Posted on 01/25/2002 3:41:39 AM PST by Mean Daddy
Most people have to deal with the reality that confronts them. They start with that reality and try to do the best they can within its limitations and within their own limitations.
But there are large and growing numbers of people -- especially among the intelligentsia -- whose starting point is some abstraction that they wish to apply to reality. For example, even in the face of a worldwide terrorist organization that has declared open warfare on every American man, woman and child, those whose starting point is abstraction focus on the "civil rights" of terrorists.
No one in World War II worried about Hitler's or Goering's civil rights. The very concept would have been considered absurd. Hitler and Goering were not part of our civil world. In fact, they were trying to destroy that world and replace it with their own tyranny. That is exactly what the world terrorist networks are trying to do today.
How can anyone have rights within a framework that he rejects and is trying to destroy? Rights are not just abstractions plucked out of thin air. Rights are part of a whole set of mutual obligations binding people together. If enemy soldiers have any rights, it is as a result of international agreements such as the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. And they have those rights only after they have surrendered and become prisoners of war.
So long as they are still fighting, enemy soldiers do not even have the right to live, without which all other rights are meaningless. If these enemy soldiers have infiltrated wearing civilian clothes or disguised in the uniform of some other country, then they can be killed legally, even after surrendering. Spies have been shot or hanged for centuries.
At one time, all this would have been considered too obvious to require saying. But today, when some people talk blithely about "animal rights," as if animals were part of some system of mutual obligations, even the obvious has to be explained to some of the products of our dumbed-down education.
A sense of decency limits what we do to enemies or to animals, but this is not a matter of rights, civil or otherwise. Nor is it a threat to the rights of American citizens when we fail to treat foreign terrorists as if they were American citizens. Citizens are people who have a legal obligation to play by certain rules, and who are therefore protected by that same national system of rules. But people who are trying to destroy both the citizens and the rules they live by have no such claim.
The hand-wringers among us seem to be worried that foreign terrorists are not being treated as nicely as they would like or that illegal aliens from the Middle East will be "singled out" to be sent back where they came from. In the abstract, there is no more reason to focus on Middle Eastern males than on Scandinavian females, when it comes to deporting illegal aliens. It is just that we do not live in the abstract. We live in the world that exists. And we want to keep on living.
Some of these hand-wringers even seem to think that we have to "set an example" that will vindicate us in the eyes of "world opinion." In short, they put these abstractions first -- ahead of the deadly realities facing us now and in the years ahead.
Why the United States of America needs to vindicate itself in the eyes of the despotic and failing governments that make up much of the rest of the world is a mystery. Whether foreigners will in fact respect us for bending over backward or despise us for our apologetic weakness is another question.
Worse yet, other nations considering whether to cooperate or ally themselves with us -- at some risk to themselves -- will have to consider whether we are dependable and realistic enough to make the gamble worthwhile or whether we are terminally addicted to shibboleths that can jeopardize ourselves and them.
The great political affliction of the 20th century was putting abstractions ahead of flesh-and-blood human beings, especially in ideological totalitarian states under Nazism and Communism. Do we need to repeat that staggering tragedy in the 21st century?
You jerk, Sowell. To think there was a time I admired you. Just what do you think led to the totalitarians? Terrorists? No, my friend. It was when people ceased to believe that government had any responsibility to properly treat people in its custody.
These people have been charged with nothing, convicted of of nothing. In fact, it is almost sure that they, like the thousand other people who gave disappeared into the American gulag, are guilty of nothing.
Yet they are being subjected to psychological torture, undoubtedly with the objective of extracting "confessions", since they manifestly have no useful information. And even if they had been convicted, they are still human beings.
When you cease to care whether government treats human beings as human beings, the gulag is the next step. America is far gone in this direction. Sowell, what happened your humanity? I'm ashamed of you. As I am ashamed of all the people who are about to flame me for these words.
Just to know that someone of your ilk is "ashamed" of me is thanks enough.
You don't have to go that far. Just tell this to a bunch of FReepers right here.
I've never respected liars.
"These people have been charged with nothing, convicted of nothing."
Well, yes – of course! They were not arrested by the police on American soil, so that statement has absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
They were not members of a recognized military force so they do not have POW status.
They are members of a terrorist group that have been turned over to our military.
It is just that we do not live in the abstract. We live in the world that exists. And we want to keep on living.
Sowell is saying that the historical Western principles that you and I were educated in, are indeed the correct ones.
The problem with the people's education nowadays, is that it emphasizes only the principles considered valuable from 1960 on -- hyperegalitarianism, veneration of third world cultures (i.e., multiculturism), submissiveness, radical environment-worship, pacifism, etc., you know, all the hippie, Kumbaya brain-wash we had to suffer through as youths from certain teachers.
But these are NOT the values that made Western Civilization.
They are NOT the values that made the United States the political, social, and economic powerhouse that it is.
Sad to say, the history of Western Civilization, of which the pinnacle is the United States, is one of warfare against barbarians such as the Taliban and other assorted Moose Limbs.
I would humbly submit that your education, to be made whole, would include a healthy dose of independent reading into the history of the West, especially the United States.
You would then see that Sowell's position is absolutely, square, smack-dab, in the middle of that intellectual tradition.
The kumbaya crowd, the Rats, the hippies, radical environmentalists, feminazis, and other assorted scum, are squatters in the West, and in the United States.
Their desire is subterfuge, passive agression, subversion, treason.
They really despise the true West, the true United States, and all it stands for.
They seek to create a utopian Disney-World that never existed, can't exist, and never will exist.
Assuming you are an architect, let me use this metaphor:
You have designed a really beautiful building, it is stunningly original, and it has idealized lines that are simply amazing. It's a really cool building.
Trouble is, structurally it is not strong enough to stand under its own weight. If built as beautifully as you plan, it will fall and kill people.
Sowell would say, 'Don't build the building. It would be crazy to do so.'
Liberals would say, 'Build it. We have principles as architects and aesthetes that we must never, ever surrender, or we will cease to be.'
Reality takes precedence over imagination, in a pinch.
That is the history of man, the West, and the United States.
Liberals absolutely refuse to accept this.
Conservatives accept this.
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