--John Stuart Mill
Posted on 09/29/2006 4:46:58 PM PDT by Grig
I remember the Italian who was faced with these filthy, ignorant savages and when they tried to break him on video he said, "Now I will show you how an Italian dies." Such men as these once conquered a world.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
--John Stuart Mill
Steyn list
"But that's not how the al-Jazeera audience sees it. If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling -- that the West is weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade....n the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. And they draw their own conclusions -- that these men are easier to force into the car than that 16-year-old girl in Sydney was. It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead."
Now that you've read that, go back and read (or re-read) this thread....
Would you submit to a forced 'conversion'?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1691374/posts
Jehovah Witnesses never renounced their faith and were slaughtered by the Nazis.
They practice "journalislam." Mark, you missed it!
Something Victor McLaughlin might have uttered in Gunga Din... and rightly so.
bump
--John Stuart Mill
The green fields of heaven are his.
It's quite a story. Even the cynical Frenchman, who prides himself on believing in nothing, understands that to yield to the forced conversion is wrong.
That is such a great quote!
We used to raise boys to be brave. Now we try to get them in touch with their "feminine side".
"The Tragedy of the Korosko" is available to download from
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12555
Moments of Truth --- Fabrizio Quattrocchi lived fully — to his last moment.
Thank you, Mark Steyn!
Many people here defended the journalists by saying that they themselves would have done the same because it really doesn't matter what you say - a stupid position that I can't even begin to address here.
Other more traditional FReepers were concerned that the journalists had "renounced Christ," but the fact is that the journalists probably weren't Christians in the first place. So did their words matter?
I doubt that the journalists were Christians, but Mark Steyn is absolutely right. Even if you believe in nothing, coming out and saying at gunpoint that you believe in Islam is like being raped repeatedly and thrown to the side of the road. And these guys went along with it and have been praised for their "prudence," not only in the general media, but by many here on FR.
But I bet these journalists wake up in the middle of the night and miss their huevos, their integrity and the world they have verbally rejected - and are horrified by the world that is boasting of their easy submission. Remember, they weren't even tortured, just "mistreated" and threatened, and that was enough to do them in.
How little will it take for all of us?
For once I'm not understanding or agreeing with this. Does he really expect them to die! that's the stuff the stupid muslim fanactics do, make a big deal about dying for their faith.
I'm certainly not going to sit here and make a judgement because these men didn't want their heads sawed off.
If we're going to be brave lets be brave where it counts.Lets stop worrying about the opinions of the world and get down to taking care of the muslim problem, and that means a whole lot of dead people...I dare say our society as a whole isn't brave enough to take on the scorn we'd receive yet we expect kidnapped victims to suffer torture in the name of bravery. What rot.
Every time I read that J S Mill quote is seems more and more beautiful , and more profound. Easy to trace a line directly to George Orwell, who said something similar.
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