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."
America is NOT a Christian Nation.
Has no national religion.
And it will be kept that way.
If it's against islamics...
absolutely.
She did not go far enough to humiliate the prisoners, in my opinion.
I would stand with and defend the rights of a gay, drug using American car theif, against an Islamist of any kind, any day.
I guess nowadays, you are what's considered a proud American.
God help us.
You don't speak for PJB, or do you ?
So then, you would side with an islamist head chopper, against a us military person. and she is yet unconvicted.
disgusting.
Mr., if Afghanistan = Iraq in your lexicon, we have nothing to discuss.
I don't speak for PJB
But I've read about all his material and never found him endorsing Hitler's politics, policies, or holocaust.
Still want to be the aggressive, Gibson- and PJB-hater, eh?
Stuff it, sonny.
I want the truth, Ma'am. I don't trust PJB at all. He is poison. I wish he weren't. He has squandered his talent and is dangerous because he has Israel in his crosshairs. It is no accident he admires Hitler.
It is no accident he admires Hitler.
Why doesn't it?
Nope.
"AP made a statement of fact. The Constitution certainly does not proscribe religion. This country's population is majority Protestant, by far. And the Founders were the same."
Do you have reading comprehension problems? Well, perhaps I shouldn't ask, as you seem not to notice the anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism of your Leader, Patsy.
I never said that the Constitution proscribes religion. It DOES, however, proscribe an establishment of religion, i.e., a "religion of the state", or an "official" religion.
With that as a beginning, it just does not matter what religion the Founders, or even a majority of Americans are...it STILL nonetheless cannot be incorporated into law.
When you loudly proclaim America to be a "Christian Nation", that is what you are fantasizing, and it is what most people understand you to mean. One MORE reason why Pat and his marks (and, for that matter, such other lunatics such as Pat Robertson) cannot get enough votes to wipe their noses with.
Sane people understand that using phrases such as that, and twisting the meaning of the First Amendment, will do nothing but drive away and offend people of other religions, and, of course, those who choose not to belong to any religion, as is their right.
It (The "Christian Nation") IS a myth...as far as the Constitution goes. It is based upon the supposed religious convictions of the Founders, which themselves are under disagreement, not by anything that they actually wrote into our Founding Documents. The First, in fact, makes it clear that establishing ANY religion as "America's" was the OPPOSITE of what they intended.
Poor try at spinning, there, if it indeed was not a result of a poor reading.
Ping to #592.
Some people can find fault with just about anything, especially if other find it to be enjoyable.
I've seen many here wax wroth about the "garbage" in movies and on TV. Without doubt, exploitation, violence, sex, and other nastier stuff can be found. However, the majority of movies and TV, due to the irresistable pull of the marketplace, do not feature these things, at least as the majority of viewers understands them. The list posted above proves this.
Furthermore, the so-called "garbage" (one man's garbage, BTW, is another's entertainment. I happen to have a weakness for schlocky horror films, for example) is usually quite clearly sold and advertised for what it is, and is shown in venues in which it is seperate from the mainstream fare. Ultimately, of course, no one is forced to watch it, and it is the individual's responsibility to learn what it is he or his children want to watch that evening.
Once again, the freedom of the American marketplace will produce things that someone, somewhere, will dislike. That's no reason at all to ban it. In fact, out of the wild, insane mishmash comes some of the best entertainment available in the world.
There were many people offended by The Passion Of The Christ. Most FReepers expressed the view that they should "just get over it". What's good for the goose, and all that. Movies like Passion and on the other end of the spectrum, such films as Friday the Thirteenth all came from the same source...the LIBERTY to experiment, to seek financial rewards, and to TRY. Neither would have been possible without that Liberty.
Some religious socialists, posing as "moral conservatives" are driven insane by the thought, that somewhere, in some way, folks might be indulging themselves in some form of pleasure or entertainment..
Jesus could turn the water into wine at the local bar... and they would turn their "self righteous" noses up to him... "this man is a friend of publicans and drunks!"
I tire of the relgious-moral police, no matter where they show up.
I think Pat sounds more and more like Hitler.
I just thought that someone should repost Pat's short essay, to put the thread back on the subject:
"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."
Agree with Pat, or disagree with Pat. But he and we deserve higher standards of discourse, than that shown by would be smear artists, who refuse to even consider his argument, but spread half-baked and unsupportable accusations against the man. Both Pat and this forum deserve better treatment than some have given in this thread.
Long Cut, you were simply the last on the thread. I am not suggesting that you are refusing to rationally discuss your ideas. But probably 200 or so of the above responses are beneath contempt. It has been a struggle for me not to take several posters apart; but I did not want to distract attention from the important point that Pat was making.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Hitler was the leading exponent, in his time, of the idea of using armed force to impose your social values on other peoples. Pat is the exact opposite.
In this particular essay, he is assailing the idea that certain crack-pots--or what else can we call them--want to jeopardize the American future, by antagonizing a large slice of humanity, by trying to foist the absurd values of American Feminists on them. If you think the individuals whom Pat mentions in the above essay can be defended, by all means defend them. But suggesting that a patriotic American Conservative is "Hitlarian," does not advance either civil discourse, nor afford any reason whatsoever why the rest of us should not applaud Pat's essay.
He hates what his country is, enough to endorse our enemies. How is that ONE WHIT different than the Leftists at ANSWER, or indeed our enemies themselves?
ANSWER, no doubt, would ALSO claim that they "really" want what is "best" for America, which of course is their OWN vision of it, much like Pat.
B. Pat is not saying that we should stand with Islam, except against the Feminist agenda, which would corrupt all human societies.
Read the essay, and put the remark that you are referring to in context.
Pat's constantly being defended, it seems, on the basis of "context". Looks to me like his defenders and marks saying, "don't believe what you read, here's what he REALLY meant...".
I got it just fine.
Pat has expressed anti-American views on a par with ANSWER and Michael Moore. His fans, however, refuse to see that and continue with the defense, which only gets weaker and weaker.
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