Moral equivalence
A mob, whipped up to a homicidal frenzy by local Afghan clerics enraged at the recent Koran burning by a fanatical minister in Florida, kills twelve UN workers in retaliation.
And the Guardian’s poll asks whether the Florida pastor is responsible for the deaths, with the results neck and neck between yes and no. Simultaneously, many in the comments section to this article on the killings make a similar pernicious moral equivalence.
The continuing decline of the West—as well as logic and judgment—in full view.
So, if Terry Jones is responsible for deaths in Afghanistan, then clearly Janet Reno (or is it Bill Clinton) is responsible for the bombing of the Murrah federal bldg in Oklahoma City.
And what’s more daming, the common thread in each case is the news media. They covered and disseminated both the Waco raid and the Koran burning; had they not covered the news, then the Afghan riots would not have taken place and the Murrah bldg would still be standing.
The solution is clear; SHUT DOWN THE NEWS INDUSTRY and close all the schools of journalism across the country! (/sarc)
sorry, it should be “And what’s more damning. . .”
T, I understand the point you intend, but it is pretty far off. In McVeigh’s twisted mind the Federal Government was guilty of mass murder ordered by Reno. (Don’t blame Clinton, as he said that was all Janet’s deal; or “I know nothing”. (that is heavy handed sarcasm BTW)).
Anyway, OKC is not a corollary to this at all. If it were, Christians and Jews in the West would be indiscriminately killing Muslims on a routine basis. I am sure you know that burning of holy books has been a spectator sport in Muslim countries for a long time.
Jones is a jerk. He was needlessly, and destructively provocative. On the other hand, he states that his intent was to demonstrate the barbaric proclivities of the Muslim faithful. In that, he succeeded; perhaps beyond his wildest dreams.
Aside from the direct loss of life, and the likely effect on people who may consider volunteering to go to various Islamic controlled hell-holes to help, is that various people will draw a parallel between the actions of one benighted soul whose harmless little stunt is attributed to one great religion, and the actions of thousands who slaughter in the name of another. In fact they are already doing so. The slaughter is widely mitigated in the minds of the chatterers, because of the nature of the provocation.
Oh, man, this upsets me. Is no one responsible for their own actions anymore? I’ve seen this train of thought before, but for this? Being a jerk versus murder? I can’t even find the words to say how disappointed this makes me. Or how dismayed I am that I’m not really all that surprised. Wow.
The muslim world needs to be provoked to shine a light on their barbaric backwardness. I say get the idiots foaming at the mouth so we’ll be forced to end this conflict and move on to bigger and better things to focus attention on in this world.
The muslim world shows its true colors yet again and all the MSM wants to do is find a way to blame the West and/or Christianity. I guess it would not be keeping with the “narrative” to just blame the perps themselves for all-too-predictably overreacting to a backwater preacher’s publicity stunt. The libs won’t learn until the blade of the sword is on their necks, and even then, they’ll still wonder what they did to “upset” the muslims. By then, it’ll be too late.
Oldflyer,
“In McVeigh’s twisted mind. . .” was exactly my point. I’m not a Clintonista, but neither do I blame Reno or Clinton for McVeigh. The media chooses to ignore THAT mythical link (show me a reporter who ever asked a member of the Clinton administration if they felt responsible for OKC), but attempt to mythically link Terry Jones and the Afghani riots.
Both OKC and the riots resulted from the sick and twisted minds of the perpetrators, (McVeigh and the involved Afghanis). My comment was aimed at the Islamophilia and the double std of the media. As you point out, “The slaughter is widely mitigated in the minds of the chatterers, because of the nature of the provocation.”
Waltj, you note “. . . even then, they’ll still wonder what they did to “upset” the muslims.” No they won’t even as the blade descends they’ll be blaming the damned conservatives and “islamophobes” for causing their deaths,
Each and every American should publicly burn a Koran every single day of the year.
I am in favor of offending Muslims at every opportunity.
Enough of this crap. Either we loudly proclaim our right to freedom of speech, or we submit to the muzzies.
Oldflyer, please see this comment at Belmont Club.
And the Guardian’s poll asks whether the Florida pastor is responsible for the deaths, with the results neck and neck between yes and no.
Well it is 50% of Guardian readers. Not exactly a group noted for their common sense and well-grounded views…
The pastor is not responsible in any sense: he just is not a responsible person. A nut. But journalists are: they should know better. There was not any compelling public interest to cover this non-story, and harmful consequencies were evident. When a nation is in war, some self-censorship is necessary. Remember, loose lips sink ships. Waco raid is another story: this terrible crime must be reported, and actions of a lone nutter are never predictable.
billm99uk,
That’s an excellent point. As you point out The Guardian readers are “not exactly a group noted for their common sense and well-grounded views . . . ”
and yet, even 50% of those leftest readers do NOT see Terry Jones as culpable.
Are you a nut because you burn a Koran? Why do people call this guy a nut? Is he out provoking Jews? Retarded people? Cats? Fence posts?
All the work that Hollywood does to “raise awareness:” Is there any difference between what Jones is doing and that?
Maybe what Jones is doing is exactly what needs to be done. I think it is. Haven’t we had enough of people backing down to the rabid madness of jihadies. What is the first rule on how to treat a bully? You don’t allow their terror to stand. You break them. It’s either them or you.
Jones is a hero.
In LA there is an exhibition of a painting showing Sarah Palin being crucified. Although this news is available everywhere, along with descriptions of endless recent profanities against the Jewish/Christian Bible, I notice that NO godless heathens or members of other religions have been beheaded, tortured, or raped as a result. No mobs whipped up to a blind fury have destroyed buildings. Christians, Jews, Tea Partiers and admirers of Palin seem to be able to control themselves. Is it really so discriminatory to expect Muslims to do the same?
Moral equivalence would be when these things are common responses to insults against OUR God. And as we know, it just isn’t going to happen. Idiots who excuse criminal acts will always be able to find a plausible reason for the violent acts of their demented pets. These fools and tools are almost as great a threat to society as those who take up swords against the innocent.
Far left blogger Digby, at the blog Hullaboo, says that Republicans are in part to blame.
According to Digby, “…there is no excuse for a major faction of one of the political parties in America to fan the flames of religious extremist in Florida for cheap political gain — they bear some share of the blame for this too. They created the public space for this bigotry with their stupid mosque protests and congressional hearings…”
Speaking of “cheap political gain”, isn’t blaming Republicans for Afghans murdering U.N. workers half a world away a stretch? Isn’t politizing murder a “cheap political gain” that Digby decries?
The left gets loonier and loonier by the day.
Scott,
I agree with you, but lets crystallize the islamophilic hypocrisy. You quote Digby, “‘…there is no excuse for a major faction of one of the political parties in America to fan the flames of religious extremist in Florida for cheap political gain.'”
Okay, so where was Digby when it was time to protest the artist Serrano’s “Piss Christ” (a Crucifix in a jar of urine)? I say “there’s no excuse for an arrtist to fan the flames of religious extremists in New York for cheap artistic and pecuniary gain.”
Leftists? Liberals? Digby? Bueller? (crickets chirp)
neo, “The continuing decline of the West–as well as logic and judgment–in full view”–really?
Before I ask you to explain how this episode accounts for or represents the decline of an entire multi-millennial civilization composed of a billion people, perhaps you wouldn’t mind establishing a baseline.
What, precisely, are we declining from? Greek, Rome, the Carolingians, Louis XIV’s France, Bismarck’s Germany, Victoria’s England, or post-WWII 1950s America?
And when, exactly, was logic and judgment transcendent? In the civilizational sense, I mean, more significantly than today?
To paraphrase a wise man, “For you have the illogical always with you….” And those lacking in judgment and etc.
I know large sections of humanity sometimes go crazy, but I can’t see how our times can lay claim to more crazies than normal, however highly placed some are.
I dispute the progressive notion, in the sense of ‘progress’ in history, but I’m nearly as opposed to the notion of decline.
What always rankles me about the reasoning here, setting up a Koran-burning as the ultimate cause of some butchery – is how incredibly racist it is. Maybe not “racist” exactly, since “Islam” is not what is usually known as a race – but certainly the attitude toward Islamic people manifested is the same as that of the typical racist as we know him (or her! Thanks PC!).
This is one of those things that I’m sure has played into many “conversions” from left to right, and it certainly played into mine. When I began to examine the issue of black poverty and crime, and the basic liberal attitude of “it’s all the White Man’s fault,” it didn’t take a lot of brain-power to see that their view of blacks was at bottom one that say them as automata and puppets, incapable of exercising free will and so of being held responsible for their acts.
The level of thoughtlessness is astonishing. For the left, there is no action of an “oppressed” group, and today especially Muslims, that can be properly attributed to their own free will. The implication by simple logic is that Muslims do not have free will. Thereby, they are dehumanized (All of this was explored in Pascal Bruckner’s still indispensable “The Tears of the White Man”).
The correlate of the dehumanization of the “oppressed,” as Bruckner noted, is the Ubermensching, as it were, of the “oppressors.” The sheer power and manipulative malevolence of the White Man is posited as being somewhere near omnipotence. The White Man is not just free, he stands above history and manipulates historical perception itself. He creates the conditions of life – everything from scarcity of resources to gender differences to the very psychoses that afflict some butchers in Afghanistan. (This slides into my Gnostic interpretation of the Left).
Conservatives, by contrast, are easy to mistake for the racists in this discussion because we are not afraid or bothered by saying, “There is a murderer and a Muslim. That Muslim is responsible for his murder.” Or for the Ground Zero Mosque, where we tended to say, “This Faisal man has his OWN thoughts and designs, and he is not just some bit player in a liberal psychodrama of multiculturalism – so we need to be on our guard.”
And on a more general level, most conservatives have no problem taking a cold look at Islam itself and noting that if anything led these Afghans to commit murder – aside from their own personalities – it was almost certainly the mutilated picture of the world they had absorbed from their religious teachers and their culture. If the phrase “climate of hate” has any meaning at all, that would be it. We do not deny Muslims their humanity by taking their free will from them, but we also don’t pretend that powerful cultural forces are irrelevant to what those free wills opt to do.
One could think of the influence of culture as analogous to that of magic. In the case of a good deal of Islamic culture which is basically ancient Middle Eastern/Arab culture raised to a universal principle – it transforms the self-conception of people into members of a groups essentially in opposition to others. Call it the Dynamite trick – it turns people into sticks of dynamite in the larger bundle which is the group.
Next is the Match trick. Anything that “enters” into the ambit of the Dynamite (the group), no matter how innocuous or irrelevant by other standards, is magically transformed into a potential or actual “match” that always might lead the Dynamite to explode.
This isn’t the same thing as what we think of as the normal human mode of risk perception. Indeed, it is a perversion of that normal mode, a lopping off of every other mode in favor of the Risk/Response mode’s complete dominance in thought and in deed. So it isn’t just that the Dynamite group might explode like any other group, it’s that the basic categories of their self-understanding are always “to explode, or not to explode?” And thus, it isn’t just that some things really threaten all groups – which is true – but that given the Dynamite trick, EVERYTHING which enters into the group from outside is viewed in terms of its potency as a Match.
It reminds me of a famous story about the great Islamic philosopher Averroes (whose school of thought unfortunately was extinguished in Islam, but integrated, fortunately, into the thought of Western Scholastics). The Muslim authorities made a fatwa against his work, and it was eventually burned. The rationale was this:
“If it contains lessons not in the Koran, then it is heretical; if it contains only what the Koran says, then it is irrelevant.”
Thus the Match trick. Forces or ideas entering from outside are not, say, potentially beneficial or enriching or interesting or worth considering. They are either heretical or irrelevant.
Leftists are lost forever to this kind of analysis. Which is to say, it is conservatives who tend to be truly willing to admit complexity and nuance into their thought, for to acknowledge and account for the influence of cultural, religious, and ideological differences is complicated.
Not complicated, however, is breaking the world up into White Men and Those He Oppresses, and filtering every event through that crude sieve.
What we have with the reporting on this story is another case-in-point on that one.
LAG:
I think Progressives are responsible for and are hastening the decline of the West.
See my comment here.
The Koran deserves to be burnt. It is a book written by a man who was mad and wicked. Where the Koran is honored, people live in oppression and poverty and fear. It is a ridiculous book that is incoherent but murderous.
Let objective reasoning and stone cold facts speak for themselves. Let the facts of what the Koran says become known. Let the facts of the prophet’s life become known. Let the history of the murder and slavery of Islam become known. Let the culture of Islam become known:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/03/028659.php
LAG – I do understand your discomfort with the ideas of progress and decline, and in certain ways I agree with it. Human nature certainly does not make “progress,” for example.
But there is a definite meaning to saying that the ways in which human nature are expressed is “better” than other ways. For one to reach the state of that “better” would aptly be called progress, unless words have no meaning.
But again we have to define our terms. It is nonsense, I agree, to speak of a personified History as exhibiting progress or decline – in the mode of the founder of optimistic historicism, Hegel, or his antipode, Spengler. History is not a force or a being, therefore it cannot progress or decline.
But human nature is a force and a being – in the strict sense (“ousia” in Greek, “substance” or “essence”). And if human nature has ends toward which it strives, and tendencies also deflecting it from those ends, then to follow from the basic state of conscupiscence (unfocused willing) to a state of willing that goes toward the rational ends is meaningfully said to be progress; and the converse is meaningfully said to be regress or decline.
I think it would be odder to say that America transforming into a state like Pakistan is not decline than to say that it is decline. Likewise, it would be odd to say that America is great or exceptional if we were really no different from the Aztecs – morally, in terms of the direction we turn human nature.
Just a word of caution, then. To let hostility – justified hostility – toward ideological Progressivism turn you sour against all notions of progress risks throwing you into relativism and moral equivalence, precisely what I know you do not stand for.
You did note at the end that you meant “progress” and “decline” in the historicist sense, but the thrust of your argument is that progress or decline would in some way depend on the “proportion of crazies” among us. The point is not that the proportion of crazies goes up or down, it’s that certain arrangements make it harder to give craziness full scope for action, and make non-craziness relatively attractive. So we can stipulate that there are no fewer crazies in America than in Pakistan, proportionally speaking, but that it would be progress for Pakistan to evolve into a more American-like state. Likewise that it would be decline for America to go the way of Pakistan.
The illogical are always with us, yes, but the restraints and incentives that dampen its effects are not.
OMT – I should add that when I spout my Cassandra-like musings, the sense of “decline” I use is the one implied by my above remarks. That is, it is not that there are more crazies now than hitherto (which may or may not be true) but that the Madisonian system, and the four republican prerequisites detailed by Tocqueville, are eroding.
Thus the crazies are encouraged to go on the attack, while their attacks also become more effective. I think rickl has something like this in mind as well when he speaks of decline, based on what I read at the link he provided.
Here comes an educated idiot to the rescue and makes a simple statement like “decline of the West” something other than what it is. Yep, LAG, every now and then your stupidity is more than stupidity: it’s pretentious stupidity.
Despite Muslims ever changing list of grievances, it is not, nor has it ever been, about anything that we “unbelievers” have done or not done, but it has always really been about who we are, “unbelievers.”
What will it take, folks?
What will it take for people, for us “unbelievers” and “Infidels” to figure out that the predatory, violent, xenophobic, totalitarian, military-political ideology called Islam is the “Religion of Pieces” and not the “Religion of Peace,” and that it is an existential threat to each and every “unbeliever” on the face of this Earth? Some of our ancestors, Founding Fathers, and other leaders knew exactly what Islam was, and gave us their estimation of it:
“Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it…have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind.”
–John Wesley (1703-1791) Methodist leader
President [John Quincy] Adams on Islam
“In the seventh century of the Christian era a wandering Arab, of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combing the powers of transcendent genius with the preternatural energy of a fanatic and the fraudulent spirit of an imposter, proclaimed himself as a messenger from heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting, from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God, he connected indissolubly with it the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as part of his religion against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust; to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature. Between these two religions, thus contrasted in the characters, a war of more than twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extincture of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute are encouraged to furnish motives to human action, there never can be peace on earth and good will toward men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.” -Originally published in The American Annual Register for 1827–1829 (NY 1830)
“Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to, and including, the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over, the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated.
Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could, and would, fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor.”
The civilization of Europe, America, and Australia, exists today at all, only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization–because of victories through the centuries from Charles Martel, in the eighth century, and those of John Sobieski, in the seventeenth century. …There are such “social values” today in Europe, America and Australia only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do–that is, to beat back the Moslem invader.”
–Teddy Roosevelt (1858 -1919) Twenty-sixth President of the United States
Yet we, supposedly much more educated, have forgotten these very accurate evaluations– confirmed by 1,400 years of Islamic history and today’s mounting body count–and deny what is staring us is the face, and getting closer to home each day.
In the face of its foundational texts, 1,400 years of bloody history, and today’s mounting body count, how can the MSM, Academia, practically all our so-called our “leaders,” and the majority of our citizens refuse to face the fact that Islam is an ideology dedicated to the subversion, domination, conversion, enslavement, or destruction–by turns violent and/or stealthy–of all unbelievers, along with each and every one of our nations and governments, religions, cultures and laws, until, as Allah has commanded, Islam and Muslims rule the world and all its nations and peoples, and Shari’a law governs every aspect of the lives of every single surviving person on Earth?
Here is the Ayatollah Khomeini in an unusually frank evaluation of Islam, violence, and conquest, and those foolish enough to delude themselves that “Islam is the Religion of Peace”:
“Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled and incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world. But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world…. Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says, kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! …Whatever good there is, exists thanks to the sword, and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient, except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! …Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”
–Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1989) Iran’s Supreme Leader from 1979 to 1989–the highest ranking political and religious authority of the nation.
What the proportion of our denial to ignorance to fear to stupidity is, I don’t know, but I do know that we “unbelievers” had better turn our heads face forward and unflinchingly look Islam and Muslims straight in the eye, pierce through and disperse the politically correct, deliberately generated fog and confusion about Islam and Muslims, correct our ignorance, master our fear, end our denial, and speak the truth and act on it, or we will deserve the death or enslavement that we–in our ignorance, fear, and denial–will have brought upon ourselves.
This blood is on Obama’s hands. If he would have closed Gitmo there wouldn’t have been the anger and hate that was responsible for the murders.
I wonder if Keith Ellison, the man who weeps for the oppressed Muslims, will weep for the slaughtered and beheaded victims who died surely in horror and without any one to defend their rights.
LAG, here’s an example of decline:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/04/united-methodists-reach-out-in-solidarity.html
Compare the UM’s statement to some of the statements in Wolla Dalbo’s post.
Kolnai,
I think that there is an additional dimension to be considered. Over the past 10 years, there has been little public outcry from Muslims condemning Islamic terrorists (not NO condemnation, but very little condemnation, and virtually none of it has been reported by the media).
Now, when the majority chooses to remain silent, then it’s very easy for outsiders to identify the vocal minority (the Wahabists, the terrorists) as the equivalent of the group as a whole. It doesn’t have to be true, its a matter of what benchmark one has to make a judgement. If the terrorists are vocal and the majority does not conspicuously condemn them, then the terrorists become the apparent spokes-group for the whole.
This same problem bothers me every time I hear Alan Colmes speak. When confronted with Democrat hypocrisy or failure, he will never criticize the party member; he either deflects the point or he replies with a “well, what about the Repuiblican [fill in the blank]?” Contrast this to Sean Hannity (I’m no fan of his either), but unlike Colmes’ Group-Think, I have seen him agressively criticize Republicans.
So, whether most Muslims cower in fear before the terrorists, whether they are not comfortable criticizing one of their own or whether they actually agree with the terrorists, the result is the same. They do themselves a greaqt disservice by not forming active opposition to Islamic terrorists and Islamic terrorism no matter where it occurs on the globe.
Curtis, the Gitmo statement is simply an absurdity not worthy of further comment Your question of Keith Ellison’s response is most incisive, although if I were you, I wouldn’t wait up nights expecting to hear anything from Colmes, er, that is Ellison.
kolnai is right.
To blame Jones is to imply that Muslims are without self-control, prone to mass murder at any provocation, see nothing wrong with it, have no self-doubts afterwards. Those who don’t indulge will either celebrate or excuse.
And, that this is so obvious that everybody ought to know it and act accordingly.
You really want to go there?
Keep in mind that, with hate speech, truth is no defense.
That the Gitmo statement is absurd is the point.
When I mentioned our ignorance above I should have really said “willful” ignorance. But such willful ignorance has been very powerfully helped along by what has got to be one of the greatest “disinformation” and “influence operations” of all time; the estimated $600 million dollars that the Saudis and other Muslim nations have “donated” over the last 40 years to the most influential institutions of higher learning here in the U.S.
While we have been watching football games, tinkering with our cars and then computers, watching Ozzie and Harriet and then American Idol and the latest reality show, Muslims have employed this tsunami of donations to set up numerous Middle Eastern/Islamic study centers, funded departments and individual scholars, established chairs in Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies, and set up scholarships and so, now–after 40 years of slow, patient effort–their Wahabi view and the view of their allies on the Left about the Middle East, Islam and its history, Middle East Peace, the Palestinian problem, and Israel pretty has great influence in the field of Middle Eastern studies, and through the influence they have bought on hiring, promotion, publishing, honors and tenure, they have essentially bought off our entire contemporary cadre of Middle Eastern experts. For, if you want to hold “controversial” views about Islam, the Qur’an, or Muhammad, want to research “sensitive” subjects that might offend these very generous Muslim patrons, or conduct an archeological dig in Saudi Arabia that might uncover something embarrassing for Islam, the Qur’an or Muhammad you will not be hired, not be funded, not be allowed to dig, not be published, not be invited to speak at conferences, accumulate honors and praise, or get tenure.
The handful of European scholars who are still doing such “controversial” research publish their work under pseudonyms, and have to pay careful attention to their personal safety, for fear of a visit by some enraged and homicidal Muslim.
Rickly says,
“I am in favor of offending Muslims at every opportunity.”
Its a very easy thing to do, like taking candy from a baby. Draw a cartoon of Mohammed and get a fatwa placed on your head. Sheeeesh.
Wallo Dalbo says,
“… it is not, nor has it ever been, about anything that we “unbelievers” have done or not done, but it has always really been about who we are, ‘unbelievers’.”
He shoots and he scores!
Richard Aubrey says,
“kolnai is right. To blame Jones is to imply that Muslims are without self-control, prone to mass murder at any provocation, see nothing wrong with it, have no self-doubts afterwards. Those who don’t indulge will either celebrate or excuse.”
Another 3 pointer.
I know a few muslims, they are nice people and they are not fanatical in the least bit. However, they are VERY afraid of many of their fellow muslims and are reluctant to speak out against the towel wrapped too tight crowd. Voices of tolerance and mutual respect for non-muslims are scarce in muslim communities not only within predominately muslim nations, but also among those communities that reside in Western nations. IMO this is the real problem we face in the West.
Somedays I feel like Mecca and Medina should be turned into glass camel racing tracks, other days I vainly wish the tolerant muslims would realize it is in their best interests to kill the jihad loons.
Oh, yeah.
Getting mad at Jones isn’t going to get you beheaded.
Those other guys are nuts, man.
Curtis, thanks for the insightful comments. So, what is your first language anyway? I only ask because you seem to have trouble forming and understanding simple declarative sentences.
You also seem to have trouble understanding that when I quote someone, it’s not my statement but a point of departure for discussion.
rickl, you can make an argument for your point of view, that is for a narrative that puts progressives in the driver’s seat, but I don’t buy it. Modern Progressivism is a western phenomena based in many ways on a Christian tradition that has been abandoned for more secular arguments. Hard to blame it for, say, Africa.
kolnai I think you’re reading to much into my comment. I know some things progress, but I don’t subscribe to the notion that the human condition (whatever that is) necessarily progresses or that such a thing is inevitable.
But you are right about defining terms. Take your Pak example. If American civil liberties were reduced to the level of those in Pakistan or perhaps China, but at the same time American military power was firmly established in control of the entire world for centuries, is that progress or not? Thomas Friedman might be willing to go along with part of that sort of progress, judging by some of his columns.
Seems like a real on the one hand sort of thing.
LAG –
1) Based on what you said above, I wasn’t reading too much into your comments. In fact, you’ve just restated the tension in your earlier remarks in your latest post.
You do this thing where you say, “I accept there is progress” but then advert to other views, such as Tom Friedman’s, and say, “On the one hand,” etc., negating the first part where you accept some notion of progress. Either you do or you don’t.
If you do accept that there is progress as I defined it – and as most of the West has understood it until modern historicism – then you must be, on a charitable reading, denying that historicist notions of progress and decline have any meaning. I agree with that. And indeed you do say this in your fourth paragraph.
But in your fifth paragraph, as an example of what I was noting above, you revert to a kind of relativism and deny it.
No one could deduce from what you wrote that there is any sort of progress (or decline) you would accept as such – take a look at your fourth and fifth paragraphs and try, strictly based on what you wrote. It says A and then strongly implies not-A, and from a contradiction anything follows.
Here’s what I mean: If America turning into China or Pakistan is not clearly regress for you, regardless of our military position, then it would seem that you really don’t accept that progress can be real. Think about it for a minute. The core of America is our tradition of constitutional liberty, and you are saying that whether that represents progress vis-a-via Asian despotism is a matter of essential uncertainty (“…a real on the one hand sort of thing,” as you put it).
That does not imply good things about your view of America. But more to the point, if you don’t think constitutional liberty is one of the “progresses” you can accept, and thus that the loss of them is one of the “declines” that is easily seen to be such, then I frankly can’t see that you would defend any notion of progress at all.
Yet, to cite it again, you assert that that’s not the case; you do accept progress in “some things.” A and not-A. See what I’m getting at?
2) You imply that there is no such thing as the “human condition,” but earlier you agreed with the comment that the illogical are always with us, which is a statement about the human condition. Again, which is it?
Moreover, no one here, not neo and not me, were asserting that “the human condition necessarily and inevitably progresses (or declines).” Yet you phrased your first post as a challenge either to neo or others here who presumably hold some such view – otherwise, why are you saying it? Who are you challenging?
4) Finally, I don’t want to attack you personally, and I know from your other posts that you don’t view America like a leftist. I am only addressing the logic of what you say and suggesting, non-adversarially, that you might want to phrase it more carefully, especially if you’re trying to critique people here (thereby signaling that you would like to debate).
Yikes – seems I had a point 3) but I deleted it because my post was too long.
Alright LAG, you can jab me. Kolnai can’t count.
*facepalm*
“While we have been watching football games, tinkering with our cars and then computers…. Muslims have employed this tsunami of donations to set up numerous Middle Eastern/Islamic study centers, funded departments and individual scholars …. and so, now–after 40 years of slow, patient effort–their Wahabi view and the view of their allies on the Left about the Middle East, Islam and its history, Middle East Peace, the Palestinian problem, and Israel pretty much has great influence in the field of Middle Eastern studies… they have essentially bought off our entire contemporary cadre of Middle Eastern experts.”
Yes, what Wallo Dalbo is true.
I’m not as educated or philosophical nor as sophisticated as most of you who comment here regularly, I;m an over educated country boy …. BUT, I do know a few things:
1.) We who live today are little changed from our ancestors who walked the earth 100,000 years ago. Our tech has changed, but physiologically we are the same. The same hormones flow through our veins and the same impulses, needs, and desires constantly threaten to override our ability to behave rationally.
2.) We humans have been fighting the same battles and arguing over the same ideas for as long as we have been self-aware.
3.) What sets (or at least should set) Western Civilization apart from all other civilizations is the idea that it is always better to err on the side of individual freedom. Many of us in the West have shed this ideal, but it remains strong in a distinct and stubborn minority.
4.) We can discuss all we want; but one thing remains true when it comes to Islamic jihad in this age of supreme weaponry: either they triumph or we triumph. Nothing else matters. There is no such thing as moral equivalence between Western Civilization & Islam. When it comes to morality we beat them hands down.
Parker,
First, don’t demean yourself. It’s not a matter of education, I think it’s more a matter of observation.
Sedond, I agree with your observations. It;s a point I’ve made (or tried to) on several threads in this and other blogs. I believe that you are correct about the intrinsic desire for freedom; what most people want is to be left alone to lead their lives.
…No they won’t even as the blade descends they’ll be blaming the damned conservatives and “islamophobes” for causing their deaths.
Unfortunately, T, you’re probably right about that. Not even the approaching scimitar will cause most libs to question their own beliefs. After all, they’re the “smart” ones, or so they like to tell us.
Parker – at least you got 1, 2, 3, 4, right.
Can’t the same for myself.
Beyond that, I echo what T said.
kolnai, I’m not sure I know what you mean when you say, “You do this thing where you say, “I accept there is progress” but then advert to other views, such as Tom Friedman’s”
Let me be clear–I believe in progress in the simple sense of physical movement as toward the end point of a journey. I believe in progress in the sense of improvement in the capability, resiliency, and functionality of a system, as in the improvement over the last one hundred years in aircraft. Neither of those are inevitable by the way.
I believe mankind has the capacity to improve some aspects of its environment, but changing your environment is not progress unless you believe beavers are progressives. My point again is simply that things changes. There is no ‘direction’ that can necessarily be attributed to this change that would constitute ‘progress.’ Anything that appears to ‘progress’ in one direction can immediately be offset by another thing that moves in another.
As for Friedman, I’m not sure what you mean by ‘advert.’ I certainly don’t subscribe to any of his views.
T,
Thanks, but I’m not selling myself short… its just that I’m not prone to over analyzing things.
But don’t get me wrong, I greatly enjoy and learn much from the comments I read at neo-rio-geo-neo-neocon’s blog. There are many well informed, educated (in a classical sense) people who routinely comment here. And, Neo lays out a banquet for all of us to taste. (BTW, this is the only blog I’ve ever paid close attention to. All of you, even the occasional few fools, provide food for thought.)
Here is the best, most poetic way I know how to explain what I feel/think, with emphasis on the last stanza:
STORY OF ISAAC
The door it opened slowly,
my father he came in, I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
his blue eyes they were shining
and his voice was very cold.
He said, “I’ve had a vision
and you know I’m strong and holy,
I must do what I’ve been told.”
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
and his axe was made of gold.
Well, the trees they got much smaller,
the lake a lady’s mirror,
we stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over.
Broke a minute later
and he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle
but it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
he looked once behind his shoulder,
he knew I would not hide.
You who build these altars now
to sacrifice these children,
you must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
and you never have been tempted
by a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
your hatchets blunt and bloody,
you were not there before,
when I lay upon a mountain
and my father’s hand was trembling
with the beauty of the word.
And if you call me brother now,
forgive me if I inquire,
“Just according to whose plan?”
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
man of peace or man of war,
the peacock spreads his fan.
— Leonard Cohen
The burning of the Koran was provocative, but frankly, so what? There are lots of provocations in life and in the world, but many, many more are aimed at the West than are perpetuated by people from the West. Its a sign of maturity (and sadly sometrimes fear or ignorance) that we simply usually shrug off most provocations.
Killing a dozen people who are completely unrelated to the alleged offense is simply murder. There is no moral equivalence.
Call me immature, or vindictive, but I regard the murders as a prvocation that should not be ignored. I hope there is a black-ops team out there making sure the Mullahs behind this do not live to see the new year.
Wasn’t it Newsweak who reported on the alleged [fictitious] flushing of the koran in Gitmo that touched off muslim rioting and murders?
Well, Grauniad? are They guilty, too? they went with an unconfirmed, incendiary rumor that turned out to be a hoax. Newsweak really lied, people died.
Kolnai: it’s all binary, mon.
Yeah, the Leftist Termites have a paternalistic outlook on Everything. They are the Ubermenschen, and everyone else is an idiot child.
As far as progress is concerned, may I remind the class (ahem) that the state of physical luxury and personal liberty we enjoy here in the United States, right now, is at the apogee of human flowering thus far?
No, Man’s nature doesn’t change. We’re all subject to sin (and see, e.g., Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars [online] for some samples of utter depravity, sadism, and cruelty that could give even the jihad boys in the Seti set some pointers).
But, as Kate Hepburn remarked to Bogie in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to Rise Above.” We all have lower and higher natures. Christianity (and Judaism) train us in mastering the former and cultivating the latter. With full knowledge of the power of each.
And our liberty depends on our having good MORAL endoskeletons. Because if we don’t, rest assured that our fellow humans will begin eyeing the exoskeleton option. And that’s why the Founding Fathers insisted that a free people could only remain free if they were obedient to God.
Footnote: the allah-thing is not God. “By his fruits shall you know him”: the poisoned tree can only bear poisoned fruit.
LAG –
1) Ok, from what you’ve written it’s clear that you don’t believe in progress at all. You believe in motion – panta rhei.
You asked what I meant by claiming that you contradict yourself, and while I thought I was clear, I’ll use your latest post to illustrate it once more: Claiming to accept progress and then explaining yourself in a way that completely denies the possibility of any progress is incoherent. You can have one or the other, not both.
So, w/r/t your latest, you can’t accept even “technical progress” or “moving to the end of a journey” as progress without accepting some notion of intrinsic better and worse, in these cases that an airplane is better than x,y,z technology, or that the end of the journey is better than the beginning or the middle. Otherwise it’s just motion you’re talking about, or “change” as you put it, and from the perspective of motion, order is as good as chaos, an airplane as good as a pile of turd; it makes no difference to the great flux.
You can’t hold that “progress is real” and that “all is just change” at the same time. You’ve done that now on three occasions trying to state your view, and all I can conclude is that you haven’t thought it through.
2) You do this, to give another example, when you begin by saying we can “progress” in improving the environment, and finish by saying that we must therefore conclude that beavers are progressive. That’s like saying we make electricity, but so do clouds, so if our electricity generation is “progress” then so is a lightning bolt.
Clouds and beavers are not human beings, and I wonder why you want to judge human life from the perspective of beavers and elemental mechanics and not from that of human beings.
To turn nature to our advantage by exercising our rational faculties is not the same thing as a cloud generating a lightning bolt or a beaver building a dam. To mention nothing else, we actually consider the ethics of what we do. Also, we do it with free will. That you so easily elide what we do with what beavers do says a lot about the perspective you’re bringing to this discussion.
3) When you say progress can be or is offset by something opposing it, the correct conclusion from those words is not that progress is illusory, but that regress and decline are real. This is straight semantics. You can’t conclude from a murderer being opposed by a policeman that murder isn’t real, nor from the law being opposed by crime that the law isn’t real.
On the other hand, if it is just one “force” meeting another “force,” then sure, murder and law and good guys and bad guys are illusory. I’m trying to give you an opening to say that that’s not your view, but it seems that it is.
4) You keep insisting on the point that “none of this is inevitable,” and I confess I don’t understand why you’re so fixated on that point. No one said anything was inevitable, but you persist in specially noting it as if somebody were contesting your argument there. If you read my response to you, you will see that I went out of my way to deny that progress or decline was inevitable.
5) The phrase “Advert to” means to attend to, allude to, or make mention of. It does not mean to endorse. Hence, I was not saying you endorsed Friedman’s views. I was saying that you brought Friedman in – “called attention to” his views – to illustrate your relativistic conclusions. Give it a google.
W/r/t “the proportion of crazies” in a society, you may be familiar with the book Allegro ma non troppo, by late italian economic historian Carlo Cipolla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Maria_Cipolla#Allegro_ma_non_troppo
in wich he talks about The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity. Human beings are classified into stupid, naive, pillagers and inteligent.
According to those laws the proportion of stupid people is pretty much constant in all societies, but their influence is bigger in societies in decline. Other caracteristics of decline are the bigger proportion of pillagers among the powerful people, and an overall bigger proportion of naive people among the rest.
Sorry for my english.
There are a couple of simple observations here that need to be repeated simply so that they don’t go unnoticed:
Rathtyen
“Killing a dozen people who are completely unrelated to the alleged offense is simply murder. There is no moral equivalence.”
Beverly
“We all have lower and higher natures. Christianity (and Judaism) train us in mastering the former and cultivating the latter.”
“Footnote: the allah-thing is not God. “By his fruits shall you know him”: the poisoned tree can only bear poisoned fruit.”
IMHO these simple declarative observations truly cut to the chase of the matter in this discussion. Thank you both for your eloquence.
kolnai, to paraphrase one of the great westerns, “Harry, please don’t understand me so fast.”
You seem to be one of those folks who are incapable of taking a statement of position at face value.
Enjoy your exercise in psycho-history. I find those always say more about the author than subject and have little interest in them.
In the names of freedom, fairness, non-discrimination, liberality, equality, and multiculturalism, the Left and its allies have tried to eliminate the Judeo—Christian point of view from the public square, from our schools, from our public and private lives and actions, finding it much more convenient to talk of “nuance,” of “understanding,” of “not judging,” and “a thousand shades of gray.” For it is so much easier to peddle what they are selling if you eliminate the standards that these religions teach, if you no longer practice “discrimination”–i.e. evaluating each idea, thing, or course of action, ranking it against all other possible ideas, things and courses of action, and placing it against some scale of values to determine its value, worth, and/or advisability, meanwhile making strenuous efforts to determine consequences–short and especially long term, and possible “collateral damage.” They have made very strenuous efforts to blur and to eliminate the very real distinction between Good and Evil. Told us, in essence, that there is no real “Evil” in the world–no evil people, no evil ideologies, ideas or causes, but only differing experiences and viewpoints and solutions–none any better than any other. There is no such thing as persona. responsibility for our choices and actions, and as some of the old adages say “to know all is to understand all, to understand all is to forgive all,” and that “nothing human is alien to me.”
But the fact of the matter is that there are two extremes to the Bell Curve, there is real Evil in the world, some things are definitely better than others, and you can rank things from worst to best. In this ranking Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Hinduism are on the Good side of the scale and far superior to the ideology of Islam, which is just plain Evil.
Where Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Hinduism try to restrain, and to redirect man’s often cruel and violent nature into more peaceful, productive pursuits and ways of living, Islam, on the other hand, seeks to sanctify, inflame, and increase that cruelty and violence and, in aid of Islam’s goal of world conquest, to direct it against all who are unbelievers; this is just pure Evil, and there can be no justification for it.
The aim of this great erasure is, of course, that if there is no real Evil, if all things are equal and none superior or more desirable, and none less, then there is no justification or reason for fighting to advance or defend your particular religion or culture, nation, or way of living against all the others. It sounds just great; no more war, no more conflict, and everyone just one big happy family, as Rodney King exclaimed, “why just can’t we all get along.”
I notice, though, that Islam does not buy into this erasure, and for them Islam is the God—given and decreed best, superior, and only legitimate and acceptable system–all others being inferior, illegitimate, ignorant, evil, and null and void, and Muslims have always and are now making every effort to subvert, crush, and annihilate all other systems and ways of being and belief, and the religions, nations and cultures that embody them, so that, in the end, it will be Islam and Muslims who are “the last man standing.”
We cannot win if we refuse to acknowledge that there is a contest, and who and what our adversary is. We cannot win if we refuse to arm ourselves and to fight. We cannot win if we do not believe that we have anything worth fighting for.
P.S.–And that, of course, is the whole idea.
LAG, an alleged historian, may be overcredentialed and undereducated. Or a sophist. Or both.
I will ignore his further utterances.
Jones is neither right nor wrong; or should I say, his action was wrong not because it was immoral but because it was just a waste of time. As with Afghanistan, Iraq and now (thanks, Obushma!) Libya, the Left’s indignation about “moral atrocity” here can be dispensed with, and one need only remark that this move does not bring us any closer to the solution.
Some have said it raises awareness of the nature of Islam and its believers, and that of their Marxist allies. I agree, but we already received the greatest showcase for this truth a few years ago, when the Danish cartoons were featured. A lot of people woke up then, by that chain of events that cannot (in contrast to 9/11) be glossed over with the usual political excuses. And those whom the Danish Cartoons Riots did not wake up then will not be turned to the right side by Jones’s stunt now.
Save for an unexpected takeover of the media outlets and education institutions by the wakeful, for the time being the resistance can only be waged in the shadows. Burning the Koran is a no-show that only brings unwanted attention.
I submit that right v. wrong is a moral issue, and a waste of time v. effective use of time is a practical one.
Burning the Koran is not a “wrong” thing to do. To assert wrongness is giving credence to the absurdity of Afghan clerics mobilizing a mob. That we call “inciting to riot”, and we deem that a crime.
Three things, of which only one, Obama cares about:
1. Charlie Sheen’s “winning” tour bombed.
2.
Parker said, “1.) We who live today are little changed from our ancestors who walked the earth 100,000 years ago. Our tech has changed, but physiologically we are the same. The same hormones flow through our veins and the same impulses, needs, and desires constantly threaten to override our ability to behave rationally.”
The way I see it is the path of humans has been one from hunter-gatherer tribes toward a form of existence that combines the best of tribal doctrine with personal freedom. In tribal doctrine the tribe is more important than the individual and survival of the tribe is more important than any one member. !00,000 years ago to be cast out of the tribe meant almost certain death. Therefore, the individual stuck with the tribe through thick and thin. Also, the various tribes were in competition with one another for the available food resources. War and strife along with hatred of the “other” were an everyday and accepted part of life. Those instincts are in our DNA because humans lived in this fashion for so long.
7000 years ago that all began to slowly change with the advent of agriculture. That lead to the rise of cities, provinces, feudal baronies, nation-states, and even, empires. The tribal doctrines still held sway as that was the accepted way of doing things.
The Greeks and Romans moved toward giving citiizens rights and freedoms, but their doctrines were overwhelmed by the tribalism of the barbarian hordes.
Then in 1215, some Englishmen came up with the Magna Carta, a document granting certain rights to individuals that formed the basis of English common law.
Men began to investigate the nature of the natural world in earnest, and in spite of the tribal instincts against such activity, science was born. This led to improved living and economic conditions for Europeans.
Then Adam Smith deduced the principle of free market economics that led to more advances in living standards and more freedom for the individual.
Then we had the American Revolution, which became the least tribal, most free nation in the world.
At every step along the path, those who believe in the tribal ways (strong central government, the individual subservient to the “common good,” antagonistic to any views , economic, religious, or cultural that depart from the accepted tribal doctrine) are best have opposed freeedom for individuals. Every step of the way has been marked by bloodshed and sacrifice by those who fight to advance the cause of freedom for the individual. The DNA that gives rise to tribal instincts is still quite strong among our fellow humans. If it wasn’t, most people would eagerly accept the principles of freedom that have been established here.
To sum up: I believe both the Marxists and the Islamists are bent on restoring tribal doctrines. Since the USA is the prime example of individual freedom, both forces are out to bring us down.
Wolla Dalbo,
I agree with what you state. Carry it forward, though, it is not just Islam that fails to subscribe to the multi-culti kumbaya feel-good philosophy, it is also western chatterers. In their eyes, all cultures are equal and are to be accepted as they are except western European culture. Western culture, singularly, must change because, by the elite pundits’ stds, western culture is evil, should be fraught with guilt and should strive to descend to other cultures lowest common denominator.
The are anti-capitalist, purely and simply and for them the flaws of a free-market capitalist system are low-hanging fruit. All human beings act out of self-interest. This is the great factor that warps the playing field making any utopian society impossible. Socialism must hide its capitalist impulses because they belie the socialist ideal (remember Brezhnev’s antique car collection and the party members who shopped for luxuries at the Gum dept store while regular Russian “comrades” had to wait in line for the simple staples of life such as bread and meat?). This is no more a mal-distribution of wealth than that which exists in capitalist society. Capitalism, on the other hand, openly reveals these impulses which are seen as great sins by the socialists. To socialists, the great ideological war is socialism v. capitalism, but in reality its capitalism for a few (aka socialism) v capitalism for all.
This is the sum of Obama’s obeisance to other cultures and to his dictum that we should not unilaterally lead. Many commenters (at verious blogs) have wondered if Obama recognizes that the U.S. is an exceptional nation. I believe he does, and I believe that he resents the U.S. for not being simply one of many. Thus his current domestic and foreign policies.
“Currently, Stand Up America! is standing up for the Christians & minorities in Islamic dominated countries.”
To donate:
http://www.standupamericanow.org/about
The question to the Carnac answer, taqiyya, is, “What does the Obama justice department have in common with Islam?”
Soon to come: massive voter fraud, because if you can’t win an election, it’s okay to steal it; and voter intimidation, because if you can’t prosecute a black panther for shaking a billy club in your face at a voting place, then he’s going to shake a billy club in your face at a voting place.
yah hoo for John Yoo: (and Jennifer Rubin!)
John Yoo – on Friday. He said of the latest OPR effort: “OPR is showing yet again that it is a biased office, pursuing an ideological agenda, flinging about flawed work product that is unworthy of the Justice Department.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/obamas-justice-department-clears-itself/2011/03/29/AFD3uMPC_blog.html
The new prophet isn’t being accepted:
“I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”
–From Obama’s Cairo speech.
One of the reasons Jones’ koran burning was so right is that it drives a wedge between our two main enemies. Progressives, like Maher, will become more and more vocal against the manifested intolerance of Islam and less likely to adopt the stupidity exhibited in Obama’s Cairo speech.
I remember the 08 election, back when I was in NYC and a lot of black panthers (the old guys) were manning the voting booths of all things with the Malcolm X t-shirts on. These were not the young thugs in Philly scaring everyone. These were old dudes who were pretty nice, but still, they annoyed the Heck out of me especially because I was a Hillary supporter. Well, I had no problem pulling that lever Republican that day, as I knew Obama had no experience and would be a disaster. Still, was the first time I voted GOP, and for me personally, a bit of a big deal. I wonder if the Malcolm X t-shirt wearing black panther didn’t help nudge me in the other direction. So if he was trying to intimidate, it sure didn’t work. My suggestion would be to anybody who has to deal with that crap in the future. Just look really meek, and then vote whatever you want where they can’t see you. Although, who knows how the count will be later.
“Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Sir Winston Churchill, Speech, 1941, Harrow School.
Why is Obama concerned about the popularity of Charlie Sheen?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/charlie-sheen-presidential-poll_n_837464.html
One, either you can’t trust the polls; two, when people get a whiff of who you really are, buh bye.
The continuing decline of the West–as well as logic and judgment–in full view.
The decline is not irreversible, but it is not as yet being reversed.
Every day the cost of reversing it climbs.
Yep, kind of like bad teeth!
Tom, thanks for the laugh. “I submit that right v. wrong is a moral issue….” You are clearly a person of great reflective powers. Of course the same might be said of even an imperfectly silvered mirror.
T –
I thought you might enjoy this bit from erstwhile professor of philosophy William Vallicella’s blog*:
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2011/04/money-power-and-equality.html
It’s not a new point – Jouvenel made the argument with astounding rhetorical force in his little book “The Ethics of Redistribution” – but it’s a point that can’t be made too often.
*Everyone should give Bill’s site a look. He’s a brilliant philosopher, and a rock-ribbed conservative.
Kolnai,
Suberb!! Already bookmarked to favorites!
Good stuff, Kolnai.
Am I the only one to think that the enemies of the Western tradition and Western liberties are redoubling their efforts? That the slight check to the Left administered last fall is causing them and their co-belligerents to increase the tempo and escalate the stakes?
I have a bad feeling about this.
Oblio,
Perhaps your suspicions are correct. Then again,perhaps what we’re seeing is a first real opposition to the leftist philosophy that has gone unquestioned (or little questioned) for the past 40 years.
You know, when you’re used to getting your own way for 40 years, and then someone develops the huevos to say “NO!” a radical reaction would not be out of the question. This makes Curtis’ quotation from Churchill (7:54 above) all the more important. The adults must not back down.
While I had read highlights and excerpts of Obama’s “Speech to the Muslim World,” delivered in Cairo, from them I judged it to be a complete rewriting and fabrication of history, to be “disinformation,” so I never bothered to read the entire thing. But, I was sufficiently intrigued by the quote above from Obama’s speech, which quote was, indeed, the purest fantasy and a-historical bullshit, that I decided to go back and try to read the whole speech.
I could only stand to read a few paragraphs–picture a man screaming, with steam pouring out of his ears–but just in these first few paragraphs a few things stood out.
I noted that Obama started his opening remarks by talking about how Al-Azar University, source of endless Medieval nonsense, bloodthirsty threats and fatwas, and crazy pronouncements by its “learned” Imams–like the recent one telling Muslims that, in accordance with the Qur’an and Shari’a law, the only way to make it–you should excuse the expression– “Kosher” for a man unrelated to a women to be in the same room alone with her, was for the woman to suckle the unrelated man which, according to the Qur’an and Shari’a law, would establish a family relationship with him and, then, since the man had become “family” he could legitimately be in the room alone with her–has been a “beacon of Islamic learning and tradition” for over a thousand years. Yeah, right!
Next, I noted that Obama greeted his audience using the Muslim salutation that is only supposed to be used when one Muslim is greeting other Muslims; something that the MSM totally, and I am sure deliberately, did not report.
Then Obama went into his shtick about how the tiny “minority” of Muslim “extremists”–like those who carried out the terrorist attacks on 9/1–“has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights” and about how blaming all of “peaceful” Islam for the acts of a few was wrong.
Then, still on the first page of the transcript, mind you, Obama moved on to perhaps his biggest and central lie i.e. that “…America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings”; a statement, all of whose elements are totally and utterly refuted by the Qur’an, the Hadiths, and the Sira, by the life, sayings, and deeds of Muhammad, by the subsequent 1,400 years of predatory and bloody Islamic history, and by the terrorist acts carried out by Muslims daily in every corner of our world today.
Then Obama moved on to say how Islam had always been an integral part of America–who knew? And to list all of the splendid inventions, achievements, and discoveries of Islamic culture, seemingly to include everything including the invention of the wheel, sliced bread, the Sun, the internal combustion engine, human respiration, and waffles, although I did notice that Muslim’s modern invention of better ways of torture and beheading, the suicide belt and the IED were, curiously, absent from his list.
Then, glancing over the next few paragraphs in what was a long speech, it seemed as if each and every paragraph was so chocked full of sheer inventions lacking any historical truth whatsoever, misattribution, to Islam, and inflation of illusory or minuscule “achievements” into monumental ones–never mind that the literate and highly educated Christian, Jewish, and Hindu slaves the mostly illiterate Muslim warriors captured and forced to labor for them were probably responsible for most, if not all of these “accomplishments and discoveries”–flat out lies, and so much twisted history that refuting and correcting each and every lie and gross exaggeration would likely take a week.
Suffice it to say that there was hardly a true word in this speech, and that it was total horseshit, and the fact that our MSM did not dissect this speech and point out what a tissue of lies and distortions it was, demonstrated, once again just how thoroughly they have betrayed their public trust and become the Left’s Ministry of Truth.
oblio –
Amen to your having a bad feeling about this. I am even more apprehensive than usual about where the left seems to be willing to go to defend what T notes they views as their birthright.
One question we should file away is what it will mean if/when Judge Prosser loses his election on Tuesday, and the new leftist Wisconsin Supreme Court proceeds to do what the leftists there have always desired, viz., enforce the progressive agenda by striking down Walker’s bill.
I’m about 75% sure that this is going to happen. But regardless of my predictable pessimism, if it does happen, what’s the next move? And how significant is it?
About the latter question, I’d say very significant, not least because of the psychological effect it will have on conservative legislators elsewhere. Aside from that, it is significant for a couple of reasons, both of which are perhaps even direr than the dispiriting effects it will have on GOP magnates.
First, it indicates that conservatives have not figured out how to win the messaging war on these important matters, and that when the pinch comes, the left will be able to get an effective majority on its side (by which I mean not necessarily an actual majority, but a majority that can swing policy and elections). A correlate suggestion is that we may not be able to win a messaging war. It serves no purpose to assume that that is true, but if it is true it signals nothing good down the pike.
Second, a defeat in Wisconsin could be significant because it emboldens the left to amp up their extra-legal behavior and to continue sabotaging needed reform efforts. Say what we will about the absolute outrageousness of these tactics, if the public does not punish the Democrats for this besieging of the very foundations of the rule of law, then they will continue until the Tea Party-inspired legislative agenda is pounded into dust.
So much for significance. To re-cap, it may: 1) lead Republicans elsewhere to be more cowardly; 2) signal a defect in Republican messaging that may or may not be remediable; 3) encourage the Democrats to further undermine the rule of law by “fleebagging” and other dastardly means.
I do not see the number 4) I would prefer, which would be to revitalize grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers. Perhaps once the Walker bill is struck down they’ll get angry again. We’ll see.
Now, what’s the next move? It may be the only one that the Wisconsin GOP is not willing to countenance – pass the damn bill again, and submit to another month of death threats, fleebagging, and perhaps, this time, actual violence. I can hardly get too angry at their unwillingness to go through this again, but they need a leader right now who will put stiffness in their spines – who will be their Churchill.
To give into this sabotage would be the worst possible next move, and would amount to acquiescence. The GOP should now be clear that conservatism now stands, almost alone, not only for conservatism but also for the sheer republican processes of the Constitutional, Madisonian system. That is, we have to realize that we are fighting a two-front battle on both substantive and procedural grounds. To accept defeat in Wisconsin would be to cave on both.
If the left is willing to put their necks on the line to sabotage the rule of law, then the very least we must demand of ourselves is that we are willing to put our necks on the line to defend it.
God-willing, the Wisconsin GOP will understand that.
Wolla, many thanks for completing such a distasteful task. I believed these things to be true just from his track record of platitudes to whoever he speaks, thanks for the confirmation. If he isn’t a muslim, he sure as hell acts like one.
It’s no accident, Oblio et cie., that our enemies, foreign and domestic, have been concentrating their firepower for the last several decades on what used to be called Christendom.
Oh, and I wouldn’t be too quick to put a halo on Hinduism: they’re the ones who burned widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres, until a good Christian Englishman stopped it.
Oblio and Kolnai,
I do not disagree with anything in either of your posts. Let’s not only look at Wisconsin from a federal/national perspective because, first and foremost, it is a state issue. What happens oif Prosser loses? This is the loss of a battle, and while it may impend the loss of a the war, it is not (at least not yet). A Wisconsin loss kicks the can over to Ohio, remember this is a state issue, and even so, there are already some rumblings about overpaid public workers.pensions in (of all states, California).
IMO one of the basic problems is Dem v Republican (also liberal v conservative) is that the latter tend to intellectualize, while the former emotionalize. Thus, the conservative right deplores the tactics of the left and shies away from doing the same. Now, I’m not suggesting that the right duplicates the leftist descent into anarchich rabble-rousing, but it needs to speak as much to the gut than it does. I think that it is there that the conservative message falls consistently short.
There is some hope, however. This linked The Hill poll
http://thehill.com/polls/153517-the-hill-poll-public-sees-gop-more-reasonable-in-budget-debate
notes that a plurality sees Repubs as more sensible on the budget; the bad news, nothing has happened yet to change the way these respondents (repub or Dem) would vote. That is where the war needs to be fought.
Above
“but it needs to speak as much to the gut than it does.”
should be “but it needs to speak much more to the gut than it does.”
Sorry!
Oh, and a P.S. to the above post. The fact that the Union Grove Dollar Store’s business quadrupled because she refused to buckle to union intimidation is also a ray of hope. We’ll know better on Wednesday morning. (Union Grove v union, what sweet irony!)
And this:
http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Steve_Steckler_4052652B-EF90-498C-9D86-9602DBCED7D0.html
and the operative paragraph is ( upper case emphasis mine):
“. . . the wage cuts and increased employee pension contributions being proposed in California, Maryland and New York are actually greater, on a per capita basis, GREATER THAN those being pressed by Republicans Scott Walker, John Kasich, Rick Scott and Chris Christie.”
This doesn’t mean that the war is won, but that this is happening (spontaneously?) across the nation means something. As Curtis quoted Churchill, never give in, never, never, never, never!
T- agreed on all counts. I read Deroy Murdock’s piece on Gov. Cuomo at NRO and was highly impressed (if what Murdock said is true – which I have no reason to doubt).
The key point with respect to the significance of Wisconsin that you highlighted was that concerning messaging: The GOP needs to re-think the way it talks, and go for the gut as much as it goes for the noodle.
I’m with that 100% – I just hope that it is still possible for conservative “gut talk” to out-do liberal “gut talk.” And I’ll re-iterate simply for maximum clarity that that’s a “meta” question – in no way is it a counsel to not make the effort. There’s no choice; we have to do it. Churchill is right, then as now.
So here’s what I mean by wondering whether it’s still possible to outdo liberal emotional appeals: At a certain point conservatism always bumps up against the fact that it is pro-capitalist, and thus at a certain point the liberal gets to bang the Compassion Drum. We then have to make the people “see the unseen” – which is required to truly understand capitalism (Bastiat, broken windows, etc.) – and that, I submit, is a big part of why we tend to get too brainy and abstract.
One could point to Reagan and Kemp and a few others and say that there is a way, clearly, to make seeing the unseen have emotional force. I can’t deny it. All I’m saying is that what was true in 1984 may not be so in 2011. What worries me, and I think oblio too, is how far the left is apparently willing to go to make sure that Reagan never happens again.
The trouble, as always, is what happens when the rubber hits the road and proposals have to get specific. Simply put, the public tends to lean conservative in principle and liberal in fine – not progressive, but status quo on the administrative state. The key test will be Rep. Ryan’s attempt to sell his budget. That will tell us a lot about what we’re made of.
Finally, given what you’ve said (you = T) about this being a state issue, and noting the successful or about-to-be successful reform efforts in other states – all of which is true – I wonder why exactly the left chose Wisconsin pour encourager les autres. Fertile soil for leftist agitation? I suppose, but so is New Jersey, and even Ohio and Indiana (the latter recently subjected to a fleebagging itself) have their fair share of leftist loonies.
It could be the symbolic effect of waging the war in the womb of progressivism. If so, that’s pretty pathetic, and it would argue that the left’s behavior in Wisconsin was more of a rearguard effort than an attempt at a route. A kind of hail mary pass.
I took it as the left saying, “Folks, you haven’t even seen the half of what we’re willing to do to win this thing.” More of a warning shot across the bow.
Kolnai,
So I think we agree that the fundamental unifying message of the left is anti-capitalism. What the Repubs need to do then is clearly demonstrate how capitalism is good. The classic “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” does exactly this. They need to take capitalism to the public in direct examples in the same way that the left uses socialist examples to tug on heart strings; e.g., young businesswoman does well, but business threatened by regulation an taxation; black teenager starts business helping people only to by shut down by bureaucratic insurance and licensing requirements. The message is that these people are trying to build a better place through capitalistic endeavors and the nasty socialist bureaucracy consistently thwarts them and us. (How many people have made jokes about having to deal with a municipal or state bureaucracy? Explain that THIS is what the left and the unions want to perpetuate at the citizens expense).
With regard to why Wisconsin? Perhaps it’s because it was possible to engineer high profile opposition there (what follows is pure speculation). The Repub-Dem ratio was large enough to make the Dems look like beleaguered victims being pushed around by those bullying Repubs. I think being in the progressive womb, as you note, certainly has something to do with it, too. Why not Ohio, NJ? Well, the Ohio Dems were the Johnny-come-latelys; hey! Let’s try what they did in Wisconsin. NJ? Christie has (so far) successfully canceled out most attempts by the teacher’s union to block his proposals. Furthermore, NJ has seen corporationss and the wealthy leave the state, and they’ve seen it right next door in New York too (Rush Limbaugh being, perhaps, the most high-profile example). I’m guessing here, but I’d bet that the Wisconsin flight from the state has not been as pronounced as it has in Ohio/NJ; at least not yet (remember Ohio has lost the steel industry and is losing the auto industry out of Detroit–a double whammy).
and if anyone is still visiting this thread, the following paragraph is from Patterico (04-05-11) appropos of my comment above about speaking to the gut:
“Ken Vogel has a piece over at Politico that conservatives, libertarians and independent political activists would do well to listen to. It has a somewhat misleading title Right Seeks Edge in Opposition Wars but the main thrust of the piece is that liberal organizations like Media Matters for America, Center for American Progress and Talking Points Memo are outflanking their political opponents and that currently there is simply no equivalent on the other side. The article mentions right-wing watchdog groups like Media Research Center, Accuracy in Media and Judicial Watch but sums them all up with this money quote….”
Regarding the Belmont Club comment referred to above (where it was noted that NOT UNTIL THE MULLAHS DEMANDED OUTRAGE DURING FRIDAY SERMONS did the Afghanis start rioting and murdering):
Do you suppose that these mullahs/ imams use their power to generate rage & riots as a means to political advancement in the Bizarro-world of Islam? For the imam who generates the wildest mobs “Congratulations! You are now a semi-finalist in this year’s Fiery Imam contest!”
I’d like to point you passionate debaters to Ann Bernhardt two videos on the appropriate response to Islam’s manifesto for terrorism, the Kuran:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/american_studies/koran_burning_page_by_evi.php
About time to declare Islam a terrorist organization, isn’t it?
Look at the two videos linked above. Ann Bernhardt had more common sense and guts than the entire U.S. Congress and the White House put together.
P.S.–Check out the videos quickly, ’cause I bet they will be taken down post haste.
Muslims dancing in the streets on 9/11, and Jihadi threats, beheading and terrorism porn is fine with Youtube, but this stuff?
Hey, we don’t want to upset our Muslim brothers, do we?
On the OP, the assumption on this thread seems to be that guilt can only belong to one involved party. The reality lies somewhere in the middle: the dumbasses that took human life because of a book are clearly to blame for the taking of said human life. The dumbass that made a spectacle of burning that book (knowing full well the consequences would include innocent deaths), is also to blame.
In other news, some say that gasoline and sparks are unrelated!
This is really about freedom of speech and blackmail, about who controls the dialog.
We still have free speech in this country–although those like Congressman Graham and many others would like to shut us down, because they, and their actions, and beliefs cannot withstand honest discussion, analysis and criticism. Free speech carries with it some responsibility to use that free speech wisely, but if some people do not use discretion in speaking, that can never be an excuse to eliminate or narrow free speech. There are, after all, legal exceptions to free speech; if someone incites a crowd to riot, they can be prosecuted for it, if someone slanders or libels someone, a suit can be brought against them, but absent these very clearly defined crimes, speech is and ought to be absolutely free. Should the Administration want to charge the Florida Pastor with “inciting to riot” they are welcome to do so, but what they want to do is to stop him from speaking his mind on this subject in the first place, they want “prior restraint,” they want to gag and censor him on the subjects that they determine are taboo at their sole discretion.
The Left and their Muslim allies of convenience would like to limit free speech, to have speech codes and a whole roster forbidden topics and words that only they would determine, and in placing a smothering blanket of PC over our culture they have very nearly succeeded–notice, though, that this is a one way street, that those on the Left and in Islam who very consciously use speech to mock, insult, and vilify in the most savage way those things that Muslims hate and disdain–things like Christianity, for instance, or even desecrating the Bible–can do so with impunity, however, merely telling the truth about Islam and the life and deeds of Muhammad, reading from and calling attention to the actual texts of Islam, much less burning a Qur’an, is something Muslims and the Left want to stop and to penalize.
And their method? Blackmail. Stop the Qur’an burning, stop “insulting” Islam–and Muslims define “insulting” or “defaming” Islam as basically anyone even talking about Islam in less that slavishly obsequious terms, and if anybody criticizes Allah, the Qur’an, Muhammad, or Islam in any way, shape, or form and, increasingly, there will be death threats and violence by Muslims against those who dare to “insult” Islam, Allah, the Qur’an or the Prophet.
Muslims are told by the Qur’an that they are the “best of Peoples,” and that all unbelievers are “accursed” and “the vilest of creatures” and, this being so, it is the superior Muslims whose customs, and beliefs, and Shari’a law should take precedence–should dominate, override, supplant, and control all aspects of each and every unbeliever’s life. And to that end, Muslims are using the threat of force and force itself to intimidate, bully, and force us “unbelievers” to do things as they command, to adhere to Islamic practice and to Shari’a law, which bans criticism and free speech and, especially, any criticism or mocking of Allah, the Qur’an, Muhammad or of Islam.
Christians and Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, Confucians, Zoroastrians and Bahai’s do not a get a free pass on violence if someone questions, mocks or insults their religions, but Muslims want a free pass to be able to maim or kill anyone who questions or who does not bow down to Islam.
Let us all be very clear, as well, that it is the Muslims who are reacting with violence and lethal force against totally innocent people–“unbelievers” all, I’m guessing. Thus, it is Muslims who are really the guilty parties here, not the Florida Preacher.