It’s Time for American Christians to Stand With the Persecuted | Illinois Family Institute

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”  -  Edmund Burke 

Agreed.

The problem is, we then run into this quote.

"History never repeats itself but it rhymes,"  - Mark Twain

Ewww, and some people are tone deaf. This could be a problem.

If history repeated, it would be easier for us to identify the the impending doom and make an appropriate correction. "Been there, done that, won't get fooled again." But it rhymes so....

Life works that way, we get conflicting data. I'm with Elie Wiesel on this one. The cost of being wrong is too high, as we have found out in the past.

from Illinois Family Institute:
It’s Time for American Christians to Stand With the Persecuted | Illinois Family Institute:

Naive skeptics say what ISIS jihadists do across the world is no threat to American Christians. “It will never happen here,” they say, sighing that only the hysterical and paranoid believe anyone will suffer for their faith in America. 

 Indeed. 

But Jewish-American writer Elie Wiesel isn’t so sure. During his 1985 acceptance speech after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Wiesel shared a conversation he had with a young Jewish boy that asked him how the Holocaust could have happened.

“… 

I explained to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation,” Wiesel said.

 “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.”

'via Blog this'

"Nobody really cares about philosophy in general but they do care about two areas of practical and applied philosophy and that's religion and politics. So people will talk about philosophy in general but they will never talk about philosophy in particular (specifically). People love to talk about philosophy, but they don't want to talk about the areas where philosophy is practical / applied -- which is religion and politics." - Doug Casey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4nPuAfi1IE

from gatestoneinstitute.org
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5676/free-speech-erosion

The Erosion of Free Speech

by Denis MacEoin  •  May 3, 2015 at 5:00 am

• "If PEN as a free speech organization can't defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name." — Salman Rushdie, former President of PEN.
• Today, a genuine fear of retribution for a "blasphemous" statement has subdued the will to stand up for one's own beliefs, values and the right to speak out. This fear has made most of the West submissive, just as Islam -- in both its name [Islam means "submission"] and declarations -- openly wants.
• This time, the condemnation had not come in a fatwa from Iran's Supreme leader, but from a Western academic. If we do not reverse this trend, censorship, blasphemy laws, and all the other encumbrances of totalitarians, will return to our lives. The bullies will win.
• If Geert Wilders and others are being accused of hate speech, then why isn't the Koran -- with its calls for smiting necks and killing infidels -- also being accused of hate speech?
• The mere criticism of a religious belief shared by many people mainly in the Third World has been linked, with no justification, to their genuine prejudice against the inhabitants of the developed world.

 http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5675/saeed-abedini

U.S. Lets American Pastor Saeed Abedini Rot in Iran's Prison

by Uzay Bulut  •  May 3, 2015 at 4:00 am

• "Recently, prison guards have threatened that even if he serves the full eight years, he will not be released, and that they will find new grounds to continue to hold him indefinitely." — Naghmeh Abedini, wife of Pastor Saeed Abedini.
• Shamefully, the U.S. government has said that the four Americans being held by Iran are not even part of the current negotiations with Iran.
• No wonder the great historian Bernard Lewis says that "America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend."

American Pastor Saeed Abedini with his family, before his imprisonment in Iran. (Image source: American Center for Law and Justice)

This week, on May 7, Saeed Abedini, an American pastor, will "celebrate" his 35^th birthday behind bars in a prison for "violent offenders" in Iran, simply for being a Christian.

He has already been held in two of Iran's most brutal prisons -- first in Evin, and now in Rajai-Shahr -- for three years, out of an eight-year sentence.

According to his official website, "On 28 July 2012, during a visit to Tehran to visit family and to finalize the board members for an orphanage he was building in Iran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard detained Abedini, asserting that he must face criminal charges for his Christian faith."

In an interview with Gatestone Institute, Abedini's wife, Naghmeh Abedini, said that her husband is still exposed to pressures and mistreatment both from the guards and also from different Islamic militant groups within the prison:

Freedom versus coercion.

"So we fight evil and one of the great challenges with fighting evil is you cannot fight evil and the reason you cannot fight evil is that the moment that people see that it's evil it loses it's power.  What we fight is evil that people think is good." - Stephan Molyneux

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fWyzwo1xg0