As the riots and killing in the Middle East of Americans continue supposedly sparked by an anti-Muslim movie, Obama and his spineless cabal continue to kowtow to the raiders and killers. Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs as usual has some of the best coverage. In a recent post, she exposes our “Sharia President” whose staff proclaims that the riots are directed at the film, not the US or the Obama administration.

Apparently, we are supposed to believe that these peace-loving Muslims were simply sent over the edge by a movie and would never, ever think of hurting Americans otherwise.  The irony of the murderous reaction to this film that depicts some Muslims as murderous seems to escape Obama’s mouthpieces.  The left has had the attitude that if we were just nicer to radicals they will love us. Effigies are being burned of Obama. Isn’t he supposed to be Mr. Nice Guy? Isn’t he the one who has bowed down to Islam? It doesn’t matter. They hate us and our culture. It doesn’t matter whether we have a spineless leftist in the white house or a Republican.

I came across this passage in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged which is so apropos that I wanted to share. For those who haven’t read the book, the reference of mystics of muscle broadly relates to the leftists who want to control the products of labor. And Europe’s People’s States is the Communist incarnation of Europe that these mystics of muscle helped create.  You could substitute these terms easily with the current left and Islam.

I know Rand gets under the skin of some people, the left and the religious right especially.  But love her or hate her, this passage as well as many events and concepts in Atlas Shrugged were eerily predictive of what we are faced with today. And the book was published over 50 years ago. Rand experienced Bolshevism first hand in her native Russia. She loved the US and this book was her warning of what she believed this country was headed for if it stayed on the track it was going. Bold emphasis is mine.

“You, who are half-rational, half-coward have been playing a con game with reality, but the victim you have conned is yourself. When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by the scoundrels—and you get the indecent spectacle of cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil. As you surrendered to the mystics of muscle when they told you that ignorance consists of claiming knowledge, so now you surrender to them when they shriek that immorality consists of pronouncing moral judgment. When they yell that it is selfish to be certain that you are right, you hasten to assure them that you are certain of nothing.  When they shout that it is immoral to stand on your convictions, you assure them that you have no convictions whatsoever.

When the thugs of Europe’s People’s States snarl that you are guilty of intolerance, because you don’t treat your desire to live and their desire to kill you as a difference of opinion—you cringe and hasten to assure them that you are not intolerant of any horror. When some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia yells at you: How dare you be rich—you apologize and beg him to be patient and promise him you’ll give it all away.

You have reached the blind alley of the treason you committed when you agreed that you had no right to exist. Once you believed it was ‘only a compromise’: you conceded it was evil to live for yourself, but moral to live for the sake of your children. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your children, but moral to live for your community. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your community, but moral to live for your country. Now, you are letting this greatest of countries be devoured by any scum from any corner of the earth, while you concede that it is selfish to live for your country and that your moral duty is to live for the globe. A man who has no right to life, has no right to values and will not keep them.”

In the world of Rand’s novel, those occupying the other side of the coin of the mystics of muscle are the mystics of spirit who are the religious leaders that Rand saw as just as detrimental to the mind of man as the leftists. They ask man to sacrifice his reason and pursuit of happiness to the cult of religious personality for some promise of happiness in the afterlife. Rand was an atheist and her lumping together of the two “mystics” is one reason her philosophy irks ultra religionists.

The Islamic mystics of spirit and muscle are one. Those killing and burning flags don’t give a damn about our first amendment. They don’t even want to institute something similar for their own people. But we do have the right of freedom of religion and freedom from religion in this country. Obama and his spineless cult of mealy-mouthed, mystics of muscle jeopardize this with their half-assed lip service to the first amendment more so than any far right evangelist.

When our Secretary of State even hints that a filmmaker might be responsible for the killing of American citizens by religious extremists (and come to find out allegedly hiding her own culpability), then more than our freedom of religion is jeopardized. These mystics of muscle represent “this greatest of countries” to the world as a country of Randian cringers, compromisers, apologizers and beggers who have no values left to live for. And that is what evil has been waiting for.