Anti-Islamic blogger commits suicide

A poster at Free Republic has discovered that a right-wing blogger named Ronald Barbour committed suicide on February 19. Barbour announced the planned suicide in a blog entry posted at his website on February 17. He said that the suicide would be to protest America’s failure to oppose the spread of Islam. Barbour’s views on what to do about Islam, as shown in another article of his below, were basically the same as my own: get Muslims out of the West, confine them to their own lands (he called his policy “quarantine” rather than “separationism”), and use military force to destroy any dangerous Islamic regimes but without occupying any Muslim countries. In addition to quarantining Islam as I would do, Barbour also, following the more hard-line position of David Yerushalmi of SANE, wanted to destroy Islam by destroying every sharia regime, whether or not it directly threatened us. Strikingly, Barbour understood that the problem is not terrorism, and the problem is not jihad, the problem is sharia. He said that any sharia-believing Muslim should be made to leave the U.S.

According to a badly written and confusing article in the March 5, 2000 Florida Today, Barbour served a four year federal prison sentence in the 1990s for threatening and planning to assassinate President Clinton by shooting him as he jogged in Washington D.C. The article says that Barbour was innocent and was set up by the Secret Service.

Below is Barbour’s suicide note. In it, he links the article explaining his prison conviction, which he says ruined his life, though he says he is not depressed. He does however say that the suicide is a response to his prison sentence as well as to the West’s surrender to Islamization. Below his suicide note is an abridged version of his January 2007 article on what to do about Islam.

THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE
Sunday, February 17, 2008

I understand the ______ building is more than 150 feet tall. At the time of my last recon I noticed easy access to the roof that would allow someone to leap to their death to the parking lot below. I’m not an expert in these matters, but if I recall from my physics classes in college at 100 feet a falling object reaches a speed of about 100 MPH. This means that the falling man would hit the pavement at a speed great enough to cause instant death. I understand that over the years since the construction of this building several persons have died by jumping from this structure.

I plan to make such a leap. I do this in memory of the several hundred victims on 9/11 who jumped off the World Trade Center as a means of avoiding burning to death, and the over 3,000 American soldiers killed fighting Islamofascism in Iraq and Afghanistan. A parallel reason is a protest against the American Left and the Democrat Party who have stabbed the Armed Forces in the back in the early stages of what is shaping up to be The Third World War.

This is an excellent time to make a final statement—a dying declaration—about an event that resulted in my life being ruined. This is my imprisonment for an attempt on the life of President Clinton in 1994. In truth I made no such attempt and I was convicted on the basis of lies told to the court by the U.S. Secret Service and an edited audiotape. I have no way of knowing the dynamics behind my conviction, but I suspect that it was done on the basis of personal advancement and political reasons on the part of certain individuals in the District Federal Court and Secret Service. In addition I would not rule out Bill or Hillary Clinton being personally involved in my case based on their well known records of revenge against their opponents.

I have no doubt the Leftist Media will spin my death as that of an insane man with few options left in life who killed himself in desperation. In fact, the objective investigator will notice no signs of depression on my part the last months of my life. I would describe myself as an idealist. I know this is a personality strange to many people who would say such a person is “unusual” or “crazy” or “a bit off.” The fact of the matter is that the actions of many people that were described as heroic happened because they were idealists who chose death rather than selling out what they hold to be sacred. In my case I cannot allow myself to continue to live in a world that is largely indifferent to a neo-pagan religion called Islam that in league with Leftist appeasement and multiculturalism, and seems on the fast track to destroy the United States and Western Civilization. [Emphasis added.]

What I did is not suicide. It is the action of a patriot and idealist who loves God and Country, and who makes a very public statement as a warning of a New Dark Age that looks America straight in the face armed with a hideous ideology that makes the German Nazis or Russian Communists look like bleeding heart liberals. I hope my fellow Countrymen will rally once gain in the defense of liberty no matter how long and hard the struggle.

In this life or death struggle between civilizations it would be a critical mistake to limit our attention to the plight of isolated individuals whom Islamic militants have threatened with death: the sort of mistake that leads to a “law-enforcement” attitude toward Islam-powered violence. The Qur’an commands Muslims to impose themselves on the whole world, by any means expedient. Muhammad’s recorded history and sayings reinforce that command. Islamic militants believe that God and His Prophet have commanded them to erect a totalitarian, world-girdling Islamic state. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that there are enough adequately motivated Muslims in any of the countries of Europe to reduce those countries to chaos or shari’a, as long as Islamic militancy is regarded as a law-enforcement issue…which means, as long as Islam is welcomed in the nations of the West.

This cannot be a law-enforcement issue. It must become a war issue.

Muslims as individuals might well be overwhelmingly inclined toward peace and amicable relations with non-Muslims, though, given the sanctification by Islam of taqiyya and kitman, one can never be perfectly sure. But Islam the ideology is inherently and openly at war with any nation that refuses it. Barring extraordinary good fortune such as America had with the Fort Dix Six, militant Islam’s “active agents” cannot reliably be seined from their concealment until they’ve struck. To allow them to roam among us yet safeguard ourselves from them proactively, we would have to erect a totalitarianism that would make Oceania in 1984 look like a kindergarten class picnic.

We must accept that we’re on a war footing, and do what a people at war must do to survive: expel our putative enemies from among us and confine them where they can do us no further harm. Europe’s policy has been the reverse. India’s policy has been inanition. America’s policy defies elucidation. This cannot continue if we wish to survive as free men.

Quarantine or genocide. There are no other options.

A Declaration Of War On Islamic Tyranny
Posted January 17, 2007

After listening mostly in vain to the President tonight and his new approach to Iraq, we thought it time to come out with a clear statement on the War Against Islam. Here it is: We are at war whether we like it or not. There is no hiding from this enemy. Either we lock him out and go after his strongholds or we cower as he picks us apart piece by piece.

We listened to the President this evening. Nothing he said was convincing nor did it address in any serious or detailed way what he is going to do about the most immediate problem in Iraq and further out in what should be, but is not, the War Against Islam. Let’s first focus on the Global problem and then we’ll return to Iraq in a follow-on essay. The following can be considered the SANE War Manifesto.

On the so-called Global War on Terrorism, GWOT, we have been quite clear along with a few other resolute souls. This should be a WAR AGAINST ISLAM and all Muslim faithful. In particular, historical, traditional, and authoritative Shari’a, or the Islamic Way of Life, bound most tightly by Islamic law and jurisprudence, or fiqh, is the focus of the ideology which drives our enemy. People who don’t grasp that Islam is first and foremost a religious ideology built on a legal foundation or jurisprudence simply don’t understand Islam.

All traditional Islamic legal schools adhere to the notion that the Islamic world must persuade, conquer, or kill all of the non-Islamic world (dar al-kufr) and convert this territory to the Land of Submission to Allah (dar al-Islam). The particular emphasis on the jihadist strategic issues varies—such as aggressive and offensive outright war or a more subtle and deceptive war which capitalizes on the infidel’s inclination toward appeasement; suicide-homicide attacks against soldiers and “settlers” or the murder of all infidels whether they be men, women or children; and other such tactical issues. But the Islamic legal dictate to conquer the world for Mohammad’s rightful successor to establish the World State Caliphate occupied by the One People (Ummah) in submission to Allah is the common denominator.

Ignoring the enemy and fighting a tactic such as terrorism or worse, reducing the enemy to just those men and women dressed up in their suicide bombs on the way to attack civilians is to open the US and the West to death and destruction by the parts. Bit by bit we will be dismantled as a society and as a nation. This is unfolding before our eyes in Israel. The Jewish State is hemorrhaging land, people and resources and morphing into a “post-Zionist” or “post-Jewish Nation” status as the “State of its Citizens”. It has institutionalized since the beginning of the “Peace Process” the murderous notion of “Sacrifices for Peace” as the Hebrew word for “victim” is also “sacrifice”. This is the line made famous by Prime Minister Rabin and repeated in speech or in deed by subsequent Prime Ministers Peres, Barak, Netanyahu, and Olmert.

The actual or physical enemy is any Muslim who adopts or accepts historical and traditional Shari’a as authoritative. This includes individuals, terrorist networks, clans, tribes, regimes, or states. One law and one Rule of Engagement: If you adopt Shari’a as your ideology, you constitute our enemy and you are in our cross-hairs. We of course will pick the most opportune time and place but you will be targeted.

At a practical level, this means that Shari’a and Islamic law are immediately outlawed. Any Moslem in America who adopts historical and traditional Shari’a will be subject to deportation. Mosques which adhere to Islamic law will be shut down permanently. No self-described or practicing Muslim, irrespective of his or her declarations to the contrary, will be allowed to immigrate to this country.

The US will cease trade and all economic ties with countries which embrace Shari’a and with countries which befriend the Shari’a-based regimes. This includes the duplicitous oil-rich Gulf states.

The US will take emergency measures to open up new oil extraction facilities in US territories and will immediately make available land and reasonable regulatory structures for new refineries. Massive free market incentives such as marketable and securitized coupons and vouchers will be used to promote alternative fuels.

America and its Western allies will quarantine every enemy regime and will search out and destroy the leadership and the physical infrastructure of these regimes with air bombardment, drones, airborne gunships, sea-based missiles, special ops, and covert activities. We will not occupy these territories to “build democracies” or even to replace regimes directly. We will simply quarantine and police these regimes with a hair-trigger response to hostile behavior. We repeat: adoption of Shari’a is by definition hostile behavior.

This plan, as many of you will notice, is quite similar to a growing list of respectable thinkers who have addressed the problem of Islam in a serious way. The following list has been proposed by Lawrence Auster, himself one of the more vocal of the advocates of what has been dubbed Separationism: Serge Trifkovic, Diana West, Randall Parker, the Norwegian blogger Fjordman, and Hugh Fitzgerald. There are others and you could probably include Mark Helprin and Angelo Codevilla who have written in the Claremont Review.

For our part, we prefer a different nomenclature than Separationism because that smacks of a kind of Buchanan-like isolationism and appeasement of the Muslim regimes. Buchananism will not work because science and technology will allow our enemies to plot, conspire and strategize until they have perfected a delivery system for WMD. By then, it will be too late. We need to implement the Separation platform with a Search and Destroy mission wherever Islam raises its ugly head.

There are two critiques of this Manifesto. One, it reduces America to a state of perpetual war and turns us into a war-like society falling short of the ideal of the City on the Hill. Two, given the liberal Open Society Elite’s stranglehold on both major political parties, it is not practical.

As to the first critique, what would be the better approach? Wait for the next attack with WMD? Wish for a miraculous theological revolution among a substantial number of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims who consistently express support for Shari’a and Islamic law as a guiding political and social structure? Adopt the democracy-building ideology so tragically failing in Iraq?

With the SANE War Manifesto, we need not target all or even any substantial number of the world’s Muslims. Instead, we target their leadership strongholds and their infrastructure. Will many of them be killed in the war? Of course, and it is intended to be so. Otherwise we can never expect to be victorious. Muslims will certainly never abandon historical and traditional Shari’a easily. But given sustained and determined separate-quarantine-search-and-destroy operations, Muslims will have the choice: either reform your own societies or forever be rebuilding them while burying your dead.

The second critique is valid to the extent that either we accept the destruction of our nation and we are merely looking to forestall the inevitable or we agree that we have no alternative but to believe in and rely exclusively upon miracles. We certainly believe in Divine intervention in the affairs of men and nations but it is a fundamental principle of the Judeo-Christian creed that we don’t rely exclusively upon them. We fashion our lives and our political affairs on the basis that we must confront the reality of the world in which we live. The second critique is for us not a legitimate one.

We owe it to ourselves, our families, our nation, to act now to put Islam on notice. We are at war.

There is no chance of victory over America.

- end of initial entry -

Laura W. writes:

Judging from his statements, Barbour appears to be intelligent, sane and highly principled. But, he says, “I have no doubt the Leftist Media will spin my death as that of an insane man with few options left in life who killed himself in desperation.” Then what is the purpose of his death? Given the likelihood that his action will go largely ignored, could he be sane?

LA replies:

I don’t know, there’s a lot that’s puzzling here. I’m not sure where he would be located on a spectrum of mental health. I have to do more reading of him and try to understand where he was coming from.

Here’s one question: If he wanted his suicide to be a public statement protesting America’s ongoing surrender to Islam, why not kill himself in a much more noticeable way so that his death would make an impact? Think of the Buddhist monks who burned themselves to death in Vietnam in 1963 to protest Diem’s rule. The suicides were widely covered and had a big effect on public opinion. Not that the effect was good—it led to President Kennedy’s calamitous decision to give his ok to the coup that overthrew and killed Diem, and from that point on Vietnam was a mess that was completely in our lap. Nevertheless, the suicides “worked.” Suicide is a grave sin, but if you’re going to kill yourself for a political point, then you’d better make a splash of it.

Yet apparently Barbour jumped from a 15 story building without publicizing his motive, and it only became known when the poster at Free Republic read the suicide note at Barbour’s blog, then did a Web search for his name and came across the death notice. And the death notice gives no information other than that he died.

Furthermore, in a Google search, all the references to his suicide that I find are at blogs. There is not one newspaper or other mainstream media article about it (other than the death notice). So it appears that Barbour’s suicide is to “message” suicides what Woody Allen’s attempted bank robbery in Take the Money and Run (with his note to the teller saying “I have a gub”) was to bank robberies.

Laura W. writes:

He says on his website he was a Christian and a libertarian. He was an unorthodox Christian if he committed suicide.

James P. writes:

There’s obviously a lot more to Ronald Barbour’s suicide than Islam. However, taking his note at face value, the last thing the West needs is people committing suicide to protest America’s failure to oppose the spread of Islam. The West is already committing suicide—physically through failure to reproduce and morally / intellectually through propagation of the pernicious doctrines of liberalism—the last thing it needs is its supporters voting themselves off the planet. If Ronald Barbour was serious about fighting Islam, he would have stayed alive and raised at least three children who believed in traditional values and who understood Western history and culture.

LA:

Yes, it would seem about as useful as a way of opposing an immigration invasion as Netherlanders leaving the Netherlands to escape Muslims, British leaving Britain to escape Muslims, and Californians moving away from California to escape Mexicans.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 24, 2008 10:27 AM | Send