Kevin, I printed that out earlier today at the office, and made a half-dozen copies to leave on all the libtard desks there, as well as one for one on "our side" who will surely distribute it further.
Having read it twice through, I can say but "amen" and "amen".
I recall a book from the '70s called "The Spike". I think by, DeBorchegrave (sp?). And DeMille's "The Charm School".
Hilarious. So, all the people that want peace in America are actually going to destroy America? They all hate America right? Good Lord, what a load of propaganda. Kevin, did you ever stop and think that some of these "Peace" people want us to stop behaving like criminals in the world and start behaving like the morally superior nation we should be striving to be?
America's economic policies in the world are some of (not all) the reasons why we are hated in the world. Folks who post here are fond of saying, "Listen to your enemy." Well, did anyone here listen to bin Laden when he said that the chief reason for Al Qaeda declaring war on America was our economic relationship with Saudi Arabia?
Until we start to take responsibility for our actions in the world, admit that some of them are doing real harm, and become a force of good (not evil), we are going to continue to be attacked. There is a large difference (a chasm actually) between defending yourselves against true evil in the world and justifying horrendous actions through jingoistic fear mongering based on half truths and a complete denial of responsibility.
Oh,and Orwell. Cripes...in the first line of his article Bawer basically says...
"So, all the people that want peace in America are actually going to destroy America? They all hate America right?"
(*sigh*) No, Mark, not all of them. The majority are just "useful idiots" lead around by the nose by the leadership that hates America and wants to see it defeated and destroyed. Many state so explicitly.
Take your blinders off and READ THE PIECE. Then read the pieces linked in the post above. For example:
"Perhaps the most indignant came, with impressive alacrity, on 13 September in my daily newspaper, the voice of liberal Britain, the Guardian. 'Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington,' wrote Seumas Milne, 'it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it... Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent.'
"One doesn't need to work for a newspaper - though it probably helps - to realise that Milne was underselling his own speed of analytical thought. To get his piece published on the 13th meant that he would have needed to have completed it by around 6pm or 7pm on the 12th. Allowing for its considered tone, which must have been the product of several hours of sober reflection, it would be fair to assume that he would have begun writing it, at the latest, at around 2pm. In other words, at about 9am New York time. That left the Americans a whole 24 hours to absorb the shock, deal with the grief and then move on to some cold, hard self-criticism. And they flunked it.
"Milne's savaging of American self-absorption was the most conspicuous example of an attitude that could be heard in plenty of sophisticated conversations, or should I say conversations between sophisticated people, and read in a number of left or liberal publications.
"What all these reactions had in common, I realised, was not complexity but simplicity. For all of them this was an issue of the powerless striking back at the powerful, the oppressed against the oppressor, the rebels against the imperialists. It was Han Solo and Luke Skywalker taking on the Death Star. There was no serious attempt to examine what kind of power the powerless wanted to assume, or over whom they wanted to exercise it, and no one thought to ask by what authority these suicidal killers had been designated the voice of the oppressed. It was enough that Palestinians had danced in the West Bank. The scale of the suffering, the innocence of the victims and the aims of the perpetrators barely seemed to register in many of the comments. Was this a sign of shock or complacency? Or was it something else, a kind of atrophying of moral faculties, brought on by prolonged use of fixed ideas, that prevented the sufferer from recognising a new paradigm when it arrived, no matter how spectacular its announcement?
"In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true? I tried hard to suppress this thought, to ring-fence the global situation, grant it exceptional status and keep it in a separate part of my mind. I had too much vested in my image of myself as a 'liberal'. I had bought into the idea, for instance, that all social ills stemmed from inequality and racism. I knew that crime was solely a function of poverty. That to be British was cause for shame, never pride. And to be white was to bear an unshakable burden of guilt. I held the view, or at least was unprepared to challenge it, that it was wrong to single out any culture for censure, except, of course, Western culture, which should be admonished at every opportunity. I was confident, too, that Israel was the source of most of the troubles in the Middle East. These were non-negotiables for any right-thinking decent person. I couldn't question these received wisdoms without questioning my own identity. And I had grown too comfortable with seeing myself as one of the good guys, the well-meaning people, to want to do anything that upset that image. I viewed myself as understanding, and to maintain that self-perception it was imperative that I didn't try to understand myself.
"In a sense 11 September was the ultimate mugging, a murderous assertion of a new reality, or rather a reality that already existed but which we preferred not to see. Over the years I had absorbed a notion of liberalism that was passive, defeatist, guilt-ridden. Feelings of guilt governed my world view: post-colonial guilt, white guilt, middle-class guilt, British guilt. But if I was guilty, 9/11 shattered my innocence. More than anything it challenged us all to wake up and open our eyes to what was real. It took me far too long to meet that challenge. For while I realised almost straight away that 9/11 would change the world, it would be several years before I accepted that it had also changed me. I had been wrong."
Replace "British" with "American" in that excerpt, and you just described a lot of American liberals, too.
And I guess that is really the difference between you and me, Kevin. I think there are useful idiots being lead around on both sides. I am not going to deny that there are liberal idiots out there who don't understand the threat of the Islamist. I argue with them at parties all the time.
There are also conservtiave idiots who have a staggeringly naive view of American Foreign and Economic Policy in the world and it's implications on global conflict. These same people will believe ALL of the propaganda fed to them by the people who have the most to lose from peace. Why?
Because they have hard time admitting when they are wrong.
"And I guess that is really the difference between you and me, Kevin. I think there are useful idiots being lead around on both sides."
No, Mark, what you're seeing is our difference in basic philosophy. I, too, recognize that there are useful idiots on the Right. An anonymous quote for you:
"The only thing worse than knee-jerk conservatism is knee-jerk liberalism.
"At least with knee-jerk conservatism you know what the problems will be after you take their advice."
When you figure out how to make religious zealots want peace, please let me know. (Think about that line carefully before you reply.)
I think that the religous zealots in the Muslim world suffer from the same delusion that some people suffer from in our neck of the woods: their culture is perfect and the one that must be forced upon the rest of the world in order for good to triumph over evil. Obviously, I think they are wrong.
You see a threat in our media, our schools, and in some parts of our government. That threat, the liberal threat, is destroying our country and helping our enemies. I see this as a sham created by people who don't want us to notice them going about their business, the chief tenet of which is stay in power no matter what you have to do.
If Bruce Bawer really wanted to help defeat our enemies, he would figure out the best way to "swiftboat" Al Qaeda in the eyes of the Muslim world, many of which are aching for a better way of life than what they are currently being offerered. Iran would be an excellent example of this. Of course, like Karl Rove, he's not smart enough to do this so he goes for the easy victim: the America Hatin' liberal. And, in doing so, accomplishes the bidding of his masters.
"If Bruce Bawer really wanted to help defeat our enemies, he would figure out the best way to "swiftboat" Al Qaeda in the eyes of the Muslim world, many of which are aching for a better way of life than what they are currently being offered."
The Swiftboat veterans pointed out the inconsistencies in the record of a man they had served with decades ago and despised ever since. They even got him to acknowledge at least one of them.
The best way to "swiftboat" Al Qaeda is to create a successful Muslim society in which various sects and nationalities can progress together. We are making progress on that in Iraq.
"I think that the religous zealots in the Muslim world suffer from the same delusion that some people suffer from in our neck of the woods: their culture is perfect and the one that must be forced upon the rest of the world in order for good to triumph over evil. Obviously, I think they are wrong."
I could give a crap what culture the rest of the world finds itself adopting, as long as they leave us the hell alone. Not going to happen though, since we're the root of all that is evil in the world and thus too easy a target. I don't see us forcing anything else on the rest of the world, except in Iraq, where we traded dictatorship for democracy, but as far as you're concerned, Mark, that's just as bad as Al Qaeda's world vision, right? Well, if it's all crap, what's YOUR solution?
Above in the latest post entitled I Call Bullshit....
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2007/08/strongly-recommended-read.html (15 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Kevin, I printed that out earlier today at the office, and made a half-dozen copies to leave on all the libtard desks there, as well as one for one on "our side" who will surely distribute it further.
Having read it twice through, I can say but "amen" and "amen".
I recall a book from the '70s called "The Spike". I think by, DeBorchegrave (sp?). And DeMille's "The Charm School".
Rang true, rings true.
Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Beautiful, and perfectly succint.
A 'pacifist' is just someone who has stood up and announced to the world that nothing good is worth fighting for.
Rather than being highly moral, as it's practitioners wish to believe themselves, it is (ironically?) a profoundly nihilist philosophy.
Hilarious. So, all the people that want peace in America are actually going to destroy America? They all hate America right? Good Lord, what a load of propaganda. Kevin, did you ever stop and think that some of these "Peace" people want us to stop behaving like criminals in the world and start behaving like the morally superior nation we should be striving to be?
America's economic policies in the world are some of (not all) the reasons why we are hated in the world. Folks who post here are fond of saying, "Listen to your enemy." Well, did anyone here listen to bin Laden when he said that the chief reason for Al Qaeda declaring war on America was our economic relationship with Saudi Arabia?
Until we start to take responsibility for our actions in the world, admit that some of them are doing real harm, and become a force of good (not evil), we are going to continue to be attacked. There is a large difference (a chasm actually) between defending yourselves against true evil in the world and justifying horrendous actions through jingoistic fear mongering based on half truths and a complete denial of responsibility.
Oh,and Orwell. Cripes...in the first line of his article Bawer basically says...
War is Peace. Peace is War.
"So, all the people that want peace in America are actually going to destroy America? They all hate America right?"
(*sigh*) No, Mark, not all of them. The majority are just "useful idiots" lead around by the nose by the leadership that hates America and wants to see it defeated and destroyed. Many state so explicitly.
Take your blinders off and READ THE PIECE. Then read the pieces linked in the post above. For example:
"Perhaps the most indignant came, with impressive alacrity, on 13 September in my daily newspaper, the voice of liberal Britain, the Guardian. 'Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington,' wrote Seumas Milne, 'it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it... Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent.'
"One doesn't need to work for a newspaper - though it probably helps - to realise that Milne was underselling his own speed of analytical thought. To get his piece published on the 13th meant that he would have needed to have completed it by around 6pm or 7pm on the 12th. Allowing for its considered tone, which must have been the product of several hours of sober reflection, it would be fair to assume that he would have begun writing it, at the latest, at around 2pm. In other words, at about 9am New York time. That left the Americans a whole 24 hours to absorb the shock, deal with the grief and then move on to some cold, hard self-criticism. And they flunked it.
"Milne's savaging of American self-absorption was the most conspicuous example of an attitude that could be heard in plenty of sophisticated conversations, or should I say conversations between sophisticated people, and read in a number of left or liberal publications.
"What all these reactions had in common, I realised, was not complexity but simplicity. For all of them this was an issue of the powerless striking back at the powerful, the oppressed against the oppressor, the rebels against the imperialists. It was Han Solo and Luke Skywalker taking on the Death Star. There was no serious attempt to examine what kind of power the powerless wanted to assume, or over whom they wanted to exercise it, and no one thought to ask by what authority these suicidal killers had been designated the voice of the oppressed. It was enough that Palestinians had danced in the West Bank. The scale of the suffering, the innocence of the victims and the aims of the perpetrators barely seemed to register in many of the comments. Was this a sign of shock or complacency? Or was it something else, a kind of atrophying of moral faculties, brought on by prolonged use of fixed ideas, that prevented the sufferer from recognising a new paradigm when it arrived, no matter how spectacular its announcement?
"In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true? I tried hard to suppress this thought, to ring-fence the global situation, grant it exceptional status and keep it in a separate part of my mind. I had too much vested in my image of myself as a 'liberal'. I had bought into the idea, for instance, that all social ills stemmed from inequality and racism. I knew that crime was solely a function of poverty. That to be British was cause for shame, never pride. And to be white was to bear an unshakable burden of guilt. I held the view, or at least was unprepared to challenge it, that it was wrong to single out any culture for censure, except, of course, Western culture, which should be admonished at every opportunity. I was confident, too, that Israel was the source of most of the troubles in the Middle East. These were non-negotiables for any right-thinking decent person. I couldn't question these received wisdoms without questioning my own identity. And I had grown too comfortable with seeing myself as one of the good guys, the well-meaning people, to want to do anything that upset that image. I viewed myself as understanding, and to maintain that self-perception it was imperative that I didn't try to understand myself.
"In a sense 11 September was the ultimate mugging, a murderous assertion of a new reality, or rather a reality that already existed but which we preferred not to see. Over the years I had absorbed a notion of liberalism that was passive, defeatist, guilt-ridden. Feelings of guilt governed my world view: post-colonial guilt, white guilt, middle-class guilt, British guilt. But if I was guilty, 9/11 shattered my innocence. More than anything it challenged us all to wake up and open our eyes to what was real. It took me far too long to meet that challenge. For while I realised almost straight away that 9/11 would change the world, it would be several years before I accepted that it had also changed me. I had been wrong."
Replace "British" with "American" in that excerpt, and you just described a lot of American liberals, too.
And I guess that is really the difference between you and me, Kevin. I think there are useful idiots being lead around on both sides. I am not going to deny that there are liberal idiots out there who don't understand the threat of the Islamist. I argue with them at parties all the time.
There are also conservtiave idiots who have a staggeringly naive view of American Foreign and Economic Policy in the world and it's implications on global conflict. These same people will believe ALL of the propaganda fed to them by the people who have the most to lose from peace. Why?
Because they have hard time admitting when they are wrong.
"And I guess that is really the difference between you and me, Kevin. I think there are useful idiots being lead around on both sides."
No, Mark, what you're seeing is our difference in basic philosophy. I, too, recognize that there are useful idiots on the Right. An anonymous quote for you:
"The only thing worse than knee-jerk conservatism is knee-jerk liberalism.
"At least with knee-jerk conservatism you know what the problems will be after you take their advice."
When you figure out how to make religious zealots want peace, please let me know. (Think about that line carefully before you reply.)
I think that the religous zealots in the Muslim world suffer from the same delusion that some people suffer from in our neck of the woods: their culture is perfect and the one that must be forced upon the rest of the world in order for good to triumph over evil. Obviously, I think they are wrong.
You see a threat in our media, our schools, and in some parts of our government. That threat, the liberal threat, is destroying our country and helping our enemies. I see this as a sham created by people who don't want us to notice them going about their business, the chief tenet of which is stay in power no matter what you have to do.
If Bruce Bawer really wanted to help defeat our enemies, he would figure out the best way to "swiftboat" Al Qaeda in the eyes of the Muslim world, many of which are aching for a better way of life than what they are currently being offerered. Iran would be an excellent example of this. Of course, like Karl Rove, he's not smart enough to do this so he goes for the easy victim: the America Hatin' liberal. And, in doing so, accomplishes the bidding of his masters.
Mark, you may have just inspired another one of my signature epic-length posts.
"If Bruce Bawer really wanted to help defeat our enemies, he would figure out the best way to "swiftboat" Al Qaeda in the eyes of the Muslim world, many of which are aching for a better way of life than what they are currently being offered."
The Swiftboat veterans pointed out the inconsistencies in the record of a man they had served with decades ago and despised ever since. They even got him to acknowledge at least one of them.
The best way to "swiftboat" Al Qaeda is to create a successful Muslim society in which various sects and nationalities can progress together. We are making progress on that in Iraq.
Iraq? Um...what? Do you know anyone who has been to or currently is in Iraq?
How about some of these people?
Like, for example, this guy?
Or this one?
Will they do?
"I think that the religous zealots in the Muslim world suffer from the same delusion that some people suffer from in our neck of the woods: their culture is perfect and the one that must be forced upon the rest of the world in order for good to triumph over evil. Obviously, I think they are wrong."
I could give a crap what culture the rest of the world finds itself adopting, as long as they leave us the hell alone. Not going to happen though, since we're the root of all that is evil in the world and thus too easy a target. I don't see us forcing anything else on the rest of the world, except in Iraq, where we traded dictatorship for democracy, but as far as you're concerned, Mark, that's just as bad as Al Qaeda's world vision, right? Well, if it's all crap, what's YOUR solution?
Kevin B, I posted a response to your links above...
Kevin S, read through my blog. There are several posts about how I would handle things differently.
Above in the latest post entitled I Call Bullshit....
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>