Posted on 05/19/2004 2:54:18 AM PDT by Theodore R.
What do we offer the world?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 19, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
"So, how do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?" asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory will be theirs as well."
Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world" was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the "Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison.
Indeed, the filmed orgies among U.S. military police outside the cells of Iraqi prisoners, the S&M humiliation of Muslim men, the sexual torment of their women raise a question. Exactly what are the "values" the West has to teach the Islamic world?
"This war ... is about – deeply about – sex," declaims neocon Charles Krauthammer. Militant Islam is "threatened by the West because of our twin doctrines of equality and sexual liberation."
But whose "twin doctrines" is Krauthammer talking about? The sexual liberation he calls our doctrine belongs to a '60s revolution that devout Christians, Jews and Muslims have been resisting for years.
What does Krauthammer mean by sexual liberation? The right of "tweeners" and teenage girls to dress and behave like Britney Spears? Their right to condoms in junior high? Their right to abortion without parental consent?
If conservatives reject the "equality" preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary?
In June 2002 at West Point, President Bush said, "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time and in every place."
But even John Kerry does not agree with George Bush on the morality of homosexual unions and stem-cell research. On such issues, conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats.
The president notwithstanding, Americans no longer agree on what is moral truth. For as someone said a few years back, there is a cultural war going on in this country – a religious war. It is about who we are, what we believe and what we stand for as a people.
What some of us view as the moral descent of a great and Godly republic into imperial decadence, neocons see as their big chance to rule the world.
In Georgia, recently, the president declared to great applause: "I can't tell you how proud I am of our commitment to values. ... That commitment to values is going to be an integral part of our foreign policy as we move forward. These aren't American values, these are universal values. Values that speak universal truths."
But what universal values is he talking about? If he intends to impose the values of MTV America on the Muslim world in the name of a "world democratic revolution," he will provoke and incite a war of civilizations America cannot win because Americans do not want to fight it. This may be the neocons' war. It is not our war.
When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish "The Satanic Verses" – a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?
When the president speaks of freedom, does he mean the First Amendment prohibition against our children reading the Bible and being taught the Ten Commandments in school?
If the president wishes to fight a moral crusade, he should know the enemy is inside the gates. The great moral and cultural threats to our civilization come not from outside America, but from within. We have met the enemy, and he is us. The war for the soul of America is not going to be lost or won in Fallujah.
Unfortunately, Pagan America of 2004 has far less to offer the world in cultural fare than did Christian America of 1954. Many of the movies, books, magazines, TV shows, videos and much of the music we export to the world are as poisonous as the narcotics the Royal Navy forced on the Chinese people in the Opium Wars.
A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of "American values."
My comment is true.
These are the definitions I found on Dictionary.com:
mor·al( P ) Pronunciation Key (môrl, mr-) adj. Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character: moral scrutiny; a moral quandary.
Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior: a moral lesson.
Conforming to standards of what is right or just in behavior; virtuous: a moral life.
Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong: a moral obligation.
Having psychological rather than physical or tangible effects: a moral victory; moral support.
Based on strong likelihood or firm conviction, rather than on the actual evidence: a moral certainty.morals
n : motivation based on ideas of right and wrong [syn: ethical motive, ethics, morality]
mo·ral·i·ty
( P ) Pronunciation Key (m-rl-t, mô-) n. pl. mo·ral·i·ties The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.
Virtuous conduct.
A rule or lesson in moral conduct.eth·ic
( P ) Pronunciation Key (thk) n. A set of principles of right conduct.
A theory or a system of moral values: “An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain” (Gregg Easterbrook).ethics
(used with a sing. verb)
The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.ethics
(used with a sing. or pl. verb) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession: medical ethics.
LOL - I was wondering when one of you would finally just check a damn dictionary!
Are you endorsing the fundamental libertarian axiom, do unto others unless they don't want you to? Are you endorsing the idea of "victimless crimes"?
The problem here doesn't lie with the Ten Commandments. Free expression including blasphemy may be tolerated in a political sense in order that greater societal vices may be minimized. But this is a prudential judgement. No one has an absolute right to blaspheme, lie, calumniate, scandalize, etc., but these things may be permitted in law ---or they may not.
Kids indulging in oral sex on school busses is not about kids being moral or not. Those who were raised with morals won't be doing this, those without morals will be engaging in this behavior regardless of a Brittney Spears video.
Morality is, and should be, taught at home.
The problems on the busses have to do with the willful lack of discipline that is evident in the school system. The first offenders should have been suspended or kicked off the bus immediately.
But if you think that forcing the girls to wear burkhas and undergo genital mutilation will create more moral children, then by all means, advocate standing with Islam to oppose Brittney Spears.
Actually, what convinced me of Buchanan's dark side was when he took up the Holocaust denier argument that diesel fumes could not have killed the Jews in WWII like the survivors claimed.
Here is that quote and a few more:
http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/buchanan.html
FAIR Report:
PATRICK BUCHANAN -- IN HIS OWN WORDS
February 26, 1996 Contact: Steven Rendall
In the flap over Larry Pratt and other unsavory characters associated
with the Patrick Buchanan campaign, journalists typically framed the
question: Is Buchanan linked to extremists and bigots? But there is a
more basic question journalists should ask: Is Patrick Buchanan himself
an extremist and bigot?
Here is a sampling of Buchanan's views:
ON AFRICAN-AMERICANS
On race relations in the late 1940s and early 1950s: "There were no
politics to polarize us then, to magnify every slight. The 'negroes' of
Washington had their public schools, restaurants, bars, movie houses,
playgrounds and churches; and we had ours." (Right from the Beginning,
Buchanan's 1988 autobiography, p. 131)
In a memo to President Nixon, Buchanan suggested that "integration of
blacks and whites -- but even more so, poor and well-to-do -- is less
likely to result in accommodation than it is in perpetual friction, as the
incapable are placed consciously by government side by side with the
capable." (Washington Post, 1/5/92)
In a column sympathetic to ex-Klansman David Duke, Buchanan chided
the Republican Party for overreacting to Duke and his Nazi "costume": "Take
a hard look at Duke's portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not
in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against
white folks." (syndicated column, 2/25/89)
ON JEWS:
Buchanan referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli-occupied territory."
(St. Louis Post Dispatch, 10/20/90)
During the Gulf crisis: "There are only two groups that are beating
the drums for war in the Middle East -- the Israeli defense ministry and
its 'amen corner' in the United States." ("McLaughlin Group," 8/26/90)
In a 1977 column, Buchanan said that despite Hitler's anti-Semitic and
genocidal tendencies, he was "an individual of great courage...Hitler's
success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an
intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness
masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood
in his path." (The Guardian, 1/14/92)
Writing of "group fantasies of martyrdom," Buchanan challenged the
historical record that thousands of Jews were gassed to death by diesel
exhaust at Treblinka: "Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide
to kill anybody." (New Republic, 10/22/90) Buchanan's columns have run in
the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight, the German-American National PAC newsletter
and other publications that claim Nazi death camps are a Zionist
concoction.
Buchanan called for closing the U.S. Justice Department's Office of
Special Investigations, which prosecuted Nazi war criminals, because it was
"running down 70-year-old camp guards." (New York Times, 4/21/87)
Buchanan was vehement in pushing President Reagan -- despite protests
-- to visit Germany's Bitburg cemetery, where Nazi SS troops were buried.
At a White House meeting, Buchanan reportedly reminded Jewish leaders that
they were "Americans first" -- and repeatedly scrawled the phrase
"Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews" in his notebook. Buchanan was
credited with crafting Ronald Reagan's line that the SS troops buried at
Bitburg were "victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration
camps." (New York Times, 5/16/85; New Republic, 1/22/96)
After Cardinal O'Connor criticized anti-Semitism during the
controversy over construction of a convent near Auschwitz, Buchanan wrote:
"If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate
as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O'Connor of
New York seeks to soothe the always irate Elie Wiesel by reassuring him
'there are many Catholics who are anti-Semitic'...he speaks for himself. Be
not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests
ready to assume the role of defender of the faith." (New Republic,
10/22/90)
If not appealing to the more moderate islamites to help end the reign of terror, then what is the answer? Certainly trying to convert moderate islamites (whose ethics are by far more closer to that of conservatives than they are to radical islam or America's liberalists) would only enrage and alienate them. By doing so, we've now two enemies instead of one.
If we claim to have a moral superiority - which some have said Christianity has over radical Islam, then our collective goals better bear testament of that claim, meaning we have no choice but to disavow what America is becoming to represent with regards to several issues of late, for those moderate islamites may see an evil in homosexual marriage or abortion on demand at par with the murder of innocents.
Buchanan is so irrelevant. Read the first few paragraphs to see if he might actually have something worth reading for once. Nothing's changed.
Morality should be taught at home, but it is naive to the extreme to think that a childs morality will not be affected by what is presented to them as normal by the popular culture. It is also naive to think that a parent can shelter their children from that culture without locking them in a box.
I agree sexual morality has declined...I agree that in the name of freedom , Court decisions, ACLU have helped bring immorality in the movies, TV, lyrics. The internet spreads pornography,etc which promotes acceptance by our youth. We have become all forgiving.
There has to be a way to discuss this without accepting his "stand with Islam" remark...Pat's isolationism is not my cup of tea. His statement that neocons want to take over the world is outrageous. He has betrayed his party and hijacked another in the past and lost my admiration...His attacks against Israel are troubling.
I don't disagree with most of your post. I am simply saying that Pat Buchanan is the wrong spokesman for you to use.
In his September 1993 speech to the Christian Coalition, Buchanan declared:
"Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free."
I guess that the actions of a few guard in Iraq have since changed Pat Buchanan's view of whose culture is superior.
I'm not a great fan of Buchanan, either, though I think he is a worthy (and amusing) foil to the self-satisfied, consumer-tested, Beltway-approved "conservatism" of the Republican establishment.
As for isolationsim, I'm beginning to think that George Washington really was our greatest president and that his advice could have prevented a great many troubles. Why do we need to become so entangled in other peoples' tribal wars? I'll take isolationism over Wilsonian triumphalism any day.
Nice line.
Nice line.
OK, I tend to agree, but it seems our new found goal in Iraq is to make them a shinning pillar of democracy. There seems to be a conflict here.
We have had war declared on us. We are cleaning up a mess we left after 91...hopefully we will show a relatively just nation can exist in the ME.
We cannot hide here and ignore it. I have spoken more broadly to this in previous posts on this thread.
I share your hope.
But does it justify blowing the heads off belonging to the third party? There were very few Iraqis (ZERO) among WTC bombers.
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