Posted on 11/30/2007 7:22:03 AM PST by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
For midshipmen and alumnae of the U. S. Naval Academy, there are many special places “on the Yard.” The bronze “Tecumseh” statue, the Chapel, John Paul Jones’ tomb, or Herndon monument all come to mind, each infused with history, tradition, and reverent memory. Of all these places, however, none are quite like Memorial Hall, for it is in that soaring marble and hardwood space that every midshipman learns about commitment to duty, and the price of that commitment.
Dominating the Hall is a massive antique flag proclaiming “Don’t Give Up The Ship,” the dying words of Captain James Lawrence in 1813 that later flew over the flagship of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. Bronze and marble statuary line the Hall, testifying to the memory of other fallen heroes. But the most moving testimonies in that architecturally magnificent hall are the names.
Inscribed on the walls and displays are the names of Academy graduates who have fallen in battle and on duty, a mute testimony as powerful as any monument. Few are the midshipmen whose hearts do not skip a beat when they enter Memorial Hall, for it is where they come to understand the cost of duty.
It was also here this week that yet another American president attempted to unravel the deadly threads of the Middle East – a noble task that may be ultimately doomed. Sadly, the names printed on placards for the delegates did not likely represent the same devotion to freedom as those inscribed names that surrounded them during their deliberations.
Even as the Summit progressed, the news was full of examples of why a meeting of the minds on the future of the Middle East may not be feasible. In Sudan, a woman was charged with “inciting hate” for naming a teddy bear “Mohammed.” Iranian President and Apocalyptic Prophet Ahmadinej(ih)ad announced a counter-Summit, inviting only the heads of Islamic terrorist groups. A woman in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to a lashing after being gang-raped.
Such madness is not confined to the neo-caliphates. In France, Arabic youths waged deadly war against police in retribution for a traffic accident. In Denmark, an imam pressed the government to pay sharia-mandated blood money to the family of a murder victim. In the UK, “Piglet” (from “Winnie the Pooh”) and “The Three Little Pigs” were banned to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities.
To observe that a common theme here is Islamic law and Islamic culture does not make the analysis Islamophobic. In fact, tallying it all up to religious extremism is a cheap and easy escape, for there is much more going on here than a culture clash of faiths.
As the Middle Eastern communities have become glutted with oil revenue, there seems to have arisen a sense that they have overrun the Western democracies on our own capitalist terms. With every barrel of oil generating $60-$75 in profit to the nations sitting atop the oil fields, vast wealth has come available to people that have been itching for a comeback since the Caliphate fell.
In the ongoing litany of challenges to Western values and institutions, the undertone is clearly: “Your turn is finished – it is our turn again.” Europeans have heavily subsidized their own demographic marginalization with immigration and welfare policies, and must now deal with large and unassimilated Muslim communities clamoring for Islamic laws and values in their adopted homelands. The Western notion of fair and open societies has been turned into a form of intellectual ju-jitsu to turn aside all debate as hate speech.
The truth is sometimes hateful, and often tragic. The name of my Academy roommate is on that wall in Memorial Hall, along with many others I know. They paid the price for their commitment to the freedoms we hold dear, the very freedoms that are being encroached upon by those who would re-write the Western narrative of liberty and humanity into a re-make of a once and failed empire in the east.
We cannot afford to give up on facing the threat the Middle East poses to the world, but in the process of doing so, we cannot afford to give up the ship that carries the values so many have committed to preserve.
Some things really are carved in stone.
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