Posted on 07/24/2005 1:27:52 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
You’d probably think there’s no connection between the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “South Pacific” in 1949 and the murdering Muslims of the 21st century. If you thought that, you’d be wrong. That musical explains these events.
The most obscure song from that musical is, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.” It’s low popularity is probably due to its dark subject, the injection of prejudice into the minds of children.
Here are two of its verses, which make the point:
You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught
I’ve read translations of lessons taught in Islamic schools in Pakistan, England, Indonesia, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, and in many of the United Nations refugee camps around the world. Children are taught that Jews especially, but infidels in general, are subhuman at worst, expendable lesser humans at most. They are taught it is their “moral” duty to dominate such other people, and to kill them as necessary.
Is this the first time in human history that adults deliberately chose to pour intellectual poison into young minds, year after year, and generation after generation? The Hitler Youth and the Nazi schools taught such hatred, but they survived only one generation. The Young Communist League and the Soviet schools lasted for three generations. Miraculously, when the Soviet Union fell, most citizens somehow had learned the opposite of the prejudices they’d been taught.
For those who want to see pictures of this process, evidence of the success of teaching young children to become suicidal murderers, just Google images for “children” and “bombers.” You will see your choice of dozens of demonstration where adults and parents have dressed children in make-believe suicide belts. The children are showing off their “toys” with pleasure. This is visual evidence of what is going on in the schools. You can also find translated quotations from the schools and the mosques, if you work at it.
So, when you read superficial comments from so-called experts about the “root causes” of the suicide bombers, you will know that most of what you read is false. The 3,000 murders in the US on 9/11 were not caused by the invasion of Iraq, because we didn’t invade Iraq until after that date. But neither were the bombings in England this month caused by the invasion of Iraq.
The terrorists have a steady pool of young men, and some women, who’ve been taught all their lives that murdering other human beings and committing suicide are morally good acts. They have been carefully taught.
An Associated Press article filed from England on 16 July, demonstrates this fact. "You could see how it could turn someone to raw hate," said Ali, recalling his brush last year with the hard-edged marketing of extremism at an Islamic bookstore operated by his brother-in-law. "It even started working on me. Then I said to myself, `Get out. This stuff is poison.'"
The problem is growing. When Pakistan became independent in 1947 it had only 137 madrassahs. Government sources put today's figure at 13,000, with enrolment close to 1.7 million.
Those vicious lessons have been reinforced in these young people by supposed moral leaders in their sermons, preaching the same doctrine to adults. There is a vast gulf between what representatives of some Islamic nations say in English to the US diplomats and to us on TV, and what they say to themselves in their institutions that breed bigotry and murder.
This is the major reasons the low-grade World War IV, which we’re now in, will not tail off and end for up to a generation. Until all of these nations are persuaded by common sense, or force, to shut down their factories for producing murderers, the source of new murderers will remain. And it will also remain in some respects for up to thirty years after the factories close because those minds are already poisoned.
Leadership in those nations can play a decisive, positive role, like the Emperor of Japan did after World War II. He told his people they had a moral duty to cease fighting and to acquiesce to the changes under General MacArthur. But leadership like that is too much to ask. Merely shutting down the murder factories will, in time, be enough.
About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
John / Billybob
How long did we hate the Germans after WWII? My mother, of German ancestry, married my father, of English ancestry, in 1953. My mother wasn't accepted into my father's family for at least 10 years.
That might have more to do with then-prevailing Anglo-American prejudices than overall American sentiments. They weren't very friendly to the Irish either.
Another home run John. Thanks!
As an aside, may I say that this subject has long been of interest to me. If I knew how to pitch such a project, I would love to do a PBS-type documentary covering all the ways in which the elites of Hollywood and New York incorporated subtle (and not so subtle) plot devices into the entertainments of that time to promote the an anti-prejudice and pro-civil-rights message. Part of this dynamic was purely commercial; there is no doubt that music arising from African-America culture was very popular among teenagers and young adults of the post-WWII generation; this gave rise to the whole Rock-and-Roll phenomonon (nothing novel about that insight, I know).
Anyway, even with that, I think one of the things that made the shows of Rogers and Hammerstein so timeless was that they expressed fundamental truths of human nature. The song you reference is one example of that.
(steely)
A glaring contrast between the Nazi and USSR regimes cited and the madrasses generating the terrorist recruits: during the darkest days of Hitler or the Soviets there were brave parents willing to pass on in secret to their children the truth those children would never see in a public school or library. At literal risk of their lives a resistance was kept alive against the day they might effectively rise up.
We keep being told the terrorists are a tiny minority within this "religion of peace", but even in countries where the right to speak is protected, public protest of the militant voice of Islam is rare from the Islamic community and its leaders.
Until I see evidence to the contrary, I will call the "religion of peace" cover a sham, an ineffective non-entity. This alledgedly tiny minority of terorism cannot operate without support, safe haven and at least silence, if not overt cover from a much wider spectrum of the religion of peace.
They will like us when we win! We will not win soon or easily, but we absolutely must. They will not accept surrender. We can come home tomorrow and put Saddam back on his throne and it will only encourage these barbarians. Their goal is the utter destruction of the West, nothing less wil do. Count me in with Cal Thomas, I want to kill them before they kill me.
I suspect the CIA does. But either way, does that justify killing innocent women and children in cities thoughout the Middle East just because they have historical religious sites?
Interestingly, Nellie is able to overcome her problem and goes back for Emile, because after all, he's a Frechman and that's okay (at least, it was then). The Lt. falls in love with Liat and cannot live without her and winds up not living with her, either. A point is a point and the point was made, but money is money and R&H knew their audience. Having a US Naval officer marry a Polynesian would not have gone over with American audiences at the time. (Fooling around with her, sure, all the GIs were doing it, weren't they?)
TS
(that last line was a joke)
Merely shutting down the murder factories will, in time, be enough.
As 9/11 or London (or Madrid, or Sharm el-Sheik for that matter) didn't originate from our late invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam, neither did it originate with the formation of the nation of Israel. The bloody origins go back a lot further than the Madrassahs phenomenon, of course. They go back to the Prophet Mohammad himself, his examples and teachings, and those adherents who immediately followed him which all set the bloody pattern for Islam. In other words, the cancer dates back over 1300 years and has never been successfully exorcised despite whatever has been tried against it.
So, the primary malignancy is Islam itself, which has proved itself quite capable of mountains of atrocities piled upon atrocities over the centuries - not dependent on any particular set of individual actors or political situations.
I doubt the long term situation will change by closing down the "murder factories" (as indeed they are, and their closing down will be a vast, if temporary, improvement). The lasting change can only come when these people have a complete change of heart, not a costume change of Islamic clothes for other Islamic garments.
Quite frankly, I think Christianity is the only power capable of doing that job effectively to the deep extent required. After all, one is not here addressing a mere nation state, emperor, race, ethnicity or even Axis of Evil. What is involved at bottom is a seamless and millenium-long world-view of immense culture and societal power which has permanently changed vast regions of the globe and completely erased previously thriving cultures.
To expand the theme further, this is a spiritual as well as a temporal war - perhaps primarily spiritual. Therefore, the cure must also be spiritual (to loosely quote Douglas MacArthur). The Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany and even the Soviet Union were regional, late-blooming pikers compared to Islam.
We can aid the necessary change by promoting personal, civil and religious freedoms within these miserable, bound countries - such as we are attempting to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we cannot force it to happen. It goes down deep to the very core cultural and theological beliefs of large societies and individuals who comprise in excess of a quarter of the world's population. This is not something simply grafted or veneered on top of a single society. But the cosmic change will not happen if Islam is left alone on it's own to fester along in it's own malignant soup of theology, precedent and Sharia Law - even without the "murder factories". As you indicate, it will require strong temporal support on our part and it is not a quick fix. It will not be done alone with armies.
In the end, IMHO, only the intercession of the Holy Spirit in uncounted legions of lives of current Muslims and their offspring will make the necessary change to make it work and deliver us all from the scourge of this horror. That is ultimately beyond our immediate control, but not beyond our hopes and prayers aided by our long-term intelligent temporal actions.
It will take a lot more years than you and I have, Congressman, and certainly more power and wisdom than can be packed into 750 words. ;>)
The problem with the lyrics is that they are just not true. I think people have a natural tendency to dislike and even hate groups of people who are noticeably different, especially when they have had bad experiences with members of those groups.
I think it is much more accurate to say that children need to be taught not to hate. Anybody who has ever watched a playground full of children will quickly spot the outcasts and scapegoats. Nobody had to teach those children to turn on those who didn't fit in.
According to Google, his name was Lt. Joseph Cable.
Congressman Billybob,
I didn't mean to dismiss your thesis. I just think that the Islamic equivalent of Rogers and Hammerstein would meet an ugly fate before their voice was heard.
(steely)
All I can say is, a lot of Googling will bring up for you what I saw over the months. I guarantee it is there, however.
John / Billybob
ISLAMIC MADRASSA IN NORTH AMERICA
http://www.as-sidq.org/school.html
http://www.madania.org/
“In order to achieve the right understanding of Islam, the pass code to all joy, educational gardens are needed where the seeds of today have a chance to blossom into the flowers of tomorrow . It is no secret that knowledge is the first step towards human development (sic).”
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