Posted on 01/25/2007 7:31:10 AM PST by Valin
London LAST SATURDAY, the mayor of London, "Red Ken" Livingstonee, hosted one of the more bizarre events of recent times: a massively-promoted debate between himself and the Middle East Forum's Daniel Pipes. The official title of the event, which lasted all day and included many more speakers of less distinction, was "A World Civilization or a Clash of Civilizations?"
Livingstone opened by asserting that the Cold War had been started by the United States and that every action of the West for the last 60 years had been based on support for corrupt dictatorships. He preened over the diversity of London's populace and treated the July 2005 bombings, which are now the subject of a court proceeding, as a mere footnote.
Pipes took the subject of the debate more seriously, pointing out that although he and Livingstone agreed on the evils of terrorism, they proposed different ways of dealing with it. For London's mayor, Pipes explained, terrorism is to be solved with more multiculturalism. For his own part, Pipes believes that in a war between civilization and barbarism, the defenders of civilization--including decent, moderate Muslims--must prevail.
Pipes also noted that British authorities have demonstrated that terrorists planning attacks--including those of September 11, 2001--as well as others in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Algeria, Morocco, Russia, France, and Spain, all seem to have made stopovers in London. Livingstone responded by seeming to treat such visits as part of London's commercial success.
Pipes then homed in on the strangest aspect
of the present British situation: the alliance between the U.K.'s radical Left and fundamentalist Islamist ideology. Pipes identified the former as a phenomenon distinct from, and contrary to, the traditions of the Islamic faith. The absurdity of the relationship between Islamism and Marxism--given that leftists are strident in their defense of modernism and feminism--was nicely illustrated by Livingstone's choice of debating partner. The mayor chose Salma Yacoob, who represents the Respect party--best known as the shelter for George Galloway--in a local council in Birmingham. Yacoob appeared wearing a hijab, even though the Respect party is, in theory, an arm of the secularist Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Late in the discussion, Livingstone declaimed his atheism and proposed that British parents should have no chance to opt their children out of the state school system in order to receive faith-based education. It would seem that these sorts of attitudes should make the Marxist-Muslim alliance trickier than it appears.
But of course, British left's adulation for Islamic fundamentalism is restricted to that single variety of religious experience. While Livingstone flatters reactionary Muslim clerics such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, much of the Labour party spends its time assailing Catholic adoption agencies for declining to turn children over to homosexual couples. (Islam is generally opposed to adoption except by familial relatives, which might help square this particular circle for Britain's leftists; although Qaradawi has publicly called for homosexuals to be executed.)
Livingstone's debate with Daniel Pipes only amplified the British left's bizarre cognitive-intellectual dissonance.
Do they? I wonder. I also suspect they would have a difference of opinion as to just who the terrorists are.
My thoughts exactly. Daniel Pipes certainly seems to me to understand completely who they are...so I tend to dismiss any debate with a socialist like Livingstone or any leftist out of hand if they think they need to debate Daniel Pipes.
I feel that socialists/leftists do not have the best interests of the free world in mind, so why listen to them?
The Muslims, of course, realize that in the event they are victorious, the lefties won't pose much in the way of difficulties.
To beat them like a red headed step child? To smack them down and make them look like the fools that they are? I'll give Livingstone this, at least he's willing to get on stage and debate a Daniel Pipes. That more than can be said for some I could mention...Jimmy Carter Did I say that outloud?
Daniel Johnson had an excellent report on this in today's NY Sun. Perhaps someone could post this.
I'm gonna go waaaay out on a limb and bet you could! I've got a lot of confidence in you...of course I am dumber than a small pile of rocks [Feel free to disagree at this point], so don't get a swelled head. :-)
You bet wrong.
DARN IT! Well there goes my self esteem. :-(
I simply have no explanation for why the political right in America labors with such effort to AVOID hammering ceaslessly on this most apparent contradiction in leftist afinity therapy. The psychotic break between leftist ideological rhetoric about sexism, feminism, progressivism, atheism, civil rights, human rights, secularism...you know, the whole enchilada...and the forehead slapping obviousness of Islam's insane midieval anachronisms, is clinically schizophrenic.
It is also the achilles heel of the contemporary left. If the right wing had a Pattonesque general, you can bet your mother's portrait that he'd put his tank columns through that soft squishy underbelly in a defibulating second. Hey Patton, you got a lobotomized sector on the enemy front, what's the problem?
What we got here is a clot of cappucino leftists whose existential malaise renders them incapable of palpating their own cojones, so they run up the star and crescent banner and cheer on their surrogate WWF warriors in an orgy of schizoid vicariousness while spectating amiably under their Cinzano umbrellas like country squires at a Piltdown steeplechase.
A day should not go by in which the right wing press does not klondike the lefties on this criminal abandonment of their "sacred" principles; a dereliction which is nothing more than a direct and unmitigated admission of abject existential cowardice.
Hey lefty, where are your Abraham Lincoln Brigades hitchiking their way to Teheran? Where are your volunteer cadres of feminist Lorena Bobbit agitators teaching the "sistah girlfriends" in Kabul how to play 3 Blind Mice?
I want to see some white man Columbia U body parts in the after action backhoe bucket, yo.
Somebody poass this on to Dennis Miller...
Yollopoliuqhui
Agreed. And, yes, you did say that out loud. The same could be said for any of the empty heads on the left.
I have never had much love lost for Christopher Hitchens, the Sovietophile that he is, but boy, I gained a great appreciation for him when I heard him completely evicerate George Galloway in a debate.
But that is a rarity. You are correct...you won't get people like Michael Moore, Jimmy Carter or Maureen Dowd on a debate floor, because the floor will be shiny and clean when the debate is done, and they will be the tool of cleansing.
On the GWOT, I'm not saying I'd clean their clock, I am saying they'd better bring their big boy pads, because they'd know they were in a battle.
And I'm not that bright.
You spend any amount of time here you can't help but get good at debate.
As someone said a number of years ago "Freerepublic.com..where political debate is a contact sport."
Love the tagline.
Thanks! I agree about Free Republic. I appreciate the fact that you are generally not allowed to spout garbage here without being obligated to back it up with rationality.
It forces you to understand the underpinnings of your position and examine them closely, because if they are weak, they will surely be kicked out from under you, or at the very least, be subjected to a degree of intellectual rigor from others who disagree.
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