More Than Bluebirds In The Sky
By Tony Blankley
March 26, 2008
From a popular English World War II song:
There'll be bluebirds over The white cliffs of Dover, Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
There'll be love and laughter And peace ever after Tomorrow, when the world is free.
The shepherd will tend his sheep, The valley will bloom again, And Jimmy will go to sleep In his own little room again.
There'll be bluebirds over The white cliffs of Dover, Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
A long half-century ago, my mother and father -- along with millions of other English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Americans, Yugoslavs, Russians, Greeks, Canadians, Africans, Australians and other heirs to the Christian West, along with surviving Jews, Indian Hindus and even hard-edged French atheists, risked and often sacrificed their lives to defend their (our) way of life from the Nazi menace.
It was the great ferocious struggle of their lives. And we -- their heirs -- have frivolously prospered in the peaceful and secure aftermath of their exertion. Where once our parents marched through the mud, jungle, sand or urban bombscapes of world combat -- asking nothing, offering all -- and prevailing, gaining glorious victory, we, their diminished progeny, whine that the world has not given us enough of a living.
But into every generation, a storm must come. And as we boomers slide toward our incontinence and as our children approach their young-adult vigor, the new barbarism reveals its menace to our civilization. Every week has its own largely ignored example of the coming struggle.
Two weeks ago, the story came from a town with a college that has been a leading force in the advancement of Christian civilization for 900 years: Oxford, England. Once again, something more than bluebirds threatens English skies. It seems that authorities at the Oxford Central Mosque have requested permission to use loadspeakers to blast the call to prayer five times a day from atop their minaret across the town that has heard for the past 900 summers, falls, winters and springs only the bells of the local churches.
Unsurprisingly, the Church of England's bishop for Oxford, the Right Rev. John Pritchard, has announced his support, calling on his congregation to "enjoy community diversity." He would be a likely successor to the current archbishop of Canterbury, who called for Shariah law for England recently.
Perhaps surprisingly, two Englishmen stepped forward to oppose the proposal: professor Allan Chapman, an Oxford University historian, and Charlie Cleverly, the rector of St. Aldates Church in the heart of Oxford. "I don't have any problem with Islam, but don't force it on the people. I'm a liberal; I want to be inclusive, but I don't want to be walked over," stated the professor.
The Anglican rector of St. Aldates was a bit more blunt: "It is common knowledge, though few will say it, that radical Islam has a program to take Europe, take England and take Oxford. In this strategy, some say the prayer call is like a bridgehead, spreading to other mosques in the city."
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