A Week's Revelations (Thomas Sowell on islam, the UN, and the Pope)

HumanEvents.com ^ | 9/26/2006 | Thomas Sowell

[Dark Skies]

This past week has told us more than we wanted to know about ourselves and about our enemies.

There was far more controversy over remarks made by the Pope than over the violence unleashed by Muslims against people who had nothing to do with what the Pope said.

That our enemies do not understand the significance of free speech in a free society, where things that offend us can be denounced without indiscriminate violence, is bad enough. But that we ourselves seem headed further down the slippery slope of self-censorship is chilling.

Tolerance has been one of the virtues of western civilization. But virtues can be carried to extremes that turn them into vices. Toleration of intolerance is a particularly dangerous vice to which western nations are succumbing, both within their own countries and internationally.

Double standards are being wrapped in the mantle of morality. The drive to extend Geneva convention protection to terrorists who are not covered under the Geneva convention is one of a number of dangerous self-indulgences by people who seem to think that being morally one-up is the ultimate and survival is secondary.

Senator Lindsey Graham's comment that we are going to win in our struggle with terrorists "because we are better" was all too typical of this mindset.

It would be hard to know which would be worse -- if he said it as just some offhand political rhetoric or whether he is really fatuous enough to believe it and irresponsible enough to gamble American lives rather than extract murderous secrets from captured cutthroats.

There is already evidence from Guantanamo that the prisoners there are abusing the guards far worse than any guards have abused these prisoners. Yet our media have no interest in that and have been willing to believe every allegation by these professional terrorists, including the physical absurdity of trying to flush the Koran -- or any other book -- down a toilet.

Unfortunately, these are not just isolated lapses in judgment. It is largely the same people who have for years been more protective of criminals than of their victims who are now more protective of captured terrorists than of those who are their targets.

When such attitudes became ascendant in our courts during the 1960s, the declining trend in crime rates suddenly reversed and skyrocketed, as liberal judges created new "rights" for criminals out of thin air and called it constitutional law.

But this goes far beyond judges and far beyond our own times. The political left has been weak on protecting society from criminals for more than two centuries.

No one should be surprised that this same attitude has led to great preoccupation with trying to get captured terrorists treated more nicely.

This past week has also seen revelations about our enemies. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez' cheap demagoguery at the United Nations was a clear sign of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of his anti-Americanism. Surely if he had anything concrete and serious to say against this country, he would have said it.

Equally clearly, he understood that no coherent argument was necessary. All that was necessary was to tap into visceral resentments and play to the gallery of those poisoned by envy and ready to blame their own lack of achievement on somebody else.

The president of Iran was slicker but his speech at the United Nations and his artful evasions at his press conference are also revealing and should be a warning. He too is obviously playing us for fools.

Those in the United States and in other western nations who are urging dialogue with Iran are repeating the tragic mistakes of the 1930s that led to World War II. People say talk is cheap but it can be enormously costly when it becomes just a way to forestall action while an enemy nation builds up its military threat.

Since Iran is not letting the idle chatter at the U.N. delay their rush to get nuclear weapons, they are more dangerous than the Nazis were -- while we remain as gullible as those in the west who blundered into World War II and almost lost it.

[RexBeach]

We are leaning into a right cross on this business.

How stupid can we be to treat our enemies as though they are signatories to a treaty they probably scorn?

Here's a poser for you: In what American fought war were our POWs treated the way we wanted them to be treated?

We haven't cut off anyone's head yet, have we? Course not.

Viva our US armed services!

[BlackjackPershing]

When we lose the technological edge, we lose the War against Terrorism.

Case in point: When the barbarians learned to make steel as good as the Romans, Rome fell.

[syriacus]

Senator Lindsey Graham's comment that we are going to win in our struggle with terrorists "because we are better" was all too typical of this mindset.

Lindsey Graham has it backwards.
The terrorists know we are better.
The terrorists use terror precisely because we are better.

1. If they were better militarily, they'd conquer us.
2. If they were better morally, they'd organize peaceful demonstrations and work, honestly, to solve problems with the West.
3. If they had a better work ethic, they'd outdo us in productivity.
4. If they were better than us in innovation, they'd be solving their problems via creativity, rather than by violence and using the blame-game.
5. If they were better than us technologically, they'd be leaders in the modern world.

They know they are losers, so, like a street gang they push other people around.

One of our best options is to help Muslims make something of their own lives. That's what Bush is trying to do.

[Chickensoup]

Case in point: When the barbarians learned to make steel as good as the Romans, Rome fell.

Our barbarians can buy technology from others to use against us.

They have, in a sense, learned how to make steel.

[Chickensoup]

They are not a street gang. They are lethal barbarians and no amount of coddling is going to change them.

[Savage Beast]

"That our enemies do not understand the significance of free speech in a free society, where things that offend us can be denounced without indiscriminate violence, is bad enough."

Yes. Truth needs no defense. It has its own power.

It is liberty that must be defended.

"But that we ourselves seem headed further down the slippery slope of self-censorship is chilling."

Yes. Chilling and morally and strategically indefensible.

"...virtues can be carried to extremes that turn them into vices."

Yes. This is not a new observation, as Sowell is obviously well aware.

This is the ancient Greek concept of nemesis. Anything good, taken sufficiently to its extreme, becomes something bad, i.e. a nemesis.

"Toleration of intolerance is a particularly dangerous vice to which western nations are succumbing, both within their own countries and internationally."

Yes. This is a dangerous failing of the Western Left--an aspect of its decadence--and one excellent reason, of many, why the Left cannot be trusted. Not only is the Western Left blinded by delusion, hubris, and denial, but it is overwhelmed by moral and logical confusion, lack of clarity, greed for power, and downright mendacity.

[BlackjackPershing]

And, that's my point. We're in trouble and our leadership doesn't see it, I fear.

[Tolik]

Nailed It! Nailed It! Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

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[sarasota]

"...being morally one-up is the ultimate and survival is secondary." I've never heard it spoken so well. We're going to pay dearly for this double standard of ours.

[Valin]

Bump for later

[Esther Ruth]

That our enemies ==>> do not understand the significance of free speech in a free society <<== , where things that offend us can be denounced without indiscriminate violence, is bad enough. But that we ourselves seem headed further down the slippery slope of self-censorship is chilling.

***

The whole premise is wrong in this sentence.
"That our enemies do NOT understand the SIGNIFICANCE of free speech in a free society.."??

Our enemies DO very much understand the significance of free speech in a free society.
They understand they must not allow it - must NOT allow any free speech and freedom.
This is what they understand, this is what they value.
To allow free speech is to allow the freedom of religion and to them their is no religion but their own, no truth must be spoken but their own, they must silence all others.

Where is the virtue, the moral high ground in telling dictators who don't allow religious freedom that we do indeed respect them and respect the very religion that is intolerant of all other religions and free speech, freedom itself. It is a delusional self-lie, a tower of babel, based in arrogance and pride of foolish men.

[Gordongekko909]

Thomas Sowell *PING*

FRmail me if you want on or off the Thomas Sowell Ping List.

[Gordongekko909]

Here's a poser for you: In what American fought war were our POWs treated the way we wanted them to be treated?

A couple, actually. World War I, 1812... the difference is, we were fighting against civilized enemies in those wars. The Kaiser's Germany != Al Qaeda.

[Gordongekko909]

Thomas Sowell strikes again!

[morans14]

As usual, he is spot on.

[GOPJ]

thanks for the ping.

[GOPJ]

Toleration of intolerance is a particularly dangerous vice to which western nations are succumbing, both within their own countries and internationally.

Double standards are being wrapped in the mantle of morality. The drive to extend Geneva convention protection to terrorists who are not covered under the Geneva convention is one of a number of dangerous self-indulgences by people who seem to think that being morally one-up is the ultimate and survival is secondary.

Great stuff - thanks.

[Valin]

There is already evidence from Guantanamo that the prisoners there are abusing the guards far worse than any guards have abused these prisoners


Shameless Plug
U.S. adopts tougher stance at Guantanamo
AP ^ | 9/23/06 | ANDREW SELSKY

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1707103/posts
Posted on 09/23/2006 5:41:22 PM CDT by Valin


GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - The military is toughening a new jailhouse for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban militants to protect guards after a spate of attacks and evidence that detainees have organized themselves into groups to mount uprisings, officials said. The hardening comes as U.N. human rights investigators are calling for closing the entire detention center on this remote U.S. base. But with the war against terror groups dragging on, commanders say they have no choice in dealing with men deemed enemy combatants.

Events in recent months have made Guantanamo officials extremely wary: - Detainees lured guards into a cell in the prison's Camp 4 by staging a suicide attempt in May, then attacked with fan blades and broken pieces of fluorescent light fixtures, the military says. Defense attorneys say the clash was sparked when guards tried to search prisoners' Qurans. - On June 10, three detainees in Camp 1 committed suicide. Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the jail, described it as a coordinated protest action - "not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us." - Guards recently discovered detainees in Camp 1 were dismantling faucets on sinks, removing long, sharp springs and reinforcing them into stabbing weapons, Army Lt. Col. Mike Nicolucci said. Camp 1 has been emptied of detainees while new faucets are installed, with inaccessible springs.

From July 2005 through August, the military recorded 432 assaults by detainees using "cocktails" of bodily excretions thrown at guards, 227 physical assaults and 99 instances of inciting or participating in disturbances or riots. "What we have come to assess is these detainees - these terrorists - are still fighting a battle," said Army Brig. Gen. Edward A. Leacock, deputy commander of the detention operation. "They're not on the battlefield but ... they're still continuing to fight to this day." Leacock said hard-core al-Qaida and Taliban detainees have established a hierarchy of "military guys, religious guys ... the muscle guys, and they all have a role inside the camps."

(snip)
/Shameless Plug

[Valin]

When the barbarians learned to make steel as good as the Romans, Rome fell.

Simplistic.