal one).  If Greece were to collapse now, it could set off a "house of cards" chain of collapses, and that is perhaps premature.  Maybe it isn't yet timely or expedient for the bankers to send in their international peacekeeping forces to roll out the new global dictatorship.  We are not quite ripe for getting plucked.

Remember what I said in previous posts.  I denounced Ezra Taft Benson for saying that "This Nation Shall Endure", when D&C 87:6 plainly says:

"And thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations;"

Revelation 18:3 says:

"For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies."

Keep your eyes peeled and your lamps trimmed (and remember that even gold is not edible).  What is a "nation" now, if it is not an incorporated business unit that is able to incur debt and mortgage the land?  Why does Jesus seek the overthrow of the bankers and the dissolution of the "nations"?  Why is this same arrangement implemented on every Telestial planet throughout the universe?

P.S. Do the other planets have their own Beatles?

Liberal Causes

Trump reveals a truth

You guys know I'm not a liberal, right?  I have some relatives who are liberals.  I was at a family gathering a while ago, and this husband and wife couple who are in-laws of mine was taking turns standing sentry at the front door.  I asked why they were doing that, and the answer was that they didn't want their kids to go outside.  Now, you guys know I have umpteen kids, and my wives and I are way too busy to stand by the doors to our house to make sure the kids don't go outside.  We have other ways of inducing them not to go outside, and those inducements are usually effective after one application.

I NEVER will understand Liberals' thinking.  I understand Conservative thinking because I think like a Conservative.  I think Conservative thinking has always been the same since our God came down here and started  the reproduction process - I mean there are certain principles of liberty versus oppression that don't change simply because it is 3400 B.C. or 2015 A.D.

Recently, Donald Trump said that some of the illegal Mexican migrants who have sneaked across our southern border are rapists and drug dealers.  The political correctness machine has sprung into action and is decrying Trump for his frankness.  Nothing he said is wrong, but a lot of liberal entities are flexing and strutting their liberal feathers by boycotting Trump and by calling for others to do the same.

I don't think there is more than one Conservative cause - to wit - we should stick to our tried and true principles.  However, I think there is a new, liberal cause and fashion emerging every week.  The Oregon couple who owned the bakery that declined to bake a cake for a gay wedding was just fined $130,000.  I think their ideas were a bit extreme, but $130k !!!???

I know, we are all subjects of a corporation operated solely under the Uniform Commercial Code, and, if we don't do what the banks and their politician servants want, we get punished.

Liberals want liberty - a strange kind of liberty - the liberty to enlist government to plunder stuff from their neighbors to finance their pet causes.  If you resist their agenda, they will crush you.

Liberalism is just the dating phase of the Communism marriage.  In Communism, all the people are equal, and the oligarchs who run the country pilfer the people's money and live like kings.  When Hosni Mubarak was run out of office in the Egyptian "Arab Spring", we learned that he had billion$$$ stashed away. Vladimir Putin is no different.  They got their billions from U.S. foreign aid (=YOU and ME).  That's what oligarchs and dictators do - they get power, and then they siphon off the good folks' money.

The problem with liberalism is that it is fluid.  It is the political equivalent of scientific evolution [sorry for the oxymoron].  Its ideals can evolve from year to year, because there are "no absolutes" in the universe, and its purveyors do whatever they can get away with.  Obama and his socialist clan want a limitless stream of south- and central-American aliens to cross our border.  They want to grant them citizenship and free stuff so that they will vote Democrat, and there will never again be a Conservative government in the U.S.

I think it was Cleon Skousen who wrote that the paradigm with which we should be concerned is not Democrat vs. Republican, rather it is Liberty vs. Tyranny.  Republicans and Democrats alike have sold this land into slavery.  WE can NEVER repay our $19,000,000,000,000.00 national debt - any more than Greece can avoid default.  Greece didn't make its payment to the IMF this week, but do you seriously think the electronic funds transfer means ANYTHING to the IMF?  The bank already has all the gold, so why do you think it would have any need for Greece's worthless paper notes or electronic phantom funds transfers?

As I have said before, all of the western nations filed bankruptcy in the early 1930's (including the U.S.). Repayment of the debt with anything other than gold is forbidden, and all of the gold is gone.  Liberals have all been fooled and decoyed into thinking that everything is hunky dory, and that we can keep on borrowing fake money ad infinitum.  It is not expedient for the banks to "pull the plug" today, but when it becomes expedient, look out!  Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy,  Japan - they all owe more money to the World banks than they can ever repay.  In truth, the banks never did anything productive for the borrower countries. Those nations fell for the usury deception and lost their inheritance.  We are the biggest borrower - with the biggest debt liability.  One at a time those countries will collapse under the weight of un-repayable debt.

We have to understand that this is a Satan-versus-God battle.  Satan uses his servants to bilk God's chosen people out of their lands and wealth.  This has been going on since Cain slew Abel.  This is exactly the same program that gets implemented on every populated planet in the universe.  This is how we are judged - by the extent to which we oppress our fellow man.  Banks and Liberals oppress.  Obama is a Liberal, and he has doubled our national debt since taking office.  Any Conservative efforts to interdict this debt explosion are met with ridicule and uprisings.  I think Liberal thinking is knee-jerk thinking.  It is low-I.Q. numbskullery. You have to be stupid or evil (or both) to champion liberal causes.  They are just as idiotic as leaving the door to your house open at night and posting a yard sign that reads:  "Come into my house and take everything I own, then go next door and take everything you want from my neighbor's house."

Liberals don't seem to understand that their boneheaded policies will cause great pain when they come home to roost in their own house.

It's All Silliness

Today, (once again on June 26th) the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision.  I'll ignore yesterday's ignominious decision upholding Obominacare.  Today's decision commands all fifty states to permit and acknowledge same sex marriages.

I have been enthusiastically awaiting this outcome - not only for legal and social reasons, but also from the simple standpoint of logic.

In Saudi Arabia recently, two women were jailed for violating the kingdom's ban on women driving.  Their case has now been referred to the Terrorism Court (a court that has sentenced dissenters to death).  Now, I may be wrong, but I think automobiles are a relatively modern innovation. I would imagine that before engines came along, Arabia didn't ban women from driving/riding camels.  When the government gets involved sometimes it screws things up and makes a controversy where there needn't have been one - especially when it imposes an arbitrary discrimination.

Today, as the news media recite the arguments surrounding both sides of today's 5-4 ruling permitting gay marriage licenses nationwide, I hear remarks like - "It's been that way since the founding of our nation", "Marriage has ALWAYS been between a man and a woman", "Why does the Court think it can dictate the will of the respective states?".

Virgil Cooper wrote:

The marriage license as we know it didn't come into existence until after the Civil War and didn't become standard practice in all the states until after 1900, becoming firmly established by 1920. In effect, the states or governments appropriated or usurped control of marriages in secular form and in the process declared Common Law applicable to marriages "abrogated." 

See also UCC - Uniform Commercial Code - 1950 - Approval of the Uniform Marriage License Application Act. (http://www.barefootsworld.net/usfraud.html)

Prior to the states' intervention into the civil marriage business, it was the province of the various churches to decide whom they would marry.  The fact that the states stuck to the man/woman marriage model was perhaps arbitrary, and only reinforced by a prevailing culture which until 2003 saw gays as felons.

Today's ruling gave gays nationwide something that 100 years ago they wouldn't really have needed. What makes the difference now is that since the good religious folks of our country deputized the government to guard and maintain the sanctity of the Judeo-Christian sacrament of traditional holy matrimony, the glorious prize at stake is the LICENSE - a relatively new innovation (like the automobile).

I have said it before, but the equal protection doctrine of the (fraudulent) Fourteenth Amendment makes it silly for the new, Corporate United States government to discriminate on the basis of gender when issuing a license - especially one that is essentially a BUSINESS LICENSE.  Virgil Cooper continues:

In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a for-profit venture or profit-making venture (even though it may never actually produce a profit in operation) and as the wife goes out to the local market to purchase food stuffs and other supplies for the marriage household, she is replenishing the stocks of the business. To restate: In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a business venture, that is, a for-profit business venture. Moreover, as children come into the marriage household, the business venture is considered to have "borne fruit."  (citing William Defuniak)

I am happy for my gay friends who can now feel like fully-fledged corporate subjects with equal privileges and immunities granted as titles of nobility in an admiralty jurisdiction.  One news anchor mused about whether we polygs will now step up and insist on equal treatment in the form of licenses for a plural family.  I don't know, I'm thinking about it.

I do think that Utah's recent appeal (to the 10th Circuit) of Judge Waddoups' decriminalization of plural cohabitation is not only littered with typos, but also now is doomed to fail.  While gays have won the right to marry, we polygs are still not permitted to exist.  How silly is that?

Can barely come up with one

A TV news contributor commented the other day that criticisms of the tutti frutti lineup of 2016 Republican presidential contenders are a little hollow when the Democrats can barely come up with one candidate.  I agree.

I heard rumors that the four law enforcement officers who died on the day of the first siege of the Branch Davidian property in Waco were getting ready to give testimony in court proceedings related to Bill Clinton's sexual shenanigans.

This, whether true or not, is just one of the hundreds of suspicious events attributed to Bill and Hillary for three decades.

If it isn't enough that America has been subjected to nearly eight years of socialist bumbling from Barack "empty-suit" Obama, now we are expected to flip a coin over whether we will have this crazy megalomaniac at the helm.  Imagine being married to her AND Nancy Pelosi.

I think you have to be a fanatical liberal ideologue to even entertain the idea of electing this harpy.  I read a book by a Secret Service agent who served in the Clinton White House.  He wrote that Hillary would march through the halls with an entourage of her servants, and anyone who attempted to make eye contact with her as she passed would be punished or terminated.

I've always said that America went off the rails even before the Civil War., so it is little wonder that we are now faced with the prospect of Presidentessa Maleficentissima.

Is the the Democratic party so chained to Hillary that it cannot find even ONE other candidate to run? - somebody intelligent, honorable, charismatic, seasoned, wise, respected, temperate,  . . . . . ?

I mean - SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE !!!  Can you even like anything about this woman?  What accomplishments can she boast?  Will she step forward and repudiate our bogus debt to international banks?

I guess it doesn't matter.  This country is run by its owner, not the stooge in the Oval office.  If you vote, you signal your acquiescence to the fraud.

One Tooth

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer

I have been reading more on the topic of Intelligent Design (especially the work of Stephen Meyer).  I marvel at the venom directed at its proponents.  Darwinian evolutionists harbor so much disdain for those scientists who don't think life could have sprung into existence by way of undirected natural processes.

Darwinists allege that the idea of Intelligent Design (I.D.) is not worthy even of being called a theory - much less science.  The accusation that the belief in a designer is mere religious faith is rather hypocritical, since many of Darwin's postulations were based on his own best inferences based on historical data available in his day - a day when no one knew what a cell was.  Evolutionists' beliefs are all based on faith - faith that God does not exist.

Since evolutionists cannot demonstrate any of the biochemical events and adaptations they claim brought about life and living creatures, they rely on speculation - "The first cell could have emerged from the pre-biotic primordial soup." "The process of natural selection may have allowed monkeys to evolve into humans."

Truth is - no one alive today can state precisely how our universe started or how the first living cell found its way onto our planet.  Darwinian scientists and philosophers insist that if it cannot be demonstrated or tested today, it cannot be considered science.  That reasoning undermines much of what Darwin proposed.  For this controversy there simply will not be a level playing field.

Today I thought about teeth - individual teeth.  I still have most of mine (though some are synthetic).  It struck me as interesting that our teeth are many and separate.  Why do I not have merely two bony, enamel-clad ridges (one top, one bottom) with which to chew?  Then I realized that were that the case, I might risk losing an entire chewing ridge through injury or infection.  How wise our Creator was to let us have individual teeth so that if one goes bad, it doesn't jeopardize the rest of the mouth.

My point is - have you ever looked at your teeth?  Why do they have such remarkable anatomies?  What makes them grow into just the right shape for optimum maceration?  Think about that in light of the natural selection model.  How many generations of our human forbears had to endure having the wrong shaped teeth before the beneficent natural selection process sifted us to the current perfect arrangement?  I don't think humans have been on this planet long enough for all of that adaptation to have occurred.

I just read the book "Signature in the Cell" by Stephen C. Meyer - see

     http://www.signatureinthecell.com/

Check it out and marvel for yourself at how impossible it would have been for life to have emerged without a Designer.

The Final Showdown

In one of my recent posts I erred.  I wrote that I did not think it was likely that a Circuit Court would uphold state same-sex marriage bans.  Surprise, surprise - in a two-to-one split decision, the Sixth Circuit overturned lower-court rulings (granting gay marriage) in cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.  Read this article.  This is delicious.  Now, with contrasting rulings from different Circuits, the matter must inevitably escalate to the Supreme Court.

Despite the laments of those who insist that the decision whether to allow same-sex marriages must remain with the People of the respective states, it is clear that there is a powerful Popular trend in the U.S. to let gay people marry, and the courts are rapidly getting in step behind it.

I am reminded of the bizarre Reynolds decision.  In 1879, most Americans were enthusiastic over having a federal court barge in and dictate to the little ol' territory of Utah regarding its marriage practices.  We have short memories.

Let us not forget the breathtaking ambiguity in Canada, where gay marriages have been legally solemnized since 2005, and it is a crime to be a polygamist - even an informal one.

I express my thanks again to Judge Clark Waddoups (and Justice Christine Durham) who saw through the exquisite hypocrisies of Utah's anti-bigamy statute and obliterated it even before the Supreme Court has a chance to bless universal gay marriage.

GO TED AND DAVID !!!

Can't Have It Both Ways

I was saddened by the recent attacks by Islamic extremists on innocent victims in Paris.  The immense groundswell of public indignation has been impressive.  The reaction from most who are shocked by the terrorists' brutality has been an adamant defense of free speech and the right of those satirical journalists to publish cartoons and articles, even those which could be deemed insulting to religious figures such as the prophet Mohammed.

I went to London once, and, not far from the Houses of Parliament in the island in the middle of a noisy roundabout, there were several protesters waving banners.  I learned that this was England's free speech zone - a place where people can declaim on any subject without fear of prosecution.  I found it a little odd. It made me wonder if there are certain things that you aren't allowed to say if you are in England.

Then I remembered a video I watched in 1986.  It was one of the most shocking things I had ever seen.  A middle-aged German man, a Canadian citizen, was being attacked by thugs with baseball bats as he entered a Toronto courthouse.  This situation was repeated time after time as the man went through a trial because of some pamphlets he had published.  He had challenged conventional history regarding some of the events of World War II.  Canada doesn't have free speech like we do in the U.S.  The man, Ernst Zundel, was questioning whether the "official" tally of Jewish people murdered by the Nazis - six million - was an accurate figure.  Clearly, Zundel repudiated some statistics associated with the Holocaust - an infraction that will get you prison time not only in Canada, but also in Germany and Austria.  If you are in one of those countries, don't attempt such a thing!  Keep your mouth shut.

Now, if you are in France, and you want to write or draw insulting things about Mohammed, you may risk terrorist reprisals, but you will have the endorsement of millions and the praise of dozens of world leaders.

Since the horrific events of last week, a few Islamic sympathizers have expressed support for the two gunmen who killed the journalists at Charlie Hebdo.  Those sympathizers have been charged and now face years in prison.

Here is my conclusion from all of this:-  In France, there is freedom of speech, and that freedom is carefully controlled and restricted.  If you say what the prevailing political sentiment agrees with, you are a hero, and if you say something contrasting, you will go to prison. 

You just can't have it both ways, France.  Likewise, until recently in America, if you said you had two wives, you had to go to prison.  I despise brutality and terrorism from any source.  I also despise the ideological terrorism that limits and muzzles freedom of expression anywhere in the world.