I generaly do not like to host these open forum type panels. Yet our discusion of terrorism needs a follow up. If we are going to solve the problem and move ahead Conseratives , moderates and patriotic liberals must work together. Utopian leftists ala 167 and 147 are not interested in solutions and are interested in fighting capitalism. Communist and Jihadists are like cancer and spread death in their wake eventualy killing the host. The last sentence was paraprased DH End of Times.
I will start with a set of points be patient as this will take a few tries.
1 PC and moral relitivism should end as this aids and abets terrorism by making it a cultural varian rather then evil
2 The time has come for a candid look at the history of Islam. There is 1300 years of colonialism, slavery, abuse of a range of indigenous people etc. If it is evil under Western Civ then Islam must be held accountable . The range of crimes must not be excused or mitigated.
3 There is no excuse for terrorism and swift retaliation against terroriusts and their host should be the norm. Automatic death penalty on TV for captured terrorist and fifty years for those who aid and abet them in trhe USA.
4 All counties should be made to accept civil law
5 Freedom of press must be the norm in all countries.
6 Western countries should invest in third world countries once civil law is established.
7 Human rights are not a luxury they must be made the norm.
8 An honest assesment at the evils of Communiswm . Communists are for ridicule and to be made pariahs just like Nazis and racial seperatists.
9 Certain countries like Sudan and some of the African and middle eastern nations muswt have the maps redrawn. As for Israel there never were Palestinians just Arabs and it is the responsibility of the other states to settle the refugees . A defacto population exchange occured already. Arabs were never indigenous from that area. Assyrians, Kurds , Copts and Pashtuns all should gety homelands well before fake indigenous people.
10 The end of the culture of coruption and bribery as the norm for doing business in the third world. Countries can not develop in a culture of graft.
This is a start with how we get to a better tommorow. We do not get there without hard looks at Nihlistic strains of Islam and the correct look at Communism.
CTD
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19 comments:
Apparently, neither one of you know what political correctness is or its purpose.
Political correctness is the volume of thought that makes certain words taboo when talking about specific, (favored), groups. Its a form of propaganda perfected by the communists to stifle free thought and descent.
As near as I can tell the term was first used by Josef Stalin in the 1930's to create a set of unwritten rules to govern discourse in the USSR. Any breaches could result in a trip to the gulags. Now you are merely ostracized or called a fascist, bigot or Nazi.
Beak isn't talking about changing religious views, he is talking about "us" calling things what they are without all the BS.
For example: Reuters calls terrorists, "insurgents" and their actions insurgency or some other term that implies terrorism is legitimate.
If you hear someone say that terrorists are "freedom fighters", or some other such BS, you should speak out! I don't give a damn if they have a right to free speech, so do you and they don't have a right to go unchallenged.
Moral relativism is thinking of terrorists who are in fact cold blooded murderers, as "freedom fighters".
1. They are not fighting for "freedom", they are fighting to impose totalitarianism.
2. They are murdering innocent men, women and children without regard.
If you don't understand the difference, all the explanations in the world will not help you.
I'll get into more of this later. I'm out of time for now.
Lets start with PC and moral relitivism. If there are no standards and all cultures are equal then terrorism, slavery, female footbinding becomes a cultural variant. This is the baloney fed by the far left in any social science course or by the adherents of the far left like 167.
Certain countries were thrown together illogically by arrogant Europeans. The Brittish sold out the Assyrians and Kurds to Arab domination. In fact they tried to sell out the Jews by creating a postage stamp sized state. Even this was too much for the Arabs who got their tail kicked.
Countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan were illogically created. THe Pashtuns are large enough to have their own state. A Pashtun state would reduce terror and be able to enforce law in a lawless region. The reast of Afghanistan would benefit as well from a country that was more balanced without the Pashtun domination. Countries that were illogically created are time bombs we may have to defuse them.
Christianity and Islam have very different histories. Alvin Schmidt
wrote the Great Divide and Fred Isaac wrote on the subject as well.
While we can and do write at length about the crimes of the West
we ignore more serious crimes committed under Islam. 1300 years of terrorism and Jim Crow on steriods Dhimmi laws placed on Jews and Christians.
All countries must start from Civil law. Religion is not PC and the human rights abuses towards religious minorities and a lack of civil rights stem from religious law.
Religious law is not PC and should extend no further then a church. Churches have the right of free expression as long as no violence is urged. Thus if I am barred as a member it is their right to freedom of religion and association. If Walmart denies me a job because of my religion or I am a Yankee fan it is discrimination.
Human rights stem from Civil law and religious law falls short. Since outsiders are created thus the natural inclination is to make them less equal.
B,
" 1. Who calls insurgents freedom fighters?"
The same people that call terrorists "insurgents"!
Colin Powell said in 2001 that Palestinian terrorists might just be "freedom fighters". Pat Buchanan wrote a column where he stated "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
Tell me if you agree with this statement:
Jurisprudentially, the statement that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is entirely meaningless. There are precise and determinable standards that must be applied in judgment of all insurgent resorts to violence. These standards are known in law as JUST CAUSE and JUST MEANS. These standards, and these standards alone, allow us to distinguish lawful insurgency from terrorism.
see HERE
“How do we justify the changes without infringing upon ones religion if their laws are based on religious principal, that’s my basic question.” – Robert
You are right, Robert, there is a contradiction.
I’ll resolve it as follows: you can’t respect a religious practice that violates the rights of others anymore than you can respect a rights-violating practice based on secular philosophy (for example, Nazism, Communism, Neo-Nazism). You first and foremost morally condemn the ideology in question. If the practice (a violation of someone's rights) is committed under your jurisdiction, you arrest, prosecute and punish the crime. If it occurs in another country you have no moral obligation to come to the rescue of the individuals harmed by the religion or ideology. However, it is morally allowable and in cases of gross violations on a massive scale, it is often advisable. That’s how I see it.
But, I treat all philosophies – secular and religious – the same when it comes to critical analysis and moral judgment. I think it is a mistake to give a blanket, a priori, respect to philosophies we call religious just because their metaphysics embraces the supernatural and epistemology accepts the validity of faith. Why should that insure their respectability a priori?
There are so many points to address here, but I'll deal with one focus in this posting.
Historically speaking, how did the ideals of freedom and democracy spread in the Modern Age? Two points immediately come to my mind:
A. By means of military containment when tyrannical regimes threatened free nations.
B. By means of the oppressed who emigrated to free nations and thus made those free nations stronger and the oppressed nations weaker. Those immigrants accepted embraced new nation as "their" nation. Multiculturalism and pc hadn't yet reared their heads.
The essential danger of modern terrorism is the weaponry available to terrorists. Previous terrorists found their strikes limited by the very nature of the weaponry available. Therefore, cultural variance, as some like to deem it, was limited in its ability to impact large numbers and distant locations. Explosives and wmd's, however, have significantly raised the stakes in terms of the sheer numbers of slain people. The time for our survival may be short, in historical terms.
The conflict between the West and Islam goes way, way back. The Gates of Vienna blog has addressed this issue in numerous articles.
By giving Islam "a pass" on accountability because it wears the name "religion," we allow a geopolitical and tyrannical ideology to promote its agenda within our own nation.
We would all do well to remember that under Islamic rule, this blog would not exist. As I may have previously mentioned, I have an American friend working in Saudi Arabia, and she cannot link to certain sites I send her, so I have to copy and paste entire articles.
Tyrannical regimes, of any ilk, cannot survive as long as First Amendment freedoms apply.
PS: I just looked at the clock. Time to go to work!
Reading the many posts here and elsewhere, I’m afraid, Beak, that we will have trouble getting past point one with our friends on the left. Let me put forth a theory about the differences between the approach by those on the left and those on the right, in general terms, which, of course, won’t hold completely. Nevertheless, I see general tendencies and I’d like to see if others agree.
The left is more concerned with ends while the right is more concerned with means.
When we, on the right, approach a comparative study, we don’t assume that differing ideas, philosophies, religions, or cultures will be just as respectable before we do the analysis. It’s the process – weighing the evidence and allowing the facts to lead us to the conclusions. The left assumes from the outset that different cultures and religions must be just as respectable. They will start their analysis by matching similar attributes and if the evidence starts to accumulate such that both sides aren’t equal, they’ll abort the analysis or skew the scales.
This mirrors their approach to economics. The right focuses on the process that protects each individual’s right to act (liberty), gain (property), and go as far as their ability takes. The left sees differences of results as an automatic sign that something is wrong.
All and all, there is a different approach – insuring ends or respecting the proper means – that results in a different conclusion about thought (cultures, religions) and practices (economics, societies).
Do others – on both the left and right – see this difference in emphasis? It doesn’t always hold but we might not get very far if we don’t acknowledge our different worldviews and distinctive ways of approaching everything. We might not get past Beak’s point #1. What do others think?
Robert, I find your comparison very unfair and superficial. Like, Beak, I’m not a Christian but I still find your history extremely unfair by its omission. Take the first example:
First, Constantine legalized Christianity in 312AD – not a few decades after the death of Jesus. For 3 centuries Christianity was illegal and persecuted. Christianity, unlike Islam, developed for 300 years out of power. As a consequence, early Christianity, unlike Islam, didn’t have a political philosophy or example of their Prophet as a ruler. When they rose to power they were quite intolerant. We can debate whether it was because of Christianity or despite it but that would require more subtly than your analysis allows.
Islam, on the other hand, has an example of its Prophet as a ruler. And the example isn’t pretty. He plundered, slaughtered, conquered and oppressed. He ethnically cleansed Medina of Jews. When Christians commit atrocities you can justifiably say they aren’t following the example of Jesus. When Muslims commit atrocities they may indeed be following the example of Mohammad.
I can comment on the unfairness of your other examples but let’s accept that there is a legacy of violence and oppression everywhere in the world. We can debate the role of difference beliefs but the fact remains that people have behaved atrociously. Now, were did liberty and liberal democracy come about? Here we have to go back to the Glorious Revolution of John Locke’s time circa 1680s. What do we find? Liberty! Individual liberty – never perfect but continually expanding – was embraced and championed by people who called themselves Christian.
Yes, oppression was everywhere but liberty and individual rights were a creation of Western Europe beginning in the 17th century.
If we move past the superficial details that are artificially constructed to make Islam and the West look comparable, we see deep and profound differences. Don't you agree?
I agree with that.
The next question has to do with the ability to change and come to grips with modernity. Christians and Jews have proven they can do so and sustain a free society. Although that's not true everywhere, it is most true in the Anglo-sphere and Scandinavia.
We've also seen progress in the Pacific Rim with new democracies in several countries.
However, Islam doesn't have a very good record. Only Turkey, which was created by a dictator - Ataturk - became somewhat of a democracy. Others have been transitory or extremely limited. The prospects? My thesis is that Islam has unique challenges that other cultures don't have. Impossible? No. But difficult and unstable unless Islam is marginalized or gotten rid of completely.
There's one problem: Islam was political from the start - Mohammad was a political and military leader. Christianity wasn't political until three centuries after its founding. Christians don't have the baggage of Jesus ruling or fighting. Christianity started as a religion of personal salvation – not as an example to conquer and rule others. I don’t think it’s fair to assume they are they same. Do you?
Rob
Do not forget that secular Turkey ethnically cleansed Greeks , Armenian and Assyrians. Christianity is based upon brotherhood and equality of man. Islam is based upon submission and divides the world into the house of peace and war. It also has Jihad as a basic tenet and iot does not mean struggle either. This is not to say that all Muslims are violent but the notion that Christianity, Judism etc have the same propensity towards violence is a fantasy.
This is why Muslim countries and everyone else must accept civil law as the foundation of society.
I am glad you accept my limitation of theology at the church door. I also would remind you to keep your secularism out of my church.
Great Comments everyone much more interesting then I anticipated.
Jason (or anyone else):
Was it Sina who said that every religion other than Islam is based on the principle of the Golden Rule?
Jason,
You wrote: "Islam was political from the start - Mohammad was a political and military leader. Christianity wasn't political until three centuries after its founding. Christians don't have the baggage of Jesus ruling or fighting. Christianity started as a religion of personal salvation – not as an example to conquer and rule others."
I think you have something very important here--political orientation vs. personal orientation. Westerners today view faith as a personal matter; Muslims cannot separate those two elements--not easily, anyway.
I read this in today's Washington Post, in an article entitled "Appalled at Beating of Protesters, Egypt's Opposition Leaps to Action":
"Cooperation between the Muslim Brotherhood snd Kifaya ['a composite of small political, human rights and nongovernmental organizations] has been long gestating. The Brotherhood had resisted joining forces with secular groups, party because, as an organization banned from politics, it would be lending its numbers to others and partly because its agenda of setting up a state ruled by Islamic law clashed with that of nonreligious groups....The Brotherhood and Kifaya excluded opposition presidential candidate Ayman Nour and his Tomorrow Party from joining the new united front. They criticized Nour for meeting with Secretary Condoleezza Rice during a visit she made to Cairo last month. The Brotherhood and Kifaya are fiercely critical of the Bush administration."
Because the Western ideals of freedom and democracy--ideals which the United States embodies--are considered to be "Westoxification" (Iranian term, I believe). Can the factions in Egypt, which is the example I'm using at the moment but there are similar factions throughout Islamic nations, arrive at similar (NOT identical) ideals as long as the people subscribe to Islam? I have doubts as to the feasibility of reconciling Islam and freedom.
Robert,
Yes, all religions have violent histories. People are power-grabbers and use their religion to justify their actions. However, one needs to scrutinize the doctrines given by the founder of the religion to see if the followers' actions are justified by the actual doctrines. Jesus plainly said that his purpose was NOT to establish an earthly kingdom; he also preached peaceful conversion. What did Mohammad say? Jesus told Peter to put away the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane. What did Mohammad say to his followers about the sword? How did Mohammad himself use the sword?
Beak,
Your comments about moral relativism are excellent. That issue is key, I think.
Robert,
You wrote "[O]ne of my major problems with the current state of christianity is the message christ spoke is lost." You might be right about that.
I often think that the problem goes back to the human desire for power which makes many who profess Christianity say rather inane things. Jesus plainly preacher the personal practioning of the faith. [I know--too much alliteration in that last sentence]
Sorry I didn't get back sooner, 18 hour workday.
B said:
"One thing I never hear any of you speak out against is the terrible things done in the name of christiantiy, slavery, bigotry, lynching, colonialism, etc. All religions have a very checkered past.
We are not talking about the past, we are speaking of the here and now. I am not responsible for the actions of my forebears be they Indian or white.
Most likely, some of my ancestors were slaves to other Indians and whites and most assuredly some owned slaves themselves. I doubt that any of my white ancestors did. Quite frankly they were too poor and lower class. Almost all peoples had traditions of slavery and to pretend otherwise is stupidity!
I believe the last surviving child of a black American slave died last year. Her mother was emancipated as an adolescent. She was emancipated through the efforts of the Christian abolitionists that formed the Republican party.
But there is still religion sanctioned slavery in many Islamic nations.
"All religions have a very checkered past.
So your point is we must do nothing because our ancestors, including yours, were not very nice people?
Then why bother campaigning against corruption? I'm sure that some of your ancestors were corrupt.
" Warren, weren't our founding fathers considered terrirsts to the British? History is written by the victor.
JUST CAUSE and JUST MEANS. These standards, and these standards alone, allow us to distinguish lawful insurgency from terrorism.
But again, let's look at history, when we fought the british our war of independence, we used non accepted practices of war.
Yes the British thought it was barbaric that we would actually aim our guns and try to kill their officers. (Simply wasn't done, old boy!)
We were not trying to destroy the British Empire nor did we target innocent men, women and children in an effort to make them bend to our will.
We are not re-fighting the Revolutionary war.
Secondly, the if the insurgents are terrorists, then is our government negotiating with terrorists by having dialogue with them? I thought our policy was to never negotiate with terrorists?
Hey, I am all for summary execution! The Iraqi government wants to negotiate and its their country.
Let's be clear, I do NOT condon suicide bombings killing of innocent people, however, neither do I agree with going to war for ideological reasons of nation building, not for the safety of this nation.
Then your consent is implicit it your refusal to act.
Many good points. It looks like we won't be able to agree on the description of the threat (Islam vs. hijackers of Islam, etc.) but we know there are those who wish us harm. Mustang has a good point: where's our common ground? Let me try some points:
1. Securing the borders. Who could disagree?
2. Supporting pro-active measures abroad against our enemies. Why wait?
3. Supporting our side. We can't all be the commander-in-chief. Is it too much show support for the war overall (and the troops) even if we don't always agree on the details?
4. A willingness to play a role. Is it too much to pay more at the pump if it helps us deal with Saudi Arabia?
5. A basic patriotic pride. We're not perfect but we are the good guys in this fight. Can we keep that in mind as we see to improve our country?
Those of us with military experience will remember the acronym “KISS.” It stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” When problems become too complex, they become unsolvable. So with that in mind, let me say that illegal immigration poses the greatest threat to our domestic tranquility. First, the costs of illegal immigration to taxpayers are extraordinary. Go to the website FAIR and find out how illegal immigration affects you where you live — they have it broken down by state. Second, illegal immigration is a big business among criminal elements, and they don’t care whether illegal immigrants come from El Salvador, or Pakistan. We must get a handle on this.
Next, answer the question: Would you rather fight terrorists here, or some where else? If you think it is better to fight them here, you are probably a moron. If you think “it isn’t our business,” then you have fallen prey to one of the principal goals of terrorists, which is “take advantage of America’s apathy.” Important note: It does not matter whether terrorists are religious fanatics, or just cold-hearted mercenaries; they intend only to kill and maim innocent civilian citizens, cause citizens to lose confidence in their governments through intimidation, and shut down our economy where ever, and when ever possible.
Those who place themselves in harms way for our benefit deserve our highest admiration, whether they are serving in the Armed Forces, or members of local police, fire, and rescue teams. If you cannot support the people who are serving as your protectors, please seek mental counseling as soon as possible because there is something very, very wrong with you.
Jason is correct: while the entire world is spending gobs of money on gasoline, the US is far, far behind the world-wide norm of these costs. Why are we so willing to enrich the Saudis when much of that money is going toward their sponsorship of terrorism? Really, in terms of the big picture in our war against terrorism, is taking the boat to the lake more, or less important?
No sane person wants to go to war, but some times war is necessary. By invading Afghanistan and Iraq, the USA “pre-empted” the terrorist’s focus on targets inside its own borders. Now, most terrorists are confronting “the good guys” in a different region of the world. That was the idea, folks — and it isn’t too difficult to understand. If confused, please re-read the second paragraph.
Semper Fi . . .
Mustang
I read 167 as he lives in London hoping he would see the light. There is no light there and he still is on his own mindless jihad against Bush Joooos and Capitalism.
Enough is enough and the culture of excuses must end. This is almost a form of pointless human sacrafice. Violence with no purpose is pure evil.
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