Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2
Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 2
All politics is local. The Left in the United States has been silent on the cartoon riots. Various reasons have been put forth as to why. The most likely one is that the Left is having a problem with cognitive dissonance. The Left in this country has attempted to frame the War on Terror as a secular policy dispute. I mean, the Left has tried to make out like the Muslims are victims. The thinking goes, if we in the West would just abandon some of the foreign policies we have, then the Muslims will go away.
The flag burnings and the violent protests flies in the face of that assertion. How can you say that the grievance against the West are secular when the Muslims are burning buildings and killing people over religion? If that isn't a classic case of "I can't believe that this is happening", I don't know what is.
Look at the double bind that the Left is in when they view this battle. The American Civil Liberties Union has campaigned to make awful depictions of Jesus a protected rights. If they come out against any depictions of Mohammed, how can they justify their entire campaign against religion in the public square? Boy, would that be kind of weird. I'm sure they could do it, but it would undercut their other projects.
What I am trying to get across to the people on the Left is that they have misinterpreted the symbols of the War on Terror. Radical Islam means it when they say that they want to rule over all of the world. They really and truly want to establish the new Caliphate. And you have to understand that the symbol called Caliphate is not what you would expect. It is not just a polity, a nation state. It is a Utopian dream. The establishment of the new Caliphate would be the culmination of all the dreams of the majority of Muslims. Most Muslims at least give lip service to the concept of Ummah, the community of Muslims. The problem in the past with pan-Arabism and all its off shoots has been that the rulers in the Middle East have been so strong that attacking them seemed silly.
Think about it. The European press and the American press tried to say that Afghanistan would be a quagmire... that the brutal Afghan winter would destroy our chances of winning. The U.S. destroyed the Taliban in Afghanistan in a couple of months.
Saddam roared his defiance to the world. He looked to the Muslims to have recovered from Gulf War I. Seven weeks in 2003 and he was running for his life. In December of 2003, we had him in custody after digging him out of his spider hole.
To people in radical Islam this is fantastic, because it tells them that they have a chance of replacing the weak willed rulers of present day Muslim states with strong willed people like Osama bin Lauden. Osama bin Lauden famously said that when people see a weak horse and compare it to a strong horse of course they want to ride the strong horse.
We look at Saudi Arabia and see the most repressive regime in the world. There is no toleration of other religions. The refuse to allow women to drive. They have a religious police who wander around and hit people for religious infractions. Saudi Arabia beheads people for offenses that Americans can barely understand... Yet... Radical Islam considers Saudi Arabia to be a liberal state.
No, I am not making that up. There is too much evidence to the contrary. Saudi Arabia has cozied up to the West too much. The Saudi royal family is too secular for the average radical Muslim. The Saudis are considered to be hedonists who would sell their mothers for wealth. Most people on the Left do... not... understand that.
If Saudi Arabia is a liberal hell for radical Islam, what would the new Caliphate be like? Radical Islam is not kidding. They want the Caliphate to be reborn. Initially, the Caliphate would be from Algeria to Indonesia, then of course it would spread over all the world. Why? Well, it is in the Koran as far as they can see.
I guy I read about produced a video that said in fact that all of the beheadings and rape and pillage that the jihadis have been doing is in the Koran. He got a humongous number of emails from people who said that he was mistaken. They said that Islam was a Religion of Peace. The guy said that he agreed that for the person sending the email Islam is a Religion of Peace. The thing is that the people in radical Islam see in the Koran justification for all their deeds.
There is one strain of radical Islam I looked into a while back. This groups said that they were doing God's will because God did not stop them from killing murdering and raping in God's name. They, in fact, specifically denied that free will exists.
Many of you out there have never even heard of the concept of free will in the religious context. The thinking here is that God gave us the right to do Good or to do Evil. If we do Good, then we shall go to Heaven. If we do Evil, we shall go to hell. In short, you are given the right to Choose.
Predestination says that God guides all our steps and everything we do is ordained by God. Every single action is a manifestation of God's will. This means that we are absolved of all bad behavior, because God is doing it. We have no control over our lives, our destinies, nothing.
This group of jihadis I am talking about has taken a middle road. Their belief is that God has veto powers. By adopting this approach they are absolved of all guilt. They can in this life do ANYTHING they want on the path of jihad and be assured that they are doing God's will.
I draw your attention to the jihadis who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center. When the FBI looked at their credit card activity, they found quite a few lap dances and alcohol purchases on the cards they looked into. Isn't that a great philosophy, do as you want and get rewarded in Heaven for it with 72 virgins, because you died on the path of jihad?
Wait, I am not saying that all Muslims believe this. I am just saying there are various groups of jihadis out there who have wildly different views as to what is correct behavior. Each group and individual makes the case that their approach to life is in the Koran. Other Muslims cry out saying that radical Islam is mistaken. The ones who dissent are ignored, because they have no power.
It's all kind of weird when you get right down to it. Each of the various strains of Christianity have a central authority that decides on what is and what is not correct doctrine for their particular type of Christianity. In Islam, I have never heard of a central authority like that, but it really doesn't matter because the jihadis are going to do as they do with or without the consent of any central control. Just as that nutjob who blew up the abortion clinic a while back for Christian beliefs, so are there nutjobs in Islam who believe they have justification to do just about anything they want to based on their reading of the Koran.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with the ambassador of Libya to Great Britain. These two future presidents asked the guy why Libya was attacking American ships. Jefferson and Adams made the case that the U.S. were not at war with Libya, so what was the deal? The Libyan ambassador said that they were just doing God's will. Non-Muslims were supposed to acknowledge the primacy of Islam. By paying tribute, the fledgling United States could avoid the wrath of Islam and at the same time show proper respect for the One True Faith. The U.S. decided to pay tribute rather than fight. By the Time Jefferson became President in 1800, the bill for the tribute was VERY high. Jefferson sent the Marines to Tripoli. It didn't work. It took twenty years and three wars before the Barbary Pirates were defeated.
The point I am making is that this view of jihad is not new. It is mainstream thought among Muslims. The only difference between moderate Muslims and radical Muslims is that the moderates want world domination, but at a slower pace than radical Islam. If there are liberal Muslims, they are not in the majority. Look, you need to go out to www.memri.org and look through the translations of some of the speeches by so-called moderates in Arabic. You will be surprised how different the English speeches are versus the Arabic versions are. And I am not saying that all members of Islam are bomb throwing crazies. I am saying that the good hearted people of Islam have no voice. They are totally quailed by their more fanatical brethren and would never think to speak up against them in the normal course of their lives.
Liberalism in this country looks at radical Islam and sees victims opposing an oppressor. For anyone with any intelligence, this week has been an eye opener, because it says that radical Islam is a worse oppressor than any denomination of Christian you can name. When has there be street riots like this over cartoons depiction Jesus as... well, anything? I mean, there have been so MANY depictions of Jesus in various scandalous positions. Why hasn't there been rioting in the streets, if, as the ACLU promotes, fundamentalist Christians are out to silence their critics?
I have in the past harped on the reaction the Dixie Chicks received when they criticized George Bush. What happened next? They went on every magazine and television show who would book them and complained about being censored. What were they afraid of? What does the radical Left say they are afraid of when they speak out? Look again, the radical Left is frightened that Conservatives will say bad things about them. They are frightened that they will have to debate their beliefs. They may indeed get death threats, but there is no organized physical attacks against the Dixie Chicks at this late date. They are back to making records. They are performing. Most of their fans have just ignored their craziness and gotten on with it.
What if the Dixie Chicks had said something in a certain light might be a criticism of Islam? Those girls would be in hiding right now. Just as Salmand Rushdie is in hiding. Just as the twelve cartoonists who did the cartoons in the Jutland Post are in hiding. Neither Salmond Rushdie nor any of these cartoonists will ever be able to have a regular life.
Wake up, people. We are at war with a set of people who view the symbols of life differently than we do and will not ever change their view. We can set a terrorist down on the couch and sing Kumbiah until our throats are sore and he will not change his opinion of us. George Bush is not the enemy. The enemy has finally broken cover and has revealed himself. Have you the whit to acknowledge that he will not give up, nor go away? I hope so, because the next thirty to fifty years, the Left and the Right are going to have to come to some kind of accommodation. If the Left continues to ignore that we are at war with a set of people bent on killing us, converting us to Islam, relegating us to second class citizens or making us slaves, I have no idea what will happen.
If you are on the Left and you expect to win elections this fall with an agenda that attempts to make the case that radical Islam is made up of victims, you are sadly mistaken. The Left on moveon.org, dailykos and democratic underground make the case that the Left should come out and robustly declare that they are against the war in Iraq and in favor of immediate withdrawal. If the Left follows that advice, no one will vote for them. Not in the face of these riots.
The Left can make the case that it's all George Bush's fault for getting us into the war in Iraq. After all, had we just ignored 9/11 and pursued everything as a police problem instead of a war, we would be oh, so much better off.
Sorry... we can't go back and change anything, as much as we would want. We are stuck in the Now. Simply blaming George Bush for all our woes is not a policy. In the face of an implacable foe, what policy prescriptions does the Left have to fix the problem as it IS, not as we would want it to be? I see none. Do you? I mean, these guys over there are going around burning buildings on what appears to most sane people as a silly reason. I mean, if you look at the cartoons, they really aren't that good, either as art or political satire.
On the hand, the symbol to them is VERY serious. Radical Islam is having a problem. A BIG problem. The countries under Muslim rule are poor. VERY poor. Why is that true? To them the answer is clear. They have not been good enough Muslims. They have to become more Islamic in order for God to shed his grace on them. Only by becoming hard core Muslim can they hope to right the perceived wrong done them.
I am still not sure you understand what is happening with the War on Terror. Radical Islam sees the symbol called Islam as the One True Path... Period. America is MUCH richer than the countries of Islam. America is NOT Islamic. Only Islamic countries should be rich by their lights. How can this be happening unless the U.S. stole the wealth from them... OR unless God has sent our existence as a challenge for them overcome? Either way, the members of radical Islam are called to jihad. They have to fight us now because we are corrupting their children. If things go on much longer they fear, they will be unable to rouse the Ummah to fight at all. The War on Terror is a reaction to our wealth and power, but for a religious reason. We in the U.S. do NOT deserve these blessings. By their standards, we have NO right to much of anything. Only by defeating us can they defend God's honor.
A tree falls in the forest. Does it make a sound? Well, of course it makes a sound... Assuming you want to believe it makes a sound. At this moment the Left is trying to decide whether the symbol called victim still fits Muslims. If you are on the Left, you had best wake up... and you ha best wake up your leadership, because the do nothing option has now, as Hillary would say, become inoperative.
Segment 2
All politics is local. The Left in the United States has been silent on the cartoon riots. Various reasons have been put forth as to why. The most likely one is that the Left is having a problem with cognitive dissonance. The Left in this country has attempted to frame the War on Terror as a secular policy dispute. I mean, the Left has tried to make out like the Muslims are victims. The thinking goes, if we in the West would just abandon some of the foreign policies we have, then the Muslims will go away.
The flag burnings and the violent protests flies in the face of that assertion. How can you say that the grievance against the West are secular when the Muslims are burning buildings and killing people over religion? If that isn't a classic case of "I can't believe that this is happening", I don't know what is.
Look at the double bind that the Left is in when they view this battle. The American Civil Liberties Union has campaigned to make awful depictions of Jesus a protected rights. If they come out against any depictions of Mohammed, how can they justify their entire campaign against religion in the public square? Boy, would that be kind of weird. I'm sure they could do it, but it would undercut their other projects.
What I am trying to get across to the people on the Left is that they have misinterpreted the symbols of the War on Terror. Radical Islam means it when they say that they want to rule over all of the world. They really and truly want to establish the new Caliphate. And you have to understand that the symbol called Caliphate is not what you would expect. It is not just a polity, a nation state. It is a Utopian dream. The establishment of the new Caliphate would be the culmination of all the dreams of the majority of Muslims. Most Muslims at least give lip service to the concept of Ummah, the community of Muslims. The problem in the past with pan-Arabism and all its off shoots has been that the rulers in the Middle East have been so strong that attacking them seemed silly.
Think about it. The European press and the American press tried to say that Afghanistan would be a quagmire... that the brutal Afghan winter would destroy our chances of winning. The U.S. destroyed the Taliban in Afghanistan in a couple of months.
Saddam roared his defiance to the world. He looked to the Muslims to have recovered from Gulf War I. Seven weeks in 2003 and he was running for his life. In December of 2003, we had him in custody after digging him out of his spider hole.
To people in radical Islam this is fantastic, because it tells them that they have a chance of replacing the weak willed rulers of present day Muslim states with strong willed people like Osama bin Lauden. Osama bin Lauden famously said that when people see a weak horse and compare it to a strong horse of course they want to ride the strong horse.
We look at Saudi Arabia and see the most repressive regime in the world. There is no toleration of other religions. The refuse to allow women to drive. They have a religious police who wander around and hit people for religious infractions. Saudi Arabia beheads people for offenses that Americans can barely understand... Yet... Radical Islam considers Saudi Arabia to be a liberal state.
No, I am not making that up. There is too much evidence to the contrary. Saudi Arabia has cozied up to the West too much. The Saudi royal family is too secular for the average radical Muslim. The Saudis are considered to be hedonists who would sell their mothers for wealth. Most people on the Left do... not... understand that.
If Saudi Arabia is a liberal hell for radical Islam, what would the new Caliphate be like? Radical Islam is not kidding. They want the Caliphate to be reborn. Initially, the Caliphate would be from Algeria to Indonesia, then of course it would spread over all the world. Why? Well, it is in the Koran as far as they can see.
I guy I read about produced a video that said in fact that all of the beheadings and rape and pillage that the jihadis have been doing is in the Koran. He got a humongous number of emails from people who said that he was mistaken. They said that Islam was a Religion of Peace. The guy said that he agreed that for the person sending the email Islam is a Religion of Peace. The thing is that the people in radical Islam see in the Koran justification for all their deeds.
There is one strain of radical Islam I looked into a while back. This groups said that they were doing God's will because God did not stop them from killing murdering and raping in God's name. They, in fact, specifically denied that free will exists.
Many of you out there have never even heard of the concept of free will in the religious context. The thinking here is that God gave us the right to do Good or to do Evil. If we do Good, then we shall go to Heaven. If we do Evil, we shall go to hell. In short, you are given the right to Choose.
Predestination says that God guides all our steps and everything we do is ordained by God. Every single action is a manifestation of God's will. This means that we are absolved of all bad behavior, because God is doing it. We have no control over our lives, our destinies, nothing.
This group of jihadis I am talking about has taken a middle road. Their belief is that God has veto powers. By adopting this approach they are absolved of all guilt. They can in this life do ANYTHING they want on the path of jihad and be assured that they are doing God's will.
I draw your attention to the jihadis who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center. When the FBI looked at their credit card activity, they found quite a few lap dances and alcohol purchases on the cards they looked into. Isn't that a great philosophy, do as you want and get rewarded in Heaven for it with 72 virgins, because you died on the path of jihad?
Wait, I am not saying that all Muslims believe this. I am just saying there are various groups of jihadis out there who have wildly different views as to what is correct behavior. Each group and individual makes the case that their approach to life is in the Koran. Other Muslims cry out saying that radical Islam is mistaken. The ones who dissent are ignored, because they have no power.
It's all kind of weird when you get right down to it. Each of the various strains of Christianity have a central authority that decides on what is and what is not correct doctrine for their particular type of Christianity. In Islam, I have never heard of a central authority like that, but it really doesn't matter because the jihadis are going to do as they do with or without the consent of any central control. Just as that nutjob who blew up the abortion clinic a while back for Christian beliefs, so are there nutjobs in Islam who believe they have justification to do just about anything they want to based on their reading of the Koran.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with the ambassador of Libya to Great Britain. These two future presidents asked the guy why Libya was attacking American ships. Jefferson and Adams made the case that the U.S. were not at war with Libya, so what was the deal? The Libyan ambassador said that they were just doing God's will. Non-Muslims were supposed to acknowledge the primacy of Islam. By paying tribute, the fledgling United States could avoid the wrath of Islam and at the same time show proper respect for the One True Faith. The U.S. decided to pay tribute rather than fight. By the Time Jefferson became President in 1800, the bill for the tribute was VERY high. Jefferson sent the Marines to Tripoli. It didn't work. It took twenty years and three wars before the Barbary Pirates were defeated.
The point I am making is that this view of jihad is not new. It is mainstream thought among Muslims. The only difference between moderate Muslims and radical Muslims is that the moderates want world domination, but at a slower pace than radical Islam. If there are liberal Muslims, they are not in the majority. Look, you need to go out to www.memri.org and look through the translations of some of the speeches by so-called moderates in Arabic. You will be surprised how different the English speeches are versus the Arabic versions are. And I am not saying that all members of Islam are bomb throwing crazies. I am saying that the good hearted people of Islam have no voice. They are totally quailed by their more fanatical brethren and would never think to speak up against them in the normal course of their lives.
Liberalism in this country looks at radical Islam and sees victims opposing an oppressor. For anyone with any intelligence, this week has been an eye opener, because it says that radical Islam is a worse oppressor than any denomination of Christian you can name. When has there be street riots like this over cartoons depiction Jesus as... well, anything? I mean, there have been so MANY depictions of Jesus in various scandalous positions. Why hasn't there been rioting in the streets, if, as the ACLU promotes, fundamentalist Christians are out to silence their critics?
I have in the past harped on the reaction the Dixie Chicks received when they criticized George Bush. What happened next? They went on every magazine and television show who would book them and complained about being censored. What were they afraid of? What does the radical Left say they are afraid of when they speak out? Look again, the radical Left is frightened that Conservatives will say bad things about them. They are frightened that they will have to debate their beliefs. They may indeed get death threats, but there is no organized physical attacks against the Dixie Chicks at this late date. They are back to making records. They are performing. Most of their fans have just ignored their craziness and gotten on with it.
What if the Dixie Chicks had said something in a certain light might be a criticism of Islam? Those girls would be in hiding right now. Just as Salmand Rushdie is in hiding. Just as the twelve cartoonists who did the cartoons in the Jutland Post are in hiding. Neither Salmond Rushdie nor any of these cartoonists will ever be able to have a regular life.
Wake up, people. We are at war with a set of people who view the symbols of life differently than we do and will not ever change their view. We can set a terrorist down on the couch and sing Kumbiah until our throats are sore and he will not change his opinion of us. George Bush is not the enemy. The enemy has finally broken cover and has revealed himself. Have you the whit to acknowledge that he will not give up, nor go away? I hope so, because the next thirty to fifty years, the Left and the Right are going to have to come to some kind of accommodation. If the Left continues to ignore that we are at war with a set of people bent on killing us, converting us to Islam, relegating us to second class citizens or making us slaves, I have no idea what will happen.
If you are on the Left and you expect to win elections this fall with an agenda that attempts to make the case that radical Islam is made up of victims, you are sadly mistaken. The Left on moveon.org, dailykos and democratic underground make the case that the Left should come out and robustly declare that they are against the war in Iraq and in favor of immediate withdrawal. If the Left follows that advice, no one will vote for them. Not in the face of these riots.
The Left can make the case that it's all George Bush's fault for getting us into the war in Iraq. After all, had we just ignored 9/11 and pursued everything as a police problem instead of a war, we would be oh, so much better off.
Sorry... we can't go back and change anything, as much as we would want. We are stuck in the Now. Simply blaming George Bush for all our woes is not a policy. In the face of an implacable foe, what policy prescriptions does the Left have to fix the problem as it IS, not as we would want it to be? I see none. Do you? I mean, these guys over there are going around burning buildings on what appears to most sane people as a silly reason. I mean, if you look at the cartoons, they really aren't that good, either as art or political satire.
On the hand, the symbol to them is VERY serious. Radical Islam is having a problem. A BIG problem. The countries under Muslim rule are poor. VERY poor. Why is that true? To them the answer is clear. They have not been good enough Muslims. They have to become more Islamic in order for God to shed his grace on them. Only by becoming hard core Muslim can they hope to right the perceived wrong done them.
I am still not sure you understand what is happening with the War on Terror. Radical Islam sees the symbol called Islam as the One True Path... Period. America is MUCH richer than the countries of Islam. America is NOT Islamic. Only Islamic countries should be rich by their lights. How can this be happening unless the U.S. stole the wealth from them... OR unless God has sent our existence as a challenge for them overcome? Either way, the members of radical Islam are called to jihad. They have to fight us now because we are corrupting their children. If things go on much longer they fear, they will be unable to rouse the Ummah to fight at all. The War on Terror is a reaction to our wealth and power, but for a religious reason. We in the U.S. do NOT deserve these blessings. By their standards, we have NO right to much of anything. Only by defeating us can they defend God's honor.
A tree falls in the forest. Does it make a sound? Well, of course it makes a sound... Assuming you want to believe it makes a sound. At this moment the Left is trying to decide whether the symbol called victim still fits Muslims. If you are on the Left, you had best wake up... and you ha best wake up your leadership, because the do nothing option has now, as Hillary would say, become inoperative.
posted by aRandomTexan at
6:01 AM
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