I am a little overwhelmed by the reception that this first chunk of the promised Big Post has received. A lot of you have linked it and commented in various ways. While I am grateful for the response, I feel that one of those strains of commentary needs a clear answer. Many of you have written strongly worded responses saying things like: Islam is hateful and that, in essence, hate is what Islam and the left have in common. One of the reasons I find this disturbing is that I am always tempted to agree with it.
It is too simple and easy, though. I see hate as more of a symptom than a cause. The whole thing with Islam and the left is pretty complicated and hate is so simple. Let me try to summarize how I explain their relationship.
The problem is that hate usually grows out of a conflict that appears not to be resolvable. In the case of the Caliphate Muslims, they see much more clearly than westerners can that co-existence is not a possibility. Even if they wished it, which some of them might, it has to be clear to them that the vitality, openness and power of the west will eventually cause their totalitarian controls to disintegrate. This is why they feel humiliated. They know that the simple fact of our existence is fatal to them. This is why the lack of humor is so striking.
In the same way, the left feels kinship with them because they share that same doomed feeling of futility and humiliation. The Modern Left knows that with the fall of the Soviet Union, the Capitalization of China, successful modernization of India, Mexico and much of the old Soviet block and the defection of the best minds (Hitchens, Podhertz, Kristol, et al) they are no longer the “Modern Left”, they are merely “What’s Left”. It has never been more apparent that their ideas are mawkish, cheap and unworkable.
Both the left(overs) and the Caliphate Muslims hate us out of their envy, stubbornness and hurt pride. We don’t humiliate them- they humiliate themselves and that infuriates them.
This is not to say that the battle is won. If we cannot wake up our felloe westerners who have been put to sleep by the excess of power and safety that we have had since WWII, we can lose. We need to stop getting into futile shouting matches with the progressives and socialists and find ways to talk meaningfully to the parts of the liberal left and center that is as yet unaware of the monstrous evil at the gate. Our survival depends on it.
I have many more thoughts about the underlying cause of the hatred and I’ll be posting them soon…
1 comment:
Yaacov, you are hitting so many nails on the head that you are clearly a Jewish carpenter...lol
If I may add a slightly different spin: many years ago I studied totalitarianism, and one of the fascinating questions was why so many communists were drawn to fascism, and vice-versa...UP UNTIL THE END OF WW II.
Going back to Marx and the Communist Manifesto, communism provided a MORAL JUSTIFICATION for behavior that, by post-Ten Commandment standards, wd have been unforgivable crimes: plundering/stealing and murder. Fascism (begun by Mussolini, originally a socialist) built upon this, adding a mystical national touch. Hitler added a mystical racial touch on that. But all three glorified plunder and murder by the Master Party/Nation/Race.
My theory was/is that humans are naturally violent and greedy, and unless constrained by custom and law, they WILL resort to violence to take what they want. Of course, the Ten Commandments and all of the law that evolved out of them were the bedrock constraints against such behavior.
But in any large group of people, there will be some "deviants" who will not allow themselves to restrained by the law. In a normal, healthy society, such people inevitably define themselves as "criminals"--they cannot conform their behavior under the law. And some of these criminals will not be the stereotyped louts, but intelligent, articulate barbarians. Because intelligence is no protection against such deviancy.
Along comes communism, fascism, and nazism, and they actually promised such criminal intellectuals POWER and FREEDOM TO PLUNDER and GLORY for their plundering. WHATTA CONCEPT!!
The only question was: which philosophy held greater promise?
WWII answered that question, as communism triumphed and the other 2 were annihilated. An ambitious criminal doesn't jump onto a ship on the bottom of the ocean!
~50 years go by, and then--OHMYGODD--**communism** gets thrown on the trashheap of history. What do these people do now?
Well, we've seen them wander around from environmentalism to pro-illegal immigration to the Democrat Party...but then, thanks to the Net and immigration, they come into contact with an ideology that promises them...
DIVINE JUSTIFICATION for plunder and murder
...A HUGE CANON of historical writings to guide our present-day behavior (an intellectual needs books to argue, remember!)
...LARGER THAN LIFE historical figures to emulate (tho we can't parade giant posters of them thru the streets, for now)
...DIVINE JUSTIFICATION for orering around all those Babbits who think that earning an honest living is the highest virtue
...Effectively "free love," (at least for the men, hehe) even with underaged girls.
Notice, by the way, where Islam gets most of its Western converts...IN THE PRISONS.
For the natural criminal intellectual, Islam is the next best thing to communism. Yes, it is alien, and yes, it is ancient, but hey, we all need to adapt, don't we? Greenpeace and PETA will never get the street respect that AQ and the mullahs get, ya know what I mean?
So this pull of Westerns intellectuals [criminal types] toward Islam is largely due to the failure of fascism and communism to fill the bill, over the long term.
Forget the surface-stuff about "sexism" and "equality" and "civil rights" that these intellectuals have brayed about for decades...those slogans were only useful to bash the traditional Ten-Commandment-centered structure of Western civilization. Now that Islam and "cultural sensitivity" (toward Muslims ONLY) are the better, stronger weapons, our "intellectuals" will pick them up, with glad, vengeful hearts.
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