How does one describe an individual who directs a man to be burned alive in a cage, or beheaded with a butcher knife while pleading for his life?  Well, the Washington Post referred to him in its obituary as “An austere religious leader.”  That description was applied to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self proclaimed leader of  ISIS, whose “religious” teachings have caused the brutal executions of dozens, if not hundreds of innocent people since he came to power in the region.  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich noted that portrayal was akin to referring to Adolph Hitler as a “disgruntled painter!”

This “brave” Islamic jihadist blew himself up with a suicide vest, taking three of his children, (who were presumably being used as human shields), with him on his trip to the Muslim Paradise.  They may find it to be a bit hotter than the Northern Syrian Desert where their trip began.

Continue reading Blood in the Sand →

In the last quarter of the 18th Century, two revolutionary wars occurred which would help shape the destiny of the civilized world to this day.  The first, the American Revolutionary War, took place from 1775 thru 1783.   A group of British Colonists on the North American Continent took on the greatest military power of the time, and in eight years won their independence from Great Britain, forming the Republic which we know as the United States of America.  Only a small portion of the American Colonials initially supported the revolution, and indeed a very small part of the budding nation actually fought against the British to gain our freedom from their domination.

When the war was over, there were no mass reprisals against the “Tories”, the colonists who actively supported British rule.  Some Tories, either because they didn’t want to be part of the new nation, or feared retaliatory violence which in the main never occurred, either left their their homes and moved to Canada, or returned to the British Isles.  Some actually later returned and became citizens of the new Republic when they realized they wouldn’t be discriminated against for their beliefs.

In stark contrast to the American Revolution, dissidents in France, lead by factions of the French government who were dissatisfied with the Monarchy of Louis XVI and his predecessors, led a peasant army, generally supported by the military, to overthrow the King and his supporters.  This all began in 1789.  The violence and discord which followed, lasting until the late 1790s, took the lives of tens of thousands of French citizens, either by firing squad, the gallows, or the most feared method of all, the “Guillotine”, which claimed the lives and heads of Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette among others.  Crowds of cheering people, mainly from the lowest classes, reveled in these gruesome spectacles.  Many private grievances were settled, as French men and women “denounced” their enemies in revolutionary courts.  In the end, the French Revolution produced not peace and prosperity for the French people, but instead Napoleon Bonaparte, who became a Dictator, and started a series of wars against neighboring countries which ravaged Europe for the next quarter century.   What has happen to these two nations since? Continue reading A Tale of Two Revolutions →