"Take away God, all respect for civil laws, all regard for even the most necessary institutions disappears; justice is scouted; the very liberty that belongs to the law of nature is trodden underfoot; and men go so far as to destroy the very structure of the family, which is the first and firmest foundation of the social structure."
- St. Pius X, Jucunda Sane, March 12, 1904
“Marijuana use reduces learning ability. Research has been piling up of late demonstrating clearly that marijuana limits the capacity to absorb and retain information.”– American Council for Drug Education’s Basic Facts About Drugs: Marijuana
One does not have to do an exhaustive study to see that the use of marijuana over a period of many years brings on antipathy and indifference in a person. As well, I observe from those who I know to smoke marijuana that the inhibition that holds back anger is greatly lowered. Perhaps this is because marijuana diminishes a person’s ability to cope with the emotions within themselves by enabling them to hide behind a smoky, bittersweet cloud of “mellow” confusion and denial enhanced by the absence of short-term memory. But, what is most disturbing is the antipathy and indifference marijuana smokers have toward history and religion. What makes this even more dangerous is the fact that these people most likely are hard-core liberals who have been brainwashed into to hating anything and everything about Christianity, America, and European history. When I say brainwashed, I mean that marijuana mixed with liberalism, like meth, is the Pinesol of brain scrubbing!
The two events in history most hated by the pot-smoking southpaws (my term for leftists) are the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. Tonight, I will focus on the Crusades.
In a recent university lecture, we students were told that Muhammad was an illiterate who received his revelations from an angel, that he went to Mecca to establish his religion there, was persecuted by the authorities ruling Mecca, went to Jerusalem, was caught up to Heaven and delivered back to Earth, moved his religion to Medina and received a whole lot of conversions to his religion. From there on, Islam spread to various parts of the Middle East: Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, and (of course) Arabia. But, there is something not being said in this lecture.
Given Islam’s general geographic location as the Middle East, most people ignorant of history assume that the Middle East was always Muslim. I grant that the Bedouins had roamed the region for centuries, but these people were largely indistinguishable (as far as I know) from the Jewish people, which they had branched off from
as being the children of Ishmael, the bastard son of Abraham and Agar. As interesting and heartwarming Ishmael’s story is, that is
a subject for another article. It wasn’t until Muhammad was visited by an “angel” that the relatively peaceful Bedouins were transformed into a warring people. From Muhammad –himself a warlord- to Arslan (Turk) to Saladin, the Muslims conquered the lands of the Middle East by force, especially by forced conversion, for these lands were Christian. One disturbing factor of the time period is that al-Farabi, a very literate philosopher who wrote on the origins of creation and the design of the universe, was banished from Islam, having been publicly admonished by ibn-Kalduhn who wrote that it was best to follow the illiterate Muhammad’s teachings and that reason and rationale had no place in the world of Islam. Hence, Islam continued to fall into the hands of warlords.
One of these warlords, as mentioned, was Saladin. Now, the great thing about military history is that one can admire the enemy leaders that one’s ancestors fought against. Though, Saladin was fighting for the other guys, his diplomatic and tactical genius is highly regarded among most, if not all, military historians. He was, in fact, the Muslim equivalent of the Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson. Like Jackson during the Shenandoah Campaign, Saladin started out with a relatively small force and fought whenever advantageous. He then gained new recruits wherever he conquered by uniting his forces under on religion. That he could use enculturation as a diplomatic tool to gain recruits was a masterstroke. But, unlike "Stonewall," Saladin's men, feeling the effects of long seiges and the fatigue of war, asked to return home and leave the fight.
The Europeans:The disparagement leveled at the European Crusaders -some, for good reason- I believe comes largely from the notion that somehow the Europeans were expected to have knowledge of the cultures of the Middle East in a time when there was no mass communication. This comes from the fallacy of seeing history through modern eyes. This is where I have a problem with marijuana use and the antipathy towards religion and history it creates.
Think for a moment on how the brain becomes susceptiple to coersion from the effects of marijuana. A user's state of mind becomes so feeble that it cannot comprehend reason. Rather, it relies on emotion. Therefore, a user cannot look at conflict and analyze it properly, but looks either away or past the conflict and focuses on some existential idea about peace. Don't get me wrong: I love peace and I hate war. But, how will we have peace if we cannot arguably guard against war, that is war thrust upon us? Indeed, when the Muslims invaded Christian countries, Chrisitianity had war thrust upon it. Therefore, the Crusaders from Europe saw this as an attack against them as well as an attack against countries like Lebanon and Syria.
