The Last Totalitarians - It’s not a completely new war.

National Review Online ^ | 09/28/2001 | Brink Lindsey

[Askel5]

Oh please ... I'm talking about the chesty broads we plaster on billboards to sell liquor, cigs, Coke and whatever we wish in the way of labor-saving devices to which we're addicted over here.

I don't understand where you all keep getting the idea I'm the least bit "unhappy". It's silly. I'm happier now than I've ever been in my life. I have no fear and though I may suffer like (or sometimes more than) others, I generally find it's a great source for wisdom and charity.

By the way ... my Mom admitted the other day to sometimes "feeling like TORIE" when she gets off the phone with me and wonders "what the hell did she just say?"

[habs4ever]

Nonsense, they are blighted and backward, tribal and viscious to their core.As advanced as a feudal society, and as despotic as the Turks of old.So why not say the truth? The have brought it upon themselves.

[Askel5]

Uh, probably shouldn't have quoted the "hell" ... my mother speaks like a lady, actually, and wishes desperately I would as well.

Regards, guy.

[Askel5]

(by the way, does anybody know why our President didn't finger the latter in his epochal speech? I do.)

Eh, wot? I missed this part. Please elaborate.

[Torie]

Well, it is good to hear that you are happy.

So your comment about "dead-eyed decadent" is animated by the arrival of "chesty broads" on TV commercials? I can't really believe that you would ascribe such importance to what to me seems the totally trivial. To each his own I guess.

[Askel5]

The have brought it upon themselves.

I think killing 1.2 million unborn American every year is pretty vicious myself.

I find it strange that we call "hopeful" our use of already been killed human lives rejected for implantation and fit only for the dustbin. Seems a direct rejection of our once "self-evident" truth that all men were created equal.

So why is this "brought it on themselves" reasoning never applied to us?

[sinkspur]

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.

Yea, Askel.

The goatherders are murdering us because WE'RE decadent!

At least Jerry Falwell had the decency to apologize when he blamed his fellow citizens for the death of other citizens.

You're PROUD of your contempt for America!

[Askel5]

I can't really believe that you would ascribe such importance to what to me seems the totally trivial.

Trivial's in the eye of the beholder, baby.

Eyeless In Gaza: Sexual Liberation as Political Control

I realize the Left's been working overtime to galvanize just as neatly as the right our prejudices against Muslim (or Taliban) treatment of women ... I fail to see how our Sadistic view is any more healthy particularly when the fundamental "empowerment" of women is to make them more like men.

Insane.

[Torie]

Btw, I ate at Nola's on Sunday night. What a fantastic restaurant. The night before it was Brightsens, which was also excellent. I also picked up a couple of photographs showing the before and after of the rotunda of the Sarajevo library (the after being after the Serbs had shelled it for 3 days as part of a campaign to stamp out the Muslims culture and literary and intellectual past). I'm getting them framed today. So all in all a most satifactory trip to the Big Ezy. Cheers.

[Askel5]

It is not I who take pride in contempt, you ding-dong. Your posts speaks for themselves.

I have no contempt as a rule for Americans or America ... where "America" speaks to a nation in comport with its founding principles as enumerated in the Declaration.

I'm not going to play games, however, and pretend for a moment our Federal Government has anything particular in common with that document or the Constitution it "interprets" as necessary to accomodate each person's own definition of "IS" where human life is concerned.

Get real. I love my country. I fear my government.

[Askel5]

YOU WERE HERE AND YOU DIDN'T LET ME BUY YOU A DRINK??

I don't know Torie. I think you've finally cut me to the quick.

[Askel5]

(Doncha get the impression there were those among the Serbs specifically charged with "organizing" Muslims by terrorizing them? That's how it works, you know. Take a look at what Israel's accomplished in this respect. From Zero to Sixty in nearly as many years after nearly 400 years of decided decline. Go figure.)

[habs4ever]

I don't disagree with with the abomination that is abortion, and don't avert my eyes to the baseness of our own culture.But right now, we have to preserve our own culture and society as we know it by beating this evil menace, this modern Nazi,so people like you can continue to fight on in the culture wars.Why use this post to argue against our own sinfulness when there is a much bigger enemy right at the gates? This is a crisis, and all other considerations go by the board.So, let's fight these savages together.

[Askel5]

I'M NOT ACCUSING ISRAEL of continued terror, by the way ...

Just it's BEING THERE was the organizing principle.

The terror was only used in part to effect it in the first place: The Evil ... Purposed and Perpetuated ... by Political Murder

[sinkspur]

Get real. I love my country.

You love "America" and hate Americans.

I get it now.

[habs4ever]

He didn't finger the Reds because we still have to deal with the PRC.

[Torie]

Next time. I show up every couple of years or so. I thought about looking up Irma actually, but it was too late, since I don't carry around a laptop.

[tpaine]

Great find, thanks Fury, -- articles like this are the best of FR.

LS, you commented that, according to the article, economics seemed to be at the base of this Isamic war. -- The author sort of made this paragraph as an aside, -- but I think it needs more emphasis. -- I see this war to be about much more than just material concerns. --- This will be a cultural clash, if it goes global.
Almost authoritarian vs libertarian in the FR sense. -- And, - if I understand the author correctly, he says much the same here: --

----- "The Industrial Revolution was the economic expression of a much more general transformation, a radical new form of social order whose defining feature was the embrace of open-ended discovery:
open-endedness in the pursuit of knowledge (provisional and refutable hypotheses supplanting revelation and authority),
open-endedness in economic life (innovation and free-floating market transactions in place of tradition and the "just price"),
open-endedness in politics (power emerging from the people rather than the divine right of kings and hereditary aristocracies),
and open-endedness in life paths (following your dreams instead of knowing your place).
In short, industrialization both advanced and reflected a larger dynamic of liberalization — a dramatic and qualitative shift in the dimensions of social freedom."

[Torie]

Your last two posts (#32 and #34) are lapsing into obscurity again. Just try to say what you really mean. Just let it all hang out. I will wrestle with them when I get home, and have consumed an adult beverage.

[habs4ever]

Why are you having trouble seeing the moral differences between us and them? The treatment of women, for instance.