Posted on 09/28/2001 12:26:25 PM PDT by Fury
What a completely arrogant and wrong-headed analysis.
On the contrary. This is a PERFECT description of the resentment of ordinary Muslims and their religious leaders.
The ayatollahs in Iran have to fight their own people to keep Western influences from their young.
Envy may not be the only reason for Muslim contempt, but it's the primary reason.
I guess the Saudis really give a damn when we bomb Saddam Hussein. Get real.....
Utopians are the enemy ... be they communist, capitalist, theocratic or atheist or merely themost malleable of all ... the strictly materialistic.
Some hallmarks of utopia include: hubris, hate, faith in man, the alchemy of pragmatism, faith without reason (or reason without faith) and -- always -- an ability to distinguish and capitalize on the relative value of certain human lives.
But foremost is the ability to rationalize ... without which the militant atheists might never have struck a bargain to split with the soulless capitalist the baby the eugenicists were birthing for them.
I see no reason whatsoever to believe (as do some libertarians) that capitalism=liberty/democracy and that Lenin's NEP is somehow antithetical to "western materialism". It is not. The militant atheist Rand is a gateway drug of Convergence into rank Materialism for BOTH Left and Right.
There are other celebrated schisms which don't really exist. I see no reason to believe in the ballyhooed Sino-Soviet split. I was blown away by the frankness of Putin's latest surreal pronouncement -- that Germany not let Hitler or the Nazis preclude it from taking its rightful leadership position. All of these -- much less the increasingly communist/fascist profile of our own nation -- suggest the Convergence on which they've been working is proceeding apace.
And if you dare to take a peek at the "spiritual" side of New Age "Noosphere" evil, you'll find that same Convergence at work. It's all of a piece.
I know the lunkheads think I'm lying but I'm not so much a conspiracy theorist as I am convinced that one's take on the essentials of reality -- the infinite value and absolute right to life of every human being, for example -- quite naturally bends a person's actions, intent and convictions into service of the One Side or the Other.
We're sunk, basically. It's not so much that we've been destroyed from within and have no substance or Common Sense left, but our 1.2 million abortions a year and a President that uses a spoonful of Scripture to help the ECSR go down evidence quite clearly that we've actually embraced exactly those fundamentally evil premises which leave us poised to take the next ... and the next ... and the next Reasonable Step.
Besides, failing to be consistently good OR consistently evil, we're at the mercy of those whose Consistent Evil leaves them in the catbird seat of picking and choosing as they please what button to push, what agenda to crank, what faction to support, what "humanitarian" gesture to make, what confusion to cause in the continual and vigilant march toward the same objectives they've always had.
They describe it as being "on rails", you know, while the West waxes about its wishy washy "vision thing". No contest. The light at the end of the tunnel we think we see is the oncoming train what's going to crush us flat.
Envy may not be the only reason for Muslim contempt, but it's the primary reason.
Where do you get these absurd notions?
Just because you're a braindead American doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't full of folks -- however rich or poor, ignorant or educated -- who've sufficient common sense to recognize you and your culture as hopelessly dead-eyed decadent.
Utopian Stumbling Blocks: Government & Property
On Evil Government
Well Askie, let me make a suggestion... It's friday, get outta the house and get down to the quarter and get siht faced drunk...
Where else do you think I got the courage finally to approach the guys at Engine No. 9 to see if they'd be interested in some beef jerky and maybe a cheesecake?
When I say "we" I'm speaking in terms of our Government. Our government is going to be bested at every turn until it assumes and acts on the moral conviction and with the will of which MANY, if not most, of its citizens do.
Our government doesn't particularly "suffer" from the scourge of drugs or the threat of terrorism ... our government grows Bigger and Fatter and More Powerful, from what I can tell.
It's the people who suffer and it's the people who'll grow wise and who'll make the difference. Where there are folks willing to lay down their lives for the liberties and self-evident truths enumerated in our Declaration (and we find them often in exactly those nations who've been under the thumb of dictatorship), we'll win.
Where we just have a bunch of goons who want us to take our Clean Hands bombs and wipe Afghanistan off the face of the earth "in kind", we lose.
I have every faith in the triumph of the human spirit, in the will and ability of individuals ... and in Common Sense. But that faith is not somehow restricted by nationality or ethnicity or faith. The US by NO MEANS has a monopoly on "goodness" ... particularly where the US has contraverted its own founding principles.
Being that it's my signature Puerto Rican Rum cheesecake I'll be making this evening ... it's quite possible both the meat and I will be marinating nicely. A pity you can't come hang -- as do most of my neighbors from time to time -- while doh-poppin' on the porch. I suspect if we sat and talked you might better understand where I'm coming from.
It must be a heavy burden you bear to be so estranged from your culture. Are you really as unhappy a person as you so often sound?
My personal opinion is that in many ways, American culture is less decadent than it once was. Folks as a whole used to be far more brutal in their prejudices, ignorance and bigotry than is largely true at present. And in many ways the average American is more polite and considerate than was true a couple of generations ago. Nor despite the rhetoric, do I think our culture today is more a culture of death than it was in some age past; indeed, I think the reverse is true.
("Where do I begin," asked the nasty witch, cackling and chuckling to herself and throwing her mother's admonition: "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," to the wind.)
"...thus did industrialization beget a massive backlash..."
Let's start with that word--backlash--a favorite word of, for example, totalitarian feminist thinkers as they try to penetrate the inconceivable evidence that some people are not wholly on their side. "Backlash" attempts to contain what may be a RATIONAL CRITIQUE into childish game of crack the whip. Only crayola crayons and thick stick figures are necessary to address a backlash
Bravely the author of this essay, Brink Lindsey, battles his way through a forest of alternative viewpoints--blinkers firmly in place. Like Galahad, he rigorously maintains his intellectual virginity, manfully refusing to acknowledge the presence of the 800 pound cockroach scuttling around noisily in the corner.
Yes folks, along with those dreadful post enlightenment politicalbacklashes--Fascism and Communism (by the way, does anybody know why our President didn't finger the latter in his epochal speech? I do.) another system rose up to do battle with confusion, chaos, dislocation, longing for community, and love of toys.
And who might that be? Could it be that Mr. Lindsey does not see this fast-breeding, large-breasted (odd for a cockroach) THIRD member of the Holy Trinity of modernism because--and I blush to suggest it--he worships this diety and cannot conceive that anyone else on earth has any reservations about his deity?
With this little gem:"...Modernity thus came as a humiliation — a shocking realization that the local culture was hopelessly backward compared with that of the new foreign masters...." our hero attempts to shout down the shadows that are stalking him--tempting him away from a life of clean living, high thinking and sound investing.
The belief that envy motivates every person who rebels against the American Way Of Life is the ultimate juju bead in the arsenal of the Free Marketeer. No other possibility exists in his mind. Not because those possibilites are not there waiting to be examined, but rather because acknowleging the limitations of the Third, and most resilient godhead of the Enlightenement's Holy Trinity will unleash a new...a new....oh dear, say it ain't so....A new Enlightenment. A Great Leap Forward. Something unthinkable, indescribable to the Spenglerian "Matter Of Fact Man".
Self described "conservatives"--who are rejoicing at the "tough talk" of body bags, the "refreshing" secrecy of the military campaign, the lack of a declared war--how old fashioned--, the lack of a certain enemy, the "warm national "unity" dribbling over the country like...well...just like something that dribbles warmly--had better pause and ask themselves for whom the bell tolls. For whom is this "crusade" (that must not speak its name) being waged? Upon whose altar stone are we offering ouselves as sacrifices?
independentmind, when a civilization is nearing extinction, it is indeed shallow to characterize the prevailing emotion as envy. The once great militant Arab civilization is fighting for survival, desperately.
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