Posted on 08/15/2006 8:59:06 PM PDT by Reagan Man
Blind animus for President Bush is insufficient to explain liberals' refusal to acknowledge the reality of a cruel and imperialistic jihadist push worldwide. Nor is it simply liberals' unwillingness to work with Republicans and conservatives that render them incapable of serious and active participation in the War on Terror. It is that by so doing, liberals would be forced to upend the world view and social philosophies that have animated them since the early '60s.
At stake is their identity as individuals, what they do, what they believe, the need for their journals, indeed their sense of moral superiority and their hierarchy in society and policy making. Worse for them, their whole social milieu is dependent on maintaining the artificial and cocooned world they have created for themselves. The philosophic underpinnings of “their world” are frontally challenged by this new jihadist reality, one that cannot be controlled, maneuvered or finessed by their propositions of how life works. It is much more convenient to deny jihad’s eagerness to kill us all, including them, than to deconstruct the ersatz world they have built for themselves.
As with those in the mid-1800s unwilling to accept the transformation from an agricultural era to the new era of industrialization, most elitist liberals refuse to admit the reality of the new jihadist era since it makes irrelevant the entrenched ideas upon which they have grown rich and sassy for the last half century. At stake is their status. It is similar to the advent of the early automobile period when buggy-whip manufacturers would not reconcile themselves to a new reality rendering what they did outdated and unnecessary.
Jihadism is not a reaction to American, Israeli or Australian foreign policy. It is organic, a conventional and historic reading of the Koran as understood by many imams. Jihad is one of Islam’s authentic traditions, predating the birth of America and Israel. They seek to conquer, to create a global Islamic caliphate. Our survival depends on their defeat, total defeat. This will be accomplished not by the professional negotiators and liberal sociologists but by the force of an army, a courageous and unfettered military.
Those schooled in the liberal “it’s society’s fault” outlook when pontificating on domestic crime have for decades proclaimed “it’s America’s fault” when evaluating every atrocity found worldwide. Liberals “understand”!
To acknowledge the peculiarity of the jihadist reality undermines those in the “understanding” business. They are, now, antiquated and counterproductive, since it is not their assumptions that anymore matter but the generals and the fighting man. Liberals would rather deny truth than forfeit their heretofore prominent position at the decision table.
The fanciful and “smart” musings of Thomas Friedman and the New York Times set are valid only if jihadists are morphed into your routine troublemakers placate-able with a concession here and there. There is no serious place for liberal negotiators such as Judith Kipper and some of the smarmy know-it-alls at the Council of Foreign Relations unless the true unyielding nature and goal of Islamofascism is denied. Their journals, writings, royalties, and center of attention among the chattering class depends upon treating jihadism as something “to be reasoned with,” when it is clearly not.
Many of today’s powerful and boisterous liberals are wealthy and university schooled and consider themselves “the nice people,” sensitive, morally superior, smarter, and above such things as war. This is their identity, the passport to their social fraternity. They have constructed above-it-all lives, fashioning a sub-culture beyond the reach of life’s messiness. They live as if everything were predictable and within their control. Through negotiation, life is risk-free.
To acknowledge the true face of Islamofascism and its aims would mean having to concede the necessity of phone surveillance, tough interrogation, common sense profiling, a reliance on the CIA and a strong military -- all things they were taught to disdain. Better to deny reality than relinquish the badges and accoutrements of their internalized identity as “superior.” Besides, how un-cosmopolitan and un-transnational to be in the corner of America, especially when anti-Americanism is cool and fashionable, indeed today’s facile path to liberal “worldliness”.
Some of this crowd are, by nature, cowards and appeasers, brazen only when taking on people and institutions they know will never harm them, such as Bible-believing Christians, President Bush, and the American military. Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, for example, and other “human rights” imposters have grown celebrated and well-funded by establishing a set of official guidelines for what is permissible for Western powers during war. But their central motivation is to emasculate the strength of the West to win an armed conflict.
Everything, if carried out by the forces of freedom, constitutes, in Roth’s view, a human rights violation. In an article he published two weeks ago, he unearthed an international law “interpretation” that made illegal just about anything Israel chose in defense of its territory and citizens -- as he has done all along in America’s War on Terror. His message to Israel and America: Lose.
As with the Nazis and Communists before, Roth and cohorts are using an elaborate set of legalities to outlaw and subdue those wishing to remain free when fighting those wishing to rule over them. They are outlawing our defense of ourselves. Many “enlightened” liberals wishing to control our fate quote him because it provides them the “moral” tools with which to stymie our efforts. This is made possible only by minimizing the true threat of jihadism and accusing America of being the creator of and fueling the jihadist movement. No doubt, CBS’s Mike Wallace, Ahmadinjad’s new admirer, falls in this category.
Anti-Semitism also plays a role. Those on the left not wishing the state of Israel well, and those who do not like Jews, are reluctant to side with the anti-jihadists. To do so, they must first cast them not as jihadists ideologically and theologically hell-bent on destroying the West and Christians but simply as an aggrieved group of Moslems whose grievances should be redressed and placated. I am sure that Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh loved America, but their dislike for Jews was overriding and made them declare that Hitler could be reasoned with.
Deliberate delusion born of self-interest; ignoring reality out of self-importance; the inability of relics “in the know” to renounce what is no longer true; selfishness over love of country: All of these are reprehensible character traits. When practiced by too many, a civilization dies.
Saved. Thanks.
ping
They are deeply invested in the idea that morality is a crock, a con job, a way decent ordinary people are manipulated by unscrupulous tyrants from the dark ages. See, soldiers who actually believe in honor are to them just fools. Sacrificing oneself for one's country is obscene - no country is worth it and the things one actually does are wrong rather than right. All harsh constraint, all discipline, all necessity - they are just ways of trying to get the unwashed many to do some poohbah's dirty work.
See, as soon as one has bought that piece of easy going cynicism, life is so much easier all the way around. One is morally superior to every striving saint or hero simply because one has seen through the sham and does not try. One is wise when self indulgant. One never has to do anything or even to accept anything as true or existing, that one does not want - because one can always allege that it is a mere allegation to manipulate you. Sass is the only remaining virtue - to decide for oneself, based on what feels good right this instant, and to tell off everyone trying to tell you anything. Stopped up ears deliver an effortless liberty, inward imagination delivers achievement. Every failing is somebody else's fault, some "man" trying to con people, and all we have to do is be on to it and not go along.
What would be involved in giving that up? First, there would be urgent tasks that are matters of duty. Frivilous pursuits would be morally disreputable. There would be better and worse people in the world, objectively. Things could be legitimately asked of citizens by authorities. War would be a natural part of the human condition instead of an obscene aberrration and fit of madness, to be merely run from and screamed against. Dangers would have to be faced rather than avoided. Those one has been bad mouthing for most of one's life would be wronged parties, and guilt would be justified rather than a hangup to get over.
Fundamentally, they are fleeing the responsibilities of it all, because fleeing responsibilities and calling on others to flee from their responsibilities, termed "liberation" by those peddling it, is what they have been about for - oh about 300 years.
inspirational and prophetic analysis and worth passing on.
I skimmed it quick, but it deserves a word-for-word read. Excellent post, Reagan Man. BTTT and bookmark for later.
You go, Rabbi!
Precisely! It doesn't matter one whit if we 'accept' them, or give in to their demands in the Middle East. They'll still come for us, because that's what they believe they SHOULD do.
I'm reminded of those elitist Hellenistic loving Jews who were willing to give away their birthright along with that of their "unwashed" coreligionists who refused to do so. Fortunately the Macabees took care of it in battle known today as Hanukah
This is an outstanding article which I have bookmarked. The last paragraph especially caught my eye because it mirrors narcissism, a growing epidemic among those so-aptly described in other parts of this fantastic piece.
*sigh*...wonder what the definite number for 'too many' is...I am fearful, and very disheartened... almost half our country's population is already there.
ping
If Israel didn't exist, the problem would go away and they wouldn't have to deal with it. If Bush weren't President, liberals believe none of this terrorism would be taking place. I'm sure they believe that if a dem is elected in 2008, that terrorism will cease to exist.
What is sad is that liberals treat conservatives worse than they would an actual terrorist. Maybe we should call the terrorist Republicans and then the left would deal with them.
Great sentence, one of my biggest pet peeves about the DUmmmie types.
This Rabbi decribes democrats and RINOS, Greens, and a host of other groups.. PERFECTLY...
Liberals NEVER EVER place any blame on the terrorists themselves. They ALWAYS blame the US and Israel for driving the peaceful muslims into terrorizing:
The US, Britain, Israel, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Russia, Australia, Canada, Italy, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand, Spain, Macedonia, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, France, Germany, Uzbekistan, Gaza, Tunisia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Algeria, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Denmark, Sudan, Jordan, Holland, Greece...etc
Excellent article. He sums up the current state of liberalism, very well.
I've said that very same thing...and you know that you and I are not the only ones to think this...so, why on earth would they cave immediately to the protests of,"What no baby formula allowed on flights?!?"...and say, "Well, OK, baby formula and meds we'll allow." {{{shaking my head in disbelief}}}
How to you placate or compromise with people like that?
It's impossible...to the rest of us it is totally unimaginable that 'people' can think this way. Just incomprehensible.
I agree. He doesn't make a strong case on that point, but the point he makes ought not be ignored. After my first reading the anti-semite angle is the weakest part of this piece, but the rest is very cogent.
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