International Standards Quotes



One myth is that Islamic violence is caused by the dispute over Israel in the Middle East and American and Christian encroachments into Islam. Violence by Muslims against fellow Muslims is responsible for many more deaths than Muslims perpetrate against the West. In this example it shows that Muslim on Muslim violence in Egypt alone is far grater than the violence against the Israelis. In the Iraq war, Muslim insurgents killed many more fellow Muslims than they killed Americans. Many Muslims will kill and intimidate anyone of any religion who simply disagrees with them. Governments fighting the terrorists often, out of desperation, resort to Emergency Laws, suspensing rights or other extra judicial means. Democratic Israel, which has had to cope with terrorism for its entire existence still has a constitutional democracy and has not resorted to undemocratic extra judicial means of counter terrorism.


There were more silver mines than gold and the owners and others who wanted to increase the money supply had advocated using silver as well as gold to back the money supply. As silver was more plentiful, financiers felt that the American money had been diluted and other its value went down. Cleveland proposed that the legislation allowing so much silver be repealed. It was. Note the appeal to international opinion. At the time the United States was not one of the world’s superpowers and what the English and French thought about our money was extremely important and likely to persuade voters. A century later, American public opinion was not as influenced by that of other nations.


The Egyptian Army, responding to huge demonstrations, ordered the Muslim Brotherhood President to step down in what appeared to be a coup d’etat. There was an American law that required a cut off of foreign aid to any government that had come to power. The American Administration and most of Congress did not want to terminate foreign aid to Egypt, and announced that it could not come to a conclusion as to whether or not there was a coup. They did not say that there was no coups—they just decided not to decide. Since there was no finding of a coups, there was no cutoff. Senator Paul and a few other Senators, observing that there had been a coup, wanted the administration to cut off the foreign aid even though it would be detrimental to our foreign policy. The government must obey the law they argued, regardless of the consequences.