Posted on 09/19/2006 1:42:14 AM PDT by LibWhacker
President Bush told a group of radio talk show hosts that the war on terror must be framed in terms of values, not religion.
Coulter found herself in the uncharacteristic position of being upstaged by her introducer, Mike Gallagher. He told the audience he was fresh back from an hour-and-45-minute session which President Bush held in the Oval Office Friday afternoon with him and four other conservative talk show hosts: Atlanta’s Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Michael Medved. Rush Limbaugh couldn’t make it, he said.
Though he said this session was supposed to be off the record, Gallagher described it at some length, including Bush’s observation to the right-wing radio jocks that the War on Terror has to be about right versus wrong, “because if it’s about Christianity versus Islam, we’ll lose.”
“Remind me never to invite you to an off-the-record session,” Coulter said after his introduction.
Indeed.
Still, if Bush said what Gallagher said he did, he’s right. Islam is, of course, a big piece of the puzzle. But the battle over ideas has to be fought by finding common moral ground, not bashing Islam in general.
It’s no small irony that this was revealed while introducing, Ann “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” Coulter.
"While we're marshalling our Christian heritage we'd better not drive off nonchristian allies."
Good point Piasa.
I agree.
Just a general note here:
I ping people of MANY faiths (yes, including Muslims) to various articles.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1704053/posts?page=6#6
The problem is that the Muslims are using bombs and bullets. Not ideas.
"The jews had the good sense to appreciate Cyrus's reign instead of opposing him because he wasn't Jewish."
If I may use your illustration, we are the Medo-Persians, not the Jews.
While I think Bush is right in that the fight has got to be more broadly framed - since the Muzzies are also attacking Hindus and other non-Christians all over the world, not to mention the Jews - putting it that way was a serious mistake and the words will no doubt be appearing on the AQ website any moment now. Plus it's very disheartening for Christians.
They do that to us at work; tell us something that we aren't supposed to tell, hoping that we will. Nobody in their right mind would tell reporters something "off the record" and expect it to stay a secret. He knew at least one of them would tell and probably planned it that way. Besides, he didn't really tell them any classified information. :-)
I believe that's the question Benedict was answering. I also believe that Bush proves his point: there is no way we can defeat a violent religious ideology by some vague resort to "values." Whose values? Where does the value for human life derive from, if not the Judeo-Christian tradition this country was founded on?
Bush is right -- we will lose, if all we've got are "values."
You can't force a Muslim to convert. And it isn't about Christianity versus Islam. Hindu Mumbai has been hit, as has Jewish Israel. Atheist Europe and NYC, too. It is Islam against the rest of the world. Christians are not supposed to engage in physical wars of religion.
Dishonarable.
While it could be about Islam, it is not about Christianity versus Islam.
A moderate according to whom? He could simply have been a radical labeled a moderate as a liberal could be labeled moderate.
Good point. I'm OK with "good vs Bad" or even "Good vs Evil"..
IIRC this man is an atheist. He's at a genius level, that he studies and writes a lot about religion. Among other things
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/01/2005010701c.htm
His use of the term "theocrat" tells you all you need to know. Christians are not "theocrats," but Stanley Fish likes to consider them such and spread his fog of moral equivalency over the situation. Islam, on the other hand, is truly theocratic, and is probably the only existing truly theocratic system: it believes that religion and politics, religious and political governance, are one and the same and are to be executed by the same persons. Even a country that establishes a state church or a country like Israel, that is officially Jewish, is not the same as a theocracy.
You will note that the "secularists" everywhere - in the media and in left-wing politics - are on the side of Islam. So that should be an indicator that the situation is much more complex than Fish likes to admit, and that religion is not a very explanatory word, since it can cover things from cults where you offer your children to Moloch to religious orders where you go off to die working among the lepers.
I think the Pope was trying to establish the actual grounds of the conflict, which is between reason and nihilism. Christianity is based on a reasonable view of the universe, which came to us through God's revelation to the Jews and the philosophical foundations of the Greeks that are expressed in the New Testament. Islam is fundamentally irrational and has a concept of a god who is arbitrary and irrational and bound by no interior consistency, and who can be known only through his draconian laws. Oddly enough, secularism has the same view of an irrational, meaningless universe, which runs on laws somehow mysteriously produced and imposed by matter itself, but which also is fundamentally without a purpose or rational direction. So I think perhaps that's why the devotees of the left and the followers of Mohammed get along so well, because they are both nihilists at heart.
No, he's not right.
The alternative to Islam is not "values", it's not socialism, it's not secular humanism - it's Christianity and nothing else.
If Bush believes that Christianity cannot defeat Islam, he's the wrong leader.
African Christians will sack Mecca within the century.
Stanley Fish has been published 4 times in Frontpage magazine. So conservatives like some of what he says
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=1244
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