Posted on 04/05/2006 12:21:18 AM PDT by goldstategop
The American people got shafted in 2000 and 2004 with some rotten political choices.
In fact, the American people get shafted with rotten political choices all the time – choices called Democrats and Republicans.
There are some people gearing up to ensure that your choices in 2008 are just as rotten as they have been since about 1988.
We all know who the leading Democratic candidate for president is – Hillary Clinton.
But do you know who the leading Republican candidate is as of this moment?
By some reckonings, it is Rudy Giuliani.
No, the smart money has long suggested that Giuliani is incapable of winning the Republican nomination for the presidency because of his hideous positions on homosexuality and abortion. But it appears Giuliani is aware of this weakness and is attempting to hoodwink American evangelicals the way Bill Clinton did.
As Andrew Sullivan put it, "If Rudy is talking Jesus, he's going to run."
And, boy, is he ever talking the talk.
Now, before I tell you what he said, and to whom he said it, let me first introduce to you the real Rudy Giuliani.
Is America really ready for a drag-queen president?
Can America survive another obnoxious phony baloney masquerading as one thing and governing as another?
Will Republicans be fooled again and nominate a candidate who favors unrestricted abortion on demand?
Should we expect the Grand Old Party to become the Gay Old Party in 2008 and put its stamp of approval on a guy 100 percent committed to the homosexual activist agenda?
No that photo you're seeing has not been retouched. It really is Rudy Giuliani made up in a blond wig and pink dress in a spoof of "Victor-Victoria" for the 1997 Inner Circle dinner. He followed that up with more cross-dressing antics on "Saturday Night Live." Then in 2001, he agreed to appear in drag in an episode of "Queer As Folk."
Rudy Guiliani In Drag
Is it possible that Giuliani could survive all this to become the Republican nominee for the presidency in 2008?
He's going to try. And his strategy for overcoming his past is to reach out to Christians – pretending, quite frankly, that he is one.
Back in January, Giuliani was invited to speak to the Global Pastors Network in Orlando – an evangelical group determined to establish 5 million new churches around the world in the next decade to fulfill the Great Commission.
Suddenly, before this audience, Giuliani was transformed into a man of faith.
Asked if he was running for president, he said: "Only God knows. I'll know better in a year whether I can fully commit to that process." Notice he said "fully commit," which suggests he is already partially committed.
The pastors unwisely said they'd pray for him. I hope they meant that they would pray for his conversion, pray that he would renounce his sins, pray that he would not run for president, pray that he would not win. But I have no such confidence in foolish evangelicals who are too easily seduced by worldly power politics.
Giuliani's response: "I appreciate you. I can tell you from my heart how much I appreciate what you are doing: saving people, telling them about Jesus Christ and bringing them to God."
Excuse me, shouldn't a man with Giuliani's record be kicked out of the church? Again, I'm all for praying for his salvation, but does anyone really believe Giuliani is a sincere follower of Jesus Christ? Shame on any professing Christian who doesn't have sufficient discernment to see through this charade.
Guess what, folks: If you fall for this self-serving hokum, you will have only yourself to blame for your poor political choices in 2008.
If you think that the culture of Manhattan is anything recognizably American, perhaps you should spend some time across the Hudson. You see, there are whole swathes of America where people go to church regularly, where people can be friendly to strangers without being hustled, where people can even forget to lock their car and still find it there when they get back.
Once upon a time New York was dominated by Catholic culture. That time is no more. Now in NY politics sodomites are more important than Catholics. This is because as families have bailed depraved people from the clean parts of the country congregated in the cities. That is why they are now cesspools of cultural liberalism. Approval of sodomy can only exist in a godless, barbarian environment. Look at the last election. It isn't about red states vs blue states. Kerry carried every major city while Bush carried everything else. Giuliani may be what passes for conservatism among the pagan. But that isn't good enough.
France would never have entered the revolutionary war unless the rebels destroyed an entire British army at Saratoga. The British lost because a regular European army with its huge supply train could not maneuver quickly through the dense forests of New York State. If they had had Tory light infantry fanning out ahead of them they would have done better.
Where your thinking is EXTREMELY flawed is your total failure to understand the limitations of lace warfare. Because an 18th century army was a uniformed maximum security prison, soldiers could not be allowed beyond the sight of their officers. Given half a chance they would desert and many redcoats and Hessians did. So pursuit did not exist then. That is why a defeated army always got away in one piece (unless it was surrounded in the middle of a forest). Pursuit is what turns a defeated army into a panic stricken mob. Napoleonic warfare had pursuit which is why after a Napoleonic victory his enemies had no army left.
After rebel defeats, the rebel army always got away in one piece. The British could not crush Washington like a bug because that just plain isn't how 18th century aristocratic armies worked. Even after Frederick's victories the Austrians or Russians retired in order. There were no panic stricken routs.
Of course the Muslims can use the fruits of modernization withou modernizing themselves. That is exactly what they want. The violent hostility of Muslim men to the emancipation of women blocks any possiblity of cultural modernization in the Islamic world or even among Muslim populations in the developed world.
Where you fail and fail miserably is your assumption that Muslims perceive this as a problem. Why do you think al-Qaeda loved Taliban Afghanistan so much ? Because the very poverty and backwardness of the country was to them a paradise of pristine virtue, uncontaminated by the 'modernity' of the Persian Gulf. They don't want prosperity and modernity. They want a pure world. Why do you think we can change that ? Do you think we can produce a 'gender neutral, tolerant, inclusive' Koran ?
"If you think that the culture of Manhattan is anything recognizably American, perhaps you should spend some time across the Hudson. You see, there are whole swathes of America where people go to church regularly, where people can be friendly to strangers without being hustled, where people can even forget to lock their car and still find it there when they get back. "
Yes, thank you. I never would have known despite being born and raised in Brooklyn, and despite the fact that I have lived in North Carolina, Florida and Idaho (amongst other places), that such places ever existed. I'm just a victim of my own self-induced myopic belief that the world begins and ends with Manhattan, right? That, incidentally, is the "liberal" view of the Manhattanite, who (get this!), is very often (60% or more) NOT EVEN A NATIVE NEW YORKER!
New York, therefore, is not so much a den of "sodomites" and "liberal, godless enviornment" as much as it is a place where all the people you hounded out of Dogpatch or wherever it is you come from, came to escape your insanity. Oh, and by the way, without them (the REAL NY'ers and the refugees from elsewhere), places like Indianapolis, Des Moines or Texarkana would be little more than Tblisi, Addis Abbaba or Kashmir (i.e Third-world sh*tholes), only with a different accent.
The people of this city generate enough economic activity in one day to provide every family in Little Rock or Bismark with a new outhouse and a still, anmd still have enough left over to make sure y'all got a new copy of the Book of Common Prayer.
Bet you feel really bad about living off the sweat of the "pagan sodomites" (in caseyou hadn't heard, NY state, for example, pays out far more in federal taxes then it ever seems ot get back. Hope you like them hospitals in East Buttf*ck, Miss. that we paid for), but like a lot of people in your condition (i.e., severely strained mental state), your politics and religion start and end with your own wallet. You don't mind taking from us, just as long as you have the right to treat us like dogmess on your shoes, right?
How fabulously Christian and American of you.
Oh, and you're STILL wrong about Washington.
"Of course the Muslims can use the fruits of modernization withou modernizing themselves. That is exactly what they want..."
Can never happen. Once you begin to improve the lot of the general mass of people materially, they begin to demand political rights, primarily to protect their newly-acquired wealth. Especially from the government. The redistibution of oil wealth currently practiced in the Middle East is NOT intended to improve the general lifestyle or material well-being of the average citizen; it is intended to bribe them into a state of complacency before they get the idea that they could have political rights.
"The violent hostility of Muslim men to the emancipation of women blocks any possiblity of cultural modernization in the Islamic world or even among Muslim populations in the developed world."
The violent hostility of Muslim men towards women has more to do with desert culture than it does Islam. In desert culture, men need to know with as much certainklty as possible that the children they are raising are, in fact, theirs. Paternity is not always easy to prove, but maternity is. And if you keep your women out of sight, herded like cattle and beat into submission, you can always be assured that any offspring brought into your resource-poor world (i.e. the desert) are in fact yours.
The wrapping up of women in burlap sacks, serves two purposes, one practical and the other superstitious. Covering a woman's face and head so that another man cannot get a sense of what she looks like (and thus, be tempted to steal your woman from you), is the practical aspect.
Covering them up from head to toe is a result of the belief (which is also stated in the Bible! Go figure!) that the Angels could be tempted by female beauty, and thus lured to earth, be sure to work their havoc amongst mankind. The Bible says they did at least once, and it's a recurrent theme in the history of all Middle Eastern religions (even the one's pre-Islam and Christianity).
As for the second part of your notion: there is no "developed" Muslim world. There is merely a world populated by Muslims where WESTERNERS have built the infrastructure and provide the consumer goods that transmit the appearance of modernity. You will find, however, in some places (such as Egypt, Iran, the UAE, for example) that there were the beginnings of secular societies which were quickly extinguished by the rise of Khomeini and his ideological offshoots. But again, these were societies that LOOKED Western, but had not fully accepted Western idealogy and methods of thinking.
There is a big difference between an Iranian woman in Tehran wearing a mini skirt in 1976, and one wearing similar garb in the streets of Miami circa 2006. One is a copy of a western style that may not be fully understood (in terms of where it came from, it's history, etc), and one is the result of a mindset of freedom divorced from religious sanction where such things are not alien or shocking.
"Why do you think al-Qaeda loved Taliban Afghanistan so much ?"
Because they followed the dictates of Khomeini who stressed that embracing Western ways, despite the advantages, was not the way to true salvation or true progress. You make the mistake of believing the remark about "the Great Satan" is intended to paint us as evil. It isn't. Satan as the embodiment of evil is a CHRISTIAN invention; in Islam, he's a slippery character whose purpose is to deceive, not capture and evour souls.
Afghanistan represented the best possible opportunity to build a Khomeini-like fundamentalist state: it had no government, it had no semblence of modern, western culture or industry (except weapons, but that's okay), and it had a desperate population that had tried and failed at monarchy, democracy and communism. It was ripe for the picking by the Taliban or the Boy Scouts. The Taliban just got there first.
"Because the very poverty and backwardness of the country was to them a paradise of pristine virtue, uncontaminated by the 'modernity' of the Persian Gulf. They don't want prosperity and modernity."
Sure. And Usama Bin Laden left his billions at home in Saudi, under the mattress, not to fund the Taliban and his Al'Queada buddies, or to build hiumself up as the Middle Eastern Doctor No. Guess again. Just like many a Conservative Christian in this country, Usama's "fundamentalism" is also tempered by his pocketbook.
Never believe, for a second, that money does not intrude upon the spiritual. It ALWAYS does. Do not believe for a second that if given the choice between living his life anonymously as a wealthy playboy with hot and cold runing blondes, that Usama wouldn't take it. Why, in fact, that's what he was doing before he found his "political" calling, wasn't he?
Why, in that way, I guess we could compare Usama, the penitent defender of Islam, in much the same way we might think about a former alchoholic that walked in to speak to Pastor Bob; redemption in the church is cheaper than a psychiatrist or a 12-step program, but is just as psychologically satisfying. And the mopre austere and severe the redemption, the better.
They don't want modernity and prosperity? Are you mad? Why wouldn't anyone want a society that provides them with things like rights, education for their children, clean running water, hospitals, Wal-Mart, dentistry, open-heart surgery, newspapers, television, computers, air conditioning, roads, police forces, fire departments, Led Zepplin, delivery Pizza and Doritos? They very much want what we have in the West; they just don't want it to the same extent that we have it (i.e with the baggage attached) and are not sure how to square it with their culture and religion. In the end, the solution is to chuck the culture and send the religion to the back seat, just like in the West.
"They want a pure world. Why do you think we can change that ? Do you think we can produce a 'gender neutral, tolerant, inclusive' Koran ?"
One reason and one reason only: There is a yawning difference between the Judeo/Christian world and Islam. In our world view, there is something to look forward to. One day the Messiah will come (or comae again, depending on your faith) and set the world aright. It might be messy, it might be violent, but in the end, all will be well. It behooves us as Christians or Jews to ensure that the world is adequately prepared for this event to the bezt of our ability. In other words, we always strive to make this a better world, and in the efforts, hope to prove our worthiness to God.
In Islam, the ultimate, most sacred event has already happened: Mohammed has ascended into Heaven. There is nothing to look forward to. There is literally nothing left except the fufillment of prophecy, as recorded in the Koran, and that's all about death and suffering and icky things like that. There is no hope of redemption for mankind, no assurances that salvation can be yours through your own efforts. God has ordained that the world will be like this, and mankind canot argue with God (or at least his church).
Well, Western civilization is chock full of folks who proved that notion wrong: Gallileo, Prince Henry, Paracelsus, Mercator, Columbus, and a host of others. They demonstrated in the face of often deadly Creligious persecution that the world was a great big mystery that mankind could discern, could manipulate, and in the Newtonian sense, in the discernment and manipulation, understand God while simultaneously helping mankind.
THAT is why I believe Middle Eastern culture can be reformed; because there is a precedent.
So, you slander and hate Jews like the Islamics do... figures...
Who got slandered? And P.S., my paternal grandmother was Jewish.
You make the mistake of saying, in effect, that Roman tyranny was better than Islamic tyranny. Tyranny, even tyranny with benefits, is still tyranny. How you move from that faulty original premise to your final destination of "you hate the Jews", is beyond me.
In the Roman world, the Jews, and any other non-Roman subject peoples, existed strictly for the purposes of supplying Rome with what it needed to prop the state up: food, wealth, and soldiers. That some non-Romans could in fact BECOME Roman under law, due to political manuevering or through service to the Empire, does not change this fact.
If you are attempting, through a twisting of words or premises, to insinuate that I believe the existance of Israel to be the "imposition of foreign rule by military force and terror", and therefore deny the right of Israel to exist (and thus, "I hate the Jews") you are sadly mistaken: Israel, as a state, is a 5,000+ year old premise, with a history,a religion and a culture to back it up.
Islam, on the other hand, is neither a religion or a state, but is system of total control over it's followers that would have made the KGB jealous. It exists to justify the basest instincts inherant in human nature, and as a pretext for the conquest of the Arabian peninsula by Mohammed. There is a HUGE difference.
Francis, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Your misunderstanding of the Islamic world is incredible. In one breadth you concede that Islam is a total belief system that allows no room for rationality (medieval Christendom had Aristotle) and in the other you think it can be modernized like Germany or Japan. Maybe your understanding wouldn't be as primitive if you reflected on the reason why Communism and Socialism of the secular European variety have failed to make any headway in the Muslim world.
Islam never had a secular intelligentsia. Renaissance humanism created a proto intelligentsia in Europe. Nothing of the sort ever occured in the Muslim world. That is why whenever Islam and marxism have clashed the result has always been lots of dead communists. As a belief system it admits no equality with any other. There is no sphere of life beyond its control. That is why predictions of modernizing it are so silly.
And if the state oil monopoly is the source of all wealth, the idea of people demanding political rights to protect 'their' newly acquired wealth is ridiculous. It's not 'their' wealth. It's the state's wealth. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Desert ? How utterly ridiculous. When Muslims move to Europe (i.e., the developed world) their first act is to create enclaves in which the writ of the law no longer runs. The police learn to stay out. A very important reason behind this is so they can impose shariah on Muslim women without them having any legal recourse. Muslim women who try to stand up to their families are dealt with by 'honor killings' in the developed world to which the police have a 'hands off' attitude. Only by keeping the modern world out can Muslim men in Europe retain that kind of control over Muslim women.
Your 'we can transform them' is no less delusional than the leftists 'with education and a Marshall Plan for the Middle East we can transform them'. Both are based on a common secularist inability to take religion seriously. Both are the products of people who can understand no motivations higher than comfort and security. Both are the solutions of people who like to believe that everyone is as corrupt as they are. That everyone has his price. There isn't enough money in the world to buy religious fanatics. Osama bin Laden walked away from wealth and comfort to live in caves in Afghanistan. The Taliban fought against drug trafficking because they didn't want Mammon corrupting their paradise of perfect virtue. Al Qaeda loved Afghanistan because it was as close to 7th century Arabia as they had ever seen.
Your comprehension of Washington is similarly idiotic. British naval supremacy meant that Britain would always have the strategic initiative. Until the arrival of the French navy, British armies could land at will anywhere on the American coast. There was never anything Washington could do about that. Trying to hold an island against an enemy with naval superiority risks seeing your army trapped and destroyed. That is why Washington was wise to refuse to committ himself to holding New York at all costs. The point was not to be trapped on the wrong side of the Hudson.
Then you should be ashamed of yourself to insinuate the Jews are idolators for praying to Yahweh at the wailing wall...
(re: your original assertion that "Jews don't worship a black rock in the middle of the desert" is essentially wrong)
The fact is Jews do not worship a black rock in the desert and we are not at war with Jews. We are at war with Islam... and it cannot exist without that black idol they pray to every day. If it is gone, it will prove to them and to the world their pagan idol is not omnipotent.
__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--
"Your misunderstanding of the Islamic world is incredible. In one breadth you concede that Islam is a total belief system that allows no room for rationality (medieval Christendom had Aristotle) and in the other you think it can be modernized like Germany or Japan. Maybe your understanding wouldn't be as primitive if you reflected on the reason why Communism and Socialism of the secular European variety have failed to make any headway in the Muslim world."
Nope. Only requires one person, aty the right time, to ask the right question: Why? Revolutions (of all sorts) always begin with "Why?". You neglect the fact that millions of Islamic faithful are right now living in the West (most peacefully), and thriving here, as well. Western ways and methods will rub off on them, and some of them will return home with new ideas and ways of doing things.
By the way, it was slavish devotion to Aristotle in Christendom that helped keep Europe in the Dark Ages. Of all the famous discovers that I've mentioned above, almost every one of them advanced knowledge or thinking that directly contrary to the Christian-Aristotlian view of the world. They, in effect, destroyed Aristotle.
And yes, Islam (in terms of the nation-state) CAN be reformed in the same way Japan was after WWII. Quite frankly, in many ways, there's little difference WWII Japan and pre-WWI Turkey; we're talking about countries that made the mistake of believing that because they LOOKED Western (modern armies and navies, the mimicing of Western imperialism, bicameral legislative bodies, etc) that they WERE Western.
Only defeat taught Turkey and Japan that it was not enough to acquire or imitate the West in institutions: you had to become Western in mindset.
"Islam never had a secular intelligentsia. Renaissance humanism created a proto intelligentsia in Europe. Nothing of the sort ever occured in the Muslim world. That is why whenever Islam and marxism have clashed the result has always been lots of dead communists. As a belief system it admits no equality with any other. There is no sphere of life beyond its control. That is why predictions of modernizing it are so silly."
I do remember writing "Islam has never had a Reformation or an Age of Enlightment" somewhere up there, and something about them needing one. However, Europe never had these things either -- until they actually happened. And they always started with "Why?". Are you suggesting that such things as Reformations and Ages of Reason are spontaneously generated (or worse - pre-ordained)and never the result of a long string of historical, political, economic and social events (usually calamaties) that lead people in a certain direction?
And by the way, Nasser and Pan-Arabism (the ideological parents of Ba'athism, for example) was socialism in everything but name.
"And if the state oil monopoly is the source of all wealth, the idea of people demanding political rights to protect 'their' newly acquired wealth is ridiculous. It's not 'their' wealth. It's the state's wealth. You don't bite the hand that feeds you."
Tell that to the Red Chinese in about a decade, the Arabs perhaps sooner. We'll see. It's not exactly an unknown phenomena for the great mass of people to begin questioning and railing against the notion that resources are the wholly-owned domain of the "state" or the Monarch. Why, if I recall, that's one of the original premises of Magna Carta -- that they aren't!
"Desert ? How utterly ridiculous. When Muslims move to Europe (i.e., the developed world) their first act is to create enclaves in which the writ of the law no longer runs. The police learn to stay out. A very important reason behind this is so they can impose shariah on Muslim women without them having any legal recourse. Muslim women who try to stand up to their families are dealt with by 'honor killings' in the developed world to which the police have a 'hands off' attitude. Only by keeping the modern world out can Muslim men in Europe retain that kind of control over Muslim women."
No, the first thing that happens is that Muslim enter European society and are crowded into ghettos, not encouraged to assimilate, and are expected to do their job as good little laborers and taxpayers and don't bother the civilized French. They are wanted in Europe for their labor only, not to be welcomed into some sort of wonderful muilti-culti mosaic. That they form Islamic socioeties within the general society is to be expected; if they're not (by law, by custom, or by attitude) allowed to mix with the natives, they naturally mix amongst themselves, and they nurse their grievances, too. What do you expect them to do?
The same thing happened here in America with immigrants -- they gravitated to their own kind and associated with their own kind when the general society around them hung up signs reading "No Irish Need Apply" or circulated the propaganda of the Lazy Italian (who are all in the Mafia and beholden to the Pope, you know), the Big Stupid Pole, or the Sneaky World-Domination-on-the-brain Jew, or today's Illegal Sleepy Mexican.
There is not a city in America that doesn't have ethnic enclaves, and hasn't had them since the foundation of the country. Take a visit to your local Chinatown, Little Odessa or Little Italy, and then tell me I'm wrong.
And as for the Desert Culture and it's customs regarding women, I'm not sure where your forebears came from, but my Italian ones came from Sicily, Naples and teh Abruzzi, and they kept their traditions and culture more or less intact when they got here: notions of the family, cooking, social groups and institutions, ways of doing various things, their religious beliefs. Are immigrant Islamics expected to be any different? If there is a staple of your culture that goes back thousands of years (like keep yer women in check before you wind up supporting someone else'skids) why should it have to change because you are no longer in the enviornment where practical experience made that part of the culture to begin with?
Guess I'd better stop keeping the Saint's Days, having my extended family over for dinner on Sunday's and keeping a picture of Jesus (regardless of whether I'm religious or not) on the living room wall; Stupid Me! I forgot that my forebears were supposed to check their cultural baggage (even the ugly parts) at Ellis Island! Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
"Your 'we can transform them' is no less delusional than the leftists 'with education and a Marshall Plan for the Middle East we can transform them'. Both are based on a common secularist inability to take religion seriously. Both are the products of people who can understand no motivations higher than comfort and security. Both are the solutions of people who like to believe that everyone is as corrupt as they are. That everyone has his price. There isn't enough money in the world to buy religious fanatics. Osama bin Laden walked away from wealth and comfort to live in caves in Afghanistan. The Taliban fought against drug trafficking because they didn't want Mammon corrupting their paradise of perfect virtue. Al Qaeda loved Afghanistan because it was as close to 7th century Arabia as they had ever seen."
I'm not talking about an (il-)liberal education prgram or a Marshall Plan: I'm counting on human nature, which is the most powerful force in the universe. Once people see the benefits of the Western model first hand, they will naturally gravitate towards it (it's in their best interests to do so)and a changing of fundamental attitudes that can only occur with direct contact and the slow porcess of assimilation. You don't need a Marshall Plan or an Islamic "No Child Left Behind" to make these kinds of choices.
"Your comprehension of Washington is similarly idiotic. British naval supremacy meant that Britain would always have the strategic initiative. Until the arrival of the French navy, British armies could land at will anywhere on the American coast. There was never anything Washington could do about that. Trying to hold an island against an enemy with naval superiority risks seeing your army trapped and destroyed. That is why Washington was wise to refuse to committ himself to holding New York at all costs. The point was not to be trapped on the wrong side of the Hudson."
Nope, Washington was a still rotten commander. And if Britain had such overwhelming Naval superiority (there is no doubt that they did), they certainly used it very badly. The British handicaps were being at the end of a trans-Atlantic supply line, having multiple fronts to fight on, and the chauvanistic belief that they were facing (in Cornwallis' words) "farmers with pitchforks". The American colonists only had to stay in the field long enough before the French took the fight to the British, or the British got tired of the whole enterprise and relented. Which sounds an awful lot of Giap's strategy against the United States in Vietnam.
Washington didn't win in the sense that he defeated the British (all on his lonesome with his own resources) on the field of battle. He "won" because he managed to stay in the field long enough for the British to realize they had bigger fish to fry and could no longer afford to concentrate on America to the detriment of the rest of the Empire. The real prize (in 1781) was India, not Philadelphia or New York.
I never insinuated they were "idolators", I only threw the obvious fact that Jews gather at the Wailing Wall and that some sects believe in the insaparability of Israel and the Temple at you to disprove your silly notions.
It's fact. Look it up.
Francis, you batting .000 against me. Give it up.
You sure did insinuate Jews were idolaters.
Anyway, the Jews do not worship a black rock in the middle of the desert, like I said. The Islamics do...
Francis, francis, Francis! Whatever shall we do with you? You're so far off base as to not even be in the ballpark.
Here's the direct quote, with regards to the Wailing Wall (which you seem to think insuinates idolatry):
"History.....shows that long, long ago, Judaism and the Temple of Solomon were inseperable. the Temple was built to house the Ark of the Covenant, the container that held the sacred contract between Jews and God. As such, the temple (an inanimate object) and the land it sits on, is considered holy (despite the laughable idea that divine power can be transmitted to inanimate objects), and is not worshipped, as much as revered, as such."
I guess the words "IS NOT WORSHIPPED" threw ya off. That happens when you've only just learned to read.
With such an opening, wide enough to drive a Hummer through, one would expect he'd go into rant mode and say how much we need a viable third party in America because the current duopoly has had power long enough.
But no, Farah zeroes in on the Republican who most typifies the stupid party's win-at-any-cost, principles-be-damned attitude that's predominated since the Gingrich takeover of Congress -- and gets on his case for his choice in clothing! It's almost beyond belief that he overlooked that pink elephant right there in the living room.
Good grief, Farah! Is all you care about whether a person is a real, sincere Christian who only does it missionary style?
Aren't there more important attributes we should be looking for in a Presidential candidate - and in a political party?
How about holding to some archaic Republican notions like federalism, individual responsibility, getting government out of the business of creating, generating, regulating and subsidizing business, putting the United States back on an honest money system, etc.? I'd guess a charlatan like Giuliani would never so much as read about those topics, let along speak to them.
But why won't Farah? He's got a column, after all. And he blows it on this tripe.
If Farah's this upset about what Rudy appears in, what must he think about his ex-wife's acting roles?
Well, now, you've gone over from bloviating about what a stupid commander Washington was to acknowledging that his strategy played to American strengths while minimizing American weaknesses. Your citing of Giap was an intelligent admission on your part that my comparison of the French problem in Indochina with the British problem in the American Revolution (i.e, they could concentrate to engage the rebel conventional forces OR disperse to control real estate. Not both.) was correct. You are learning. Your smug 'stay in the field until the French enter the war' ignores the fact that France wasn't going to back losers. For all the radical chic sympathies in Versailles they entered the war AFTER Saratoga. After the rebels proved that they could win. Had Burgoyne succeeded in clearing the Hudson Valley and cutting New England off from the rest of the country, well, quelle domage.
You do not comprehend the entire political culture of the Middle East, confusing the same old statist bureaucratism since the Pharoahs and priest kings with socialism (i.e., political parties based on labor unions and left intelligentsia). But first lets get to your incredible incomprehension of the war. Japan has never accepted that its cause in the war was wrong. Never. It accepted that its lack of a continental resource base made it dangerously dependent on seaborne supply routes which could not be secured. It is not that militarism was wrong. It is that it was strategically unrealistic. Japan needs peaceful waters and open sea lanes. The Pax Americana provides more security than the Teikoku Kaigun could and at a much cheaper cost.
More education for you later.
Not to mention a coke-snorting, alcoholic, C average college student, baseball team owning son of an ex-President...
You can stop all the stuff about "maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses" because it was by pure, dumb luck and personal leadership that Washington blundered his way through the Revolution. He was no military genius.
And yes I do understand the politcs and culture of the Middle East (I only spent 12 years studying history!); you don't understand human nature. If you did, you'd see how truly off base you really are. As for Japan, I never said that anyone (Japanese) believed their cause was wrong, only that the ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING the cause were. Japan went to war to secure an empire because "that's what great nations do", without ever realizing just what actually MADE a "Great Nation". It was not battleships and colonies; it was human capital (financial and intellectual) set free. The British Empire did not come into being all on it's own; it was the result of poilitical, scientific, military and social advances that were tried, tested, debated, folded, spindled and mutilated for 3,000 years going all the way back to ancient Greece.
The Japanese could copy the methods of imperialism, they could form a Parliament, they could build battleships, but they could not create the CULTURE that made those things possible -- only a replica, and one that could not be sustained without setting the individual free. Sixty years later, Japan is as western (in outlook, in politics, in industrial methods, sciences, media, philosophy, etc) as any of the nations of the West. The Diffrence? They learned, through defeat, just what it was their system lacked and made an effort to obtain it for themselves, and added their own cultural innovations along the way.
Arabs can do the same thing. All human beings can.
You are making less and less sense.
You babble about the 'stupidity' of Washington because he did not go for the knockout with the British Empire. Get this through your brain. The redcoat could let out three rounds a minute. The Continental less. The militiaman one. All that barracks slave discipline created a fighting force that could put out a volume of fire that no other force on the planet could stand up to. The British Army had an automatic quality force multiplier.
How do you beat a better army ? By standing up to their firepower in situations where you do not have the advantage ? No. By tactical defensive, strategic counterpunch. By putting an army that will always consist of half raw militiamen in a position where if superior numbers in defensive positions don't prevail, they can get away in one piece. In time your militiamen will become veterans. But keep them alive until they do. Tactical defensive, strategic counterpunch. It is how a Buster Douglas can beat a Mike Tyson.
And your comment about Japan was ridiculous. The Japan of 1940 was the strategic equal of England. It wasn't some Third World country with a Western military like Nasserite Egypt. It was most definitely a completely modern society but with the same flaw Weimar Germany had. The Army had greater legitimacy and moral authority than the legislature. For some ridiculous reason you insist that human nature demands libertarianism when 99% of human history consists of one form of authoritarianism or another.
What your brain cannot comprehend is that the American road to modernity is not the only one. You think human nature is American. And America's greatest blunders have occurred when we blithely assumed that everyone everywhere admires and wishes to emulate us. Cultures can pick and choose what they want and reject what they don't want. Muslims can live in Europe for generations and insist upon enslaving their women. Male ego and sexual possessiveness is as close to an instinct as it gets.
I know that you cannot understand any values other than a shallow kind of materialism, but human societies do not live by bread alone. The Muslim looks at the secular West with disgust. He likes the dole and national health care but its men to him are worthless and its women sluts who deserve to be raped. The power of the West is not to him an object to be emulated but a wound to his sense of innate superiority. That is why the Arab-Israeli conflict has gone on so long. Because like with the cartoons the Muslim has chosen to be wounded, chosen grievance, chosen rage because to let these wounds to his psyche heal would be to accept failure, to accept being less than God's chosen. Being God's chosen means more to him than your idea of what he should want.
It's apparent that you keep missing the mark. Maybe that is my fault, in that I'm not as precise as I would like to be with my words. Then again, you could just be hardheaded and unable to accept a new idea if it contradicts your dogma.
So, perhaps it might make more sense for you to see where my ideas came from, and their plausibility, by your own efforts. In that case (and I do this in the spirit of hoping to achieve some middile ground), I will give you a selected list of readiing (I've read all of these, mosrt several times, and enjoyed them all) from my own library, and perhaps you can see where I'm coming from.
If not, at least it will give you something to do on those rainy saturday nights.
In no particular order:
Boorstein, Daniel:
The Discoverers
The Creators
The Seekers
Orwell, George:
The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays and Reportage
Schama, Simon:
A History of Britain (3 voulmes)
Li Naronga:
Imperial Japan and The National Identities of Asia (1895-1945) (Our Japan Argument)
Hanson, Victor Davis:
Carnage and Culture
Why the West Has Won
Ripples of Battle
The Soul of Battle
Penguin Histories (by Penguin Books):
Penguin History of the World
Penguin History of World War II (Our Japan Argument)
Keegan, John:
History of Warfare (Why Clauswitz was Wrong)
The Price of Admiralty (Our Japan Argument)
The Face of Battle
Kagan, Donald:
On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace
Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy
The Western Heritage
Webber, Eugen:
The Western Tradition (may be out of print)
Lewis, Bernard:
The Middle East
What Went Wrong? (The Clash between Islam and the West)
Fromkin, David:
The Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Creation of the Modern Middle East
It is apparent that you see foreign cultures only from your own perspective. Never trying to understand them from within. If you want to understand Arab politics, read Mohammed Heikal. Particularly read "The Sphinx and the Commissar" and that fascinating passage in "The Road to Ramadan". The chapter on the do's and dont's list of dealing with Russians is worth the price of admission. Or "The Arab Cold War" or "Egypt: Military Society". Maybe you could get out of your "inside every foreigner is an American trying to get out" mindset.
The narrowness of your reading explains a lot about the narrowness of your thinking.
LOL! This from someone who manages to scrape up a list of four books in response to a list citing over twenty.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.