Posted on 05/19/2004 2:54:18 AM PDT by Theodore R.
What do we offer the world?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 19, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
"So, how do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?" asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory will be theirs as well."
Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world" was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the "Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison.
Indeed, the filmed orgies among U.S. military police outside the cells of Iraqi prisoners, the S&M humiliation of Muslim men, the sexual torment of their women raise a question. Exactly what are the "values" the West has to teach the Islamic world?
"This war ... is about – deeply about – sex," declaims neocon Charles Krauthammer. Militant Islam is "threatened by the West because of our twin doctrines of equality and sexual liberation."
But whose "twin doctrines" is Krauthammer talking about? The sexual liberation he calls our doctrine belongs to a '60s revolution that devout Christians, Jews and Muslims have been resisting for years.
What does Krauthammer mean by sexual liberation? The right of "tweeners" and teenage girls to dress and behave like Britney Spears? Their right to condoms in junior high? Their right to abortion without parental consent?
If conservatives reject the "equality" preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary?
In June 2002 at West Point, President Bush said, "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time and in every place."
But even John Kerry does not agree with George Bush on the morality of homosexual unions and stem-cell research. On such issues, conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats.
The president notwithstanding, Americans no longer agree on what is moral truth. For as someone said a few years back, there is a cultural war going on in this country – a religious war. It is about who we are, what we believe and what we stand for as a people.
What some of us view as the moral descent of a great and Godly republic into imperial decadence, neocons see as their big chance to rule the world.
In Georgia, recently, the president declared to great applause: "I can't tell you how proud I am of our commitment to values. ... That commitment to values is going to be an integral part of our foreign policy as we move forward. These aren't American values, these are universal values. Values that speak universal truths."
But what universal values is he talking about? If he intends to impose the values of MTV America on the Muslim world in the name of a "world democratic revolution," he will provoke and incite a war of civilizations America cannot win because Americans do not want to fight it. This may be the neocons' war. It is not our war.
When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish "The Satanic Verses" – a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?
When the president speaks of freedom, does he mean the First Amendment prohibition against our children reading the Bible and being taught the Ten Commandments in school?
If the president wishes to fight a moral crusade, he should know the enemy is inside the gates. The great moral and cultural threats to our civilization come not from outside America, but from within. We have met the enemy, and he is us. The war for the soul of America is not going to be lost or won in Fallujah.
Unfortunately, Pagan America of 2004 has far less to offer the world in cultural fare than did Christian America of 1954. Many of the movies, books, magazines, TV shows, videos and much of the music we export to the world are as poisonous as the narcotics the Royal Navy forced on the Chinese people in the Opium Wars.
A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of "American values."
They do not do it because of superior virtues of America. They do it to escape poverty and to have food on the table.
Including Islamics themselves. Too many who are so eager to come in --- legally or otherwise aren't joining up with the military and have no desire to fight for freedom, they didn't fight for it back home. With our wide array of Socialist programs, too many --- not all --- are coming for those. Why work hard and sacrifice to get ahead when you can demand free college along with everything else?
Pat pretty much nails it once again. The world does not even remotely resemble the cartoonish vision of good and evil spewed forth by Bush or in the stunningly simplistic rants of children like Perle and Frum.
America has a lot of house cleaning of it's own to do.
Woah! you've read something into my statement that wasn't my intention, but quite the opposite.
America's representation of "freedom" today can easily be misconstrued by foreigners to mean abortion, queer marriage, judges incapable of defining "obscene", corruption of government officials, and in general, the incapacity to define - let alone represent - morality.
America has a greater capability of responsibility than what she's demonstrating.
Ouch.
A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of "American values."
Bullseye.
As a first step in righting the ship, we need to drive all pro-abortion and pro-homosexual "marriage" candidates out of the Republican party.
Nazism was defeated by the Soviets (and by the Russians who were the main nation within the Soviet Union). Americans protected Western Europe from Soviet rule.
Some of us have been predicting for years that Pat would go the Lord Haw Haw route. I should have taken bets on that from some of the Patsies; I'd be able to pay for the next round of furniture shopping from the proceeds....
Amen to that. This column is a far more eloquent explanation than I could ever come up with as to why the "cultural conservatives" need to be held in check just as much as Hillary Rodham Clinton and her crowd. I think I would rather deal with stuff like Howard Stern's radio show and Britney Spears frenching Madonna than see the America folks like Buchanan would create.
This column also proves that the paleoconservatives have gone over to the enemy.
Go, Pat, go... TO HELL.
I did not that Saudies are friends of Buchanan. Are you sure?
No Pat,
He means that girls should be allowed to learn to read and attend school. He means the right of a woman not to be beaten if she goes out unveiled. He means women having the same legal rights in the courts as the men do.
Let's cut to the chase. The items on your list offend Pat Buchanan every bit as much as the items he had the nerve to put in writing.
We're not helping Africa defend itself from Islam --- large portions are being overrun, many people being killed and no one seems to care.
bump...think about later...off to work.
Great quote. Is this from his speech at Harvard?
It doesn't take much "pondering" of this sentence to conclude that Pat, like anybody else who believes that there once was a time when all Americans agreed on what is moral truth, is an ignoramus.
Bump. The problem I think that is happening in certain situations is that the heathen in foreign lands are not always given a choice whether or not to accept this culture's version of 'freedom'.
When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish "The Satanic Verses" – a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?
THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of England, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put in force against political discussion, except during some temporary panic, when fear of insurrection drives ministers and judges from their propriety; and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries, to be apprehended, that the government, whether completely responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to control the expression of opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" (1869)
I always heard where 3 or 4 Baptists are gathered there's always a fifth.
Piffle. This is precisely the argument used by leftists to denegrate the Founders of the Republic (they stole the land from the natives and some of them owned slaves; therefore, they were no-good Dead White Males).
Some moral values are consistent among cultures, such as not committing murder, theft, assault, or fraud. They can better be described as "ethics".
This looks like a contradiction to me. All you've done is called "morals," "ethics." In reality, there is no difference.
It is precisely because of the superior virtues of America (e.g. a rule of law that protects individual property and liberty) that is is economically prosperous. I can't believe that I have to explain this here, of all places.
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