RUTHFULLY YOURS

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

Captain, Cool Hand Luke, 1967

In terms of understanding Islam, that would include a failure, or an outright refusal, to grasp and integrate the truth about Islam and its movers and shakers by especially those charged with the responsibility of fighting the “War on Terror” and securing the safety of this country. Given such a “war,” it is incumbent upon the government, the military, and intelligence assessment agencies to “know the enemy.” As things stand now, in their eyes Islam is not an enemy, but an “innocent” bystander upon which is heaped the “calumny” of associating it with terrorism.

“Islamophobia” in Americans is more the enemy than is the fearful enemy. Within that purgatory of purposeless analytical bean-counting and sand-sifting is a startling and craven ignorance of the actual enemy, enforced by post-modern, left-wing politically correct thought and speech while the Muslim Brotherhood and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation stymie any meaningful investigation and intelligence analysis by determining definitions and “red lines.”

And to paraphrase the Captain in Cool Hand Luke – the Captain, while a villain, is certainly a quotable character – “Some men you just can’t reach.” The men who can’t be reached have already submitted to Islam, and accepted the “war” on Islam’s terms, and they are in our government. And they are not only losing the war, but aiding in the enemy’s advance.

A single column review of Stephen Coughlin’s vitally important Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, would not do justice to the book. I can only highlight some of the important, interlinked and salient information presented by Coughlin. Therefore this review will run to two or more columns. Coughlin’s book is literally vital, as vital as the blood that courses through our veins. Catastrophic Failure brings to light everything we should know about Islam and its advocates’ determined campaign to conquer the West, and especially America, and impose Sharia law on the world – and everything our government has consistently refused to know or evaded to a degree that amounts to criminal negligence.

The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro is, like the London square drawn on its cover, tumultuous, dark and teeming with life. In the cover art, unruly crowds throng the streets, prodded and chased by authorities struggling to maintain order. In the foreground, a horse drags a traitor bound to a wicker sled toward the focus of the public’s attention: a gallows, where a man is being hung. Nearby, another man is being quartered; an executioner throws his leg, severed at the thigh, into a fire pit for cremation.

I dwell on the book’s cover art for two reasons. First, because The Year of Lear is unusually well-illustrated from start to finish, from the jacket—with gold foil details and ye olde printing press lettering—to the glossy insert with portraits of the book’s major players. (It is one of those rare books that is worth the surcharge to buy in hardcover.) Second, I mention the cover art because it distills the book down to one poignant, violent image.

This is no mean feat. The Year of Lear, for its seemingly limited scope, is an epic. Shapiro, a Columbia professor and governor at the Folger Shakespeare Library, has written a book brimming with detail about 17th century England, if not necessarily about Shakespeare.