Sad Scenes aside. . .

At dinner last night several people were lamenting the plight of Syrian immigrants in Hungary and a small boy drowned off Turkey. Maybe because I don’t watch TV, but read or hear my news, I miss the essential pathos of these stories.

Therefore, I cannot dispel nagging questions like: Why are/were so many Middle Eastern, Islamic countries--not only Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Bashir Al Assad’s Syria but countless others—dictatorships? Is there something inherently paternalistic or non-democratic that requires a strongman to hold a state with variants of Islam together, to keep civic order?

Were you flabbergasted watching the Egyptians endure the misery of revolution; then around and vote for the Muslim Brotherhood, only to find themselves back where they started? What does the endless, intractable standoff between Israel and the Palestinians tell us?

Is there some correlation between the corporate Islamic mindset and public life that leads an essentially undemocratic place? Has everybody forgotten the Charlie Hebo affair? What happened to Theo Van Gogh?

Living in Germany and France I found Europe a saner place than here for its sensible gun control, reasonable (3-month) election campaigns, social practices and other public policies. There, you are less likely to get a county clerk taking it upon herself to defy federal law because of religious principles.  

It goes without saying that modern society means porous borders. What scares me about Islam is there seems to be more of that Kentucky clerk tendency in it, and I can’t help but think the influx of that to a saner place as problematic for the future. Sad scenes aside.