If Bush would come out and say that Militant Islam is our enemy, and we will defeat it. The Public will rally around our president, and so will the non-islamofascist world.
The Perils of Designer Tribalism***The universalization-which is to say the utter trivialization-of compassion is one side of Third Worldism. Another side is the inversion of traditional moral and intellectual values. Europe once sought to bring enlightenment-literacy, civil society, modern technology-to benighted parts of the world. It did so in the name of progress and civilization. The ethic of Third Worldism dictates that yesterday's enlightenment be rebaptized as today's imperialistic oppression. For the committed Third Worldist, Bruckner points out,
salvation consists not only in a futile exchange of influences, but in the recognition of the superiority of foreign thought, in the study of their doctrines, and in conversion to their dogma. We must take on our former slaves as our models. . . . It is the duty and in the interest of the West to be made prisoner by its own barbarians.
Whatever the current object of adulation- the wisdom of the East, tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, pre-Columbian America -the message is the same: the absolute superiority of Otherness. The Third Worldist looks to the orient, to the tribal, to the primitive not for what they really are but for their evocative distance from the reality of modern European society and values.***
Mark Steyn: Multiculturalists are the real racists***Once upon a time we knew what to do. A British district officer, coming upon a scene of suttee, was told by the locals that in Hindu culture it was the custom to cremate a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. He replied that in British culture it was the custom to hang chaps who did that sort of thing. There are many great things about India -- curry, pyjamas, sitars, software engineers -- but suttee was not one of them. What a pity we're no longer capable of being "judgmental" and "discriminating." We're told the old-school imperialists were racists, that they thought of the wogs as inferior. But, if so, they at least considered them capable of improvement. The multiculturalists are just as racist. The only difference is that they think the wogs can never reform: Good heavens, you can't expect a Muslim in Norway not to go about raping the womenfolk! Much better just to get used to it.
As one is always obliged to explain when tiptoeing around this territory, I'm not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture -- rule of law, universal suffrage, etc. -- is preferable to Arab culture: that's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation. Without it, like a Hindu widow, we're slowly climbing on the funeral pyre of our lost empires. You see it in European foreign policy already: they're scared of their mysterious, swelling, unstoppable Muslim populations.***
Thank you, Mark Steyn. I am so tired of hearing that "we" (we always being white of European ancestry) must bear the sins and guilts of everyone else's failures. Is it wrong (I would have said sin, but Christianity is out) to say that I'm proud to be white? In today's *culture*, it is. We may be in danger of suiciding ourselves, due to white left-wing BS.
But the most apropos line was from Lehrer's introduction to that song. He said, "There are people in this world who do not love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that."
Congressman Billybob
I know one thing, I hate the NEA!! and I do think they should be put into internment camps.
Yes, but the lefty elites are crafting this stuff. I don't think it's mere insensitivity for many, but active hatred for "Americans" and displaced obsession or identification of the "other", distant enough to think they control them, at least in domestic discourse. They are filters, and planes into buildings, plus the internet, is making it hard for them to maintain authority. So they lash out - first was the "root causes" innuendo, which failed because the root causes people found came out of Saudi, not America, apparent to all. Next is the deflection to perceived American failures in the past, which is already part of their controlled discourse. WWII, for example. The only facts relevant to them are the internment camp and atomic bomb, which they perceive as "trumping" all the good deeds of America in that war. That's why they hype these facts, omit 99% of other information. If it doesn't further the project of maintaining an anti-American discourse, it is omitted, or red herrings and deflection are used to combat it.
"The old-time commies at least used to go to a bit of effort to tell the Western leftie intellectuals what they wanted to hear. The Islamists, by contrast, cheerfully piss all over every cherished Western progressive shibboleth. "
The important point is not that the Islamists say this, but that Western leftie intellectuals aren't listening, or are filtering the info. With the net, this is harder to do. I've noticed some leftie suppression campaigns lately about Memri.org and other groups who translate what Arabs say in Arabic...the attack is usually they are "Zionists."
At least we don't hear the "You're censoring me" thing from lefties anymore - translated: "I have nothing to say that doesn't sound stupid to any average Joe, so it's your fault."
When the "Crusade on Terror" was rechristened the "War on Terror" I started to worry a lot.
Steyn started out reasonably enough, but then stuff such as the above crept in and he flipped out. I think Bush as been skillful in pursuing the right balance between the carrot and the stick. I don't think it is in the US's best interests to declare a cultural war against Islam, even if we think that Islam has certain dysfunctional characteristics in a modern pluralistic capitalist world. Steyn misses all this nuance. Bush is right, and Steryn is wrong. Steyn is smarter than Bush in IQ no doubt, but he is not as wise. I am glad Bush is president and not Steryn. JMO.
After listening to the response President Bush is getting out in California... he isn't loosing anything. It was exciting to listen to the crowds respond to the war on terror, the democratic Congress.
Yes, I realize that it was a Republican crowd... but I haven't heard enthusiasm like that for a long time.
Steyn hits a home run with the essay as a whole, but the above line is a clinker.
While there wasn't a huge "backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf war", it's silly to go too far the other direction and say that it was "entirely mythical".
For example, here in Houston there was a long-established, well-known, successful business named "Bagdad Carpets", which specialized in persian-style rugs and other related home furnishings. I doubt they had much, if anything, to do with Iraq at all -- the name was clearly chosen years before in reference to old-time Bagdad as a capital of trade and "Ali Baba" style art.
Nonetheless, during the Gulf war the company finally had to tape large cardboard sheets over the name "Bagdad" on their delivery vans after at least two incidents in which drivers were beaten up by people with more zeal than brains.
I was aware of this mostly because the company was based right across the street from where I worked at the time, and I couldn't help but notice their cardboard-obscured vans. But surely if two independent attacks were directed at a target so close to "home", there must have been quite a few more scattered around the city and country.
That's not to say it was a veritable epidemic, but such acts clearly weren't "entirey mythical", either, as Steyn asserts.