One thing I think most of us can agree on: The state of Islamo-savvy intelligence throughout the West (no single country has distinguished itself sufficiently) remains woefully inadequate to the task of protecting its various citizens.
Where I disagree with most JWers and CJists furcates into two important points:
1) I think the social, mental and emotional inertia about Islam among the majority of Westerners is due to positive factors, not negative—in both senses of those terms: there is positive intellectual content informing PC MC, it is not merely a lack of intelligence, a lack of motivation, a lack of will, a lack of morals; and
2) it stems in large part from the good values and virtues of the Graeco-Roman/Judaeo-Christian West—the virtue of self-criticism, the virtue of trying to transcend tribalism toward universalism, which includes compassion for, and genuine interest in, the Other. The problem explaining why this has gone awry is complex, but it’s almost as though the West’s wiring, somewhere along the way, got tangled up.
The glacial progress of the West in awakening from its pleasantly PC MC torpor concerning the problem of Islam will be less likely to snowball if we in the Counter-Jihad persist in ignoring these two factors. My prescription, for starters: Accentuate the positive substance of PC MC, the better to disentangle its negative effects from its good heart.
These two factors in turn, once one thinks about them carefully, serve to guard the heart and mind from veering off into Conspiracy Theory La-La Land (which is why I think, to my dismay, they have not been thought through with much care by most in the CJ someday to become the AIM), with its rather obsessive, if semi-conscious, intent to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Exhibit A (and, unfortunately, there are thousands of Exhibits out there one could adduce to illustrate my point):
A televised public panel, and Jack Straw articulating one important—and all too prevalent—part of the PC MC paradigm, to the enthusiastic applause of the British audience.
1 comment:
So, is the glass half-empty as a pessimist CJ would argue - or half-full as an optimist CJ would argue?
You see, Hesperado, you are really rebelling against the concept of original sin....
While humans have the ability to live righteously, few exercise that ability - yet all want easy credit for being righteous. So, it is easier to condemn that which the state condemns while merrily sinning in one's private life....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
I rather like that you believe that people are intrinsically good. It is a charming idea.
I believe that people and groups of people (like Muslims and Jews) are intrinsically sinning (where being sinning is different than being intrinsically bad).
Again, I point to the realization that, if I can open my eyes to the destructive acts of Muslims then I can also open my eyes to the destructive acts of Jews (who self-identify as either racial or religious Jews).
A knee-jerk defense of Jews is NO different than a knee-jerk defense of Muslims - and there does seem to be evidence that too many Jews support destructive acts against white Christian Westerners.
Egghead
Post a Comment