Revelation: Voices of America (CUMBAYA Alert)

I had a note this week from one of Dennis Prager's minions saying Dennis had read a piece of mine with interest. "As you know," it said, "Dennis is not confrontational. His main goal is to clarify issues for his listeners." Actually, it was news to me, but I guessed Dennis might be American since his staff assumed Canadians knew him and his m.o., something media personalities here would not take for granted. So I went on Dennis's show yesterday for an hour. It comes from L.A. and is opposite Dr. Laura's brutal, abusive phone-in (toward her listeners, never the reverse), which outdraws Dennis, but then he offers mere clarity, not delicious punishment.

What piqued Dennis's interest was an item on New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, whom I described as showing a sense of American moral superiority, assuming the right to judge the rest of the world and dictate what it must do, or face the consequences. Somewhere in my Canadian brain, I must have expected Dennis to say, Oh no, we're not all that smug, you don't understand. Instead, his answer was, more or less, Yes, we are morally superior so, of course, we judge and punish; give me some examples where we aren't! (I'm paraphrasing; I hope Dennis won't find it too distorted.) Well, it's always refreshing to be surprised, but I bet you could see my mouth gape -- on radio! So we had a chat on whether the U.S. is -- not perfect, maybe, but the best country ever. And to tell the truth, there are many commentators here who would largely agree.

Then Dennis got me on the run. He asked if I didn't consider Canada morally superior to Sudan, and I felt oddly reluctant to say yes. I certainly think ours is a freer, politically better place to live, but the formulation spooked me. As if our political system proves we are inherently superior moral beings. None of us is wholly responsible for our fortune; luck and other factors have a lot to do with it. You can respond to such a state with arrogance and disdain, or with gratitude and humility.

The other revealing moment came when I said the U.S. behaved as if it were the only great power in history that acted entirely from noble concerns rather than self-interest. Well, we are, said Dennis (more or less). Damn, bushwhacked again. This strain in U.S. foreign policy goes back a century at least. When Woodrow Wilson argued for entering the First World War, he said the U.S. flag "stands for the rights of mankind, no matter where they may be." Not a big leap to George W. Bush saying America is at war with evil, full stop. It's a view of U.S. foreign policy reinforced in their media, à la Friedman, though I'm always surprised to hear Canadian-born ABC anchor Peter Jennings push it enthusiastically. Does he believe it, or just believe they believe it?

The U.S. is not the first great power to claim the moral high ground while gleefully scooping territory or gobbling resources and markets (Britain's white man's burden, France's mission civilisatrice). Yet in the U.S., it seems more -- fervent, ingenuous, deluded? And there has always been a counterstrain, going back to Mark Twain and other savage critics of America's imperial expansion during the Spanish-American War, well before Woodrow Wilson. In fact, you could say Wilson-type moralizing about U.S. foreign policy is as much a defence against criticism of imperial behaviour as it is pure idealism. And so it goes. Michael Moore today is in the Mark Twain tradition of challenging U.S. expansion and the self-congratulatory rhetoric that always goes with it.

Dennis took the last word to prove his point about the purity of American motives abroad. He used the example of Israel, and I think it's telling. He said there were no interests that could explain U.S. support for Israel beyond altruistic faith in a doughty little democracy. I'd say that ignores a raft of geopolitical, military and other strategic calculations, as well as domestic political pressure from American Jews and fundamentalist Christians. Yet Israel is at the centre of U.S. thinking about the world, in an amazing way, considering its size and heft. At the least, it provides a splendid justification for American delusions about the moral purity of its policies -- as Dennis illustrated.

I've had some mail from his listeners, all pointing out that he made mincemeat of me and some containing the (sounds to me) strain of a new, virulent anti-Canadianism. "WE HAVE MORE POWER AND HAVE USED IT LESS THAN ANY OTHER SUPER POWER IN THE WORLD. . . . I TRULY FEEL YOUR SHELTERED, ENVIOUS, OR STUPID. . . . I WISH WE WOULD SEAL OUR BOARDERS BOTH NORTH AND SOUTH. HOW ABOUT WILL TRADE YOU CLINTON AND STREISAND FOR A COUPLE OF CLEAR THINKERS. PLEASE NO ARTIST, ACTORS. . . . WE WOULD BE SAFE, YOU CAN SING CUMBAYA!!!!!!!" rsalutin@globeandmail.ca

I believe this is the Friedman piece he is talking about Thanks go to lavaroise for posting it.

"Defusing the Holy Bomb" by Thomas L. Friedman (NYT) New York Times ^ | 29/11/2002 | THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Posted on 11/29/2002 10:00 AM CST by lavaroise

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/27/opinion/27FRIE.html

Defusing the Holy Bomb By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

To: Leaders of the Muslim world From: President George W. Bush

Dear Sirs,

As you approach the end of Ramadan and we approach our Thanksgiving, I thought it would be a good time for me to share with you some concerns. Let me be blunt: I am increasingly worried that we are heading toward a civilizational war.

How so? Well, let me point out just a few news stories in recent days: Imam Samudra, the Indonesian Islamist accused of masterminding last month's Bali bombing - in which nearly 200 tourists were killed - reportedly said during his confession that it was a "holy bomb" that ripped apart that disco, and that it was aimed there because it was full of foreigners - i.e., non-Muslims. There is nothing "holy" about a bomb that kills 200 people just because they are foreigners.

Then I read about Bonnie Penner, a young U.S. missionary nurse at a prenatal clinic in Sidon, Lebanon, which provided care for needy Palestinians and Lebanese. She was shot three times in the face. A Palestinian security official told The A.P. that "the killing was the result of a hostile Muslim reaction in Sidon to the preaching . . . lessons the center was giving to Muslim youths." Do you know how much proselytizing Muslim groups do in America? A lot. We have no problem with that. That's who we are. Who are you? I have no idea whether this woman's clinic was involved in proselytizing Muslims, but I do know that she was a nurse, caring for Muslims, and she was shot for who she was.

Then there was Azmi Abu Hilayel, whose son Na'el strapped himself with dynamite and blew up an Israeli bus with school kids. Azmi was quoted as saying: "I thanked God when I heard that my son had died in an operation for the sake of God and the homeland." I can't believe that the God of Islam, a God of mercy and compassion, would bless killing anyone's kids. Believe me, I know Israeli soldiers have killed dozens of Palestinian children during the intifada. That is shameful. But I don't hear Israeli generals, parents or rabbis thanking God their sons could kill Muslim kids. Soldiers shooting kids is wrong. Suicide killing is wrong. There is no God that blesses either.

On top of all this, we just had the imam of a Paris mosque arrested for allegedly helping the airplane shoe-bomber. And we had two U.S. marines shot in Kuwait, a country we helped rescue from Saddam, and we saw one of our top aid officials in Jordan killed in his front yard for a similar "crime" - being an American in the Muslim world. Now you see why I ordered that young men from most Arab countries who are studying in America be fingerprinted and photographed by the I.N.S. I had no choice.

You say all this is happening because we support Israel. I know we need to do more to bring peace, but I don't think that nurse was shot, or that Bali bomb was made "holy," because we support Israel. I think it has to do with the rise within your midst of a deeply intolerant strain of Islam that is not simply a reaction to Israel, but is a response to your failing states, squandered oil wealth, broken ideologies (Nasserism) and generations of autocracy and illiteracy. Armed and angry, this harsh fundamentalism now seems to totally intimidate Muslim moderates.

But the values it propagates will bring ruin to you and conflict with us. As Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute wrote in National Review, "No faith will make rote memorization of ancient texts, suppression of critical inquiry and dissent, subjugation of women, and a servile deference to authority the recipe for anything other than civilizational decline."

The decent, but passive, Muslim center must go to war against this harsh fundamentalism. Yes, we have our intolerant bigots too. I just publicly distanced myself from those Christians who smear Islam with a broad brush. But our moderate majority and press regularly denounce them too. They are not dominating our society. We've had our civil war against intolerance. Now I'm urging you to have yours. Don't tell me you can't. Look at those courageous Iranian students who are now taking on the extreme fundamentalists within their own society - risking their lives to fight those who want to take Islam, and Iran, back to the Dark Ages. God bless them.

Friends, unless you have a war within your civilization, there is going to be a war between our civilizations. We're just one more 9/11 away from that. So let's dedicate this next year to fighting intolerance within so we can preserve our relations between.

Sincerely, G.W.B.

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