Speaking of Muslims, a Jihad Watcher recently remarked, not without a seeming twinge of anxiety:
Sometimes I think I am "falling into alarmism, hatred and bigotry". Sometimes it is hard not to hate people who lie, murder and bully.
The problem -- the real problem, as opposed to the false problem strong-armed by the PC MC mainstream -- is not the slippery slope of "falling into alarmism, hatred and bigotry". The actual problem is the irrationally anxious avoidance of that slippery slope; as though that slippery slope were the inevitable outcome of responding with rational and moral proportionality to the danger Muslims are posing for our societies. Indeed, the real slippery slope is the alacrity with which so many of our fellow Westerners impulsively and impetuously assume that criticizing Islam -- or even noticing Islam -- too much will inevitably lead to that other slippery slope that haunts them.
Even thinking the thought-crime of merely contemplating, with an open mind, such a response -- by noticing the data, asking reasonable questions, and following the dot-connection of the mountains of dots that abound from around the world concerning the problem of Islam -- tends to succumb to that irrational anxiety, and is interdicted.
When it is not interdicted externally (e.g., the McManus Disinvitation), it is interdicted internally (e.g. in the heart & mind of conservative Catholic Bishop McManus himself, truly believing his "Abrahamic dialogue" with Muslim moderates (i.e., Muslim monsters) is on the side of the angels).
It is necessary to add, in light of the woefully inadequate political science that seems rather discomfittingly common in the Counter-Jihad, that just as it is more unsettling to see PC MC among non-Leftists than it is among the unsurprisingly Islamophiliac (but comparatively rarer) Leftists; so it is more unsettling to see glimpses and twitches of the above-mentioned anxiety among those within the amorphous ambit of the Counter-Jihad than it is, again unsurprisingly, among the solid majority outside that ambit.
Ah, to live life blithely outside that ambit again, with our minds in the pleasantly puffy clouds of September 10, 2001, indulging our Snooze-Alarm Normal Life, happily incognizant -- as we get up and putter about for our daily coffee we haven't really woke-up-and-smelled -- of the fact that our alarm clock still blinks 9:11.
Ah, to live life blithely outside that ambit again, with our minds in the pleasantly puffy clouds of September 10, 2001, indulging our Snooze-Alarm Normal Life, happily incognizant -- as we get up and putter about for our daily coffee we haven't really woke-up-and-smelled -- of the fact that our alarm clock still blinks 9:11.
8 comments:
The Muslim clock blinks 666. :(
When I prove it, you will know.
Shhhh.
Egghead
Well Egghead, the global revival of Islam certainly fits the apocalyptic bill better than anything else; but that doesn't mean it really is that eschatological enemy -- or if it is, that it would necessarily be auguring that denouement now. After all, there was a solid millennium during which Christendom could reasonably have thought the same: the thousand years from the 7th to the 17th, during which Islam was assailing the West arguably worse than they are currently (the only difference being technological limitations).
Or, when I prove it, you will know.
Shhhh. :)
Egghead
The problem -- the real problem, as opposed to the false problem strong-armed by the PC MC mainstream -- is not the slippery slope of "falling into alarmism, hatred and bigotry". The actual problem is the irrationally anxious avoidance of that slippery slope; as though that slippery slope were the inevitable outcome of responding with rational and moral proportionality to the danger Muslims are posing for our societies.
With regard to that "slippery slope", I will quote Nietzsche:
"Careful when you cast your devil out of you lest you cast out the best thing in you."
Marching alongside the hyper-destructive Universalist Christians are another breed from the same stock, the Pollyanna Clan. Quite often they display an overt moral smugness over having entirely rid themselves of their "dark side"; although they rarely put it that way. The words “redeemed” or “born again” are more often put on offer.
Any student of dualism or the Tao knows quite well that the complementary aspect of nature is inescapable. Not so much that good must have its necessarily attendant evils but that the goodness of human nature carries with it "charismatic imperfections" which are part and parcel of our humanity and all that is to be celebrated about it.
As an example, it is impossible to maintain that life is simultaneously both good and evil. It can only be one or the other and, if anything, Western civilization itself is proof positive of the immense good that human life is capable of.
That said, there is indeed a “dark side” to human existence. It is embodied in the eternal truth that, “All life depends upon death.” If life on earth were immortal, the entire planet would have been stripped of all food sources eons ago. Similarly, there is the maxim that, “Peace is only obtained through war.” Not too many decades ago Neville “peace in our time” Chamberlain vividly demonstrated the value of negotiating with tyrants. Apparently, this lesson has slipped down the memory hole with many other equally valuable ones as well. Evil requires, nay, demands that it be crushed to the point where it is no longer attractive to be evil.
(to be continued)
Crushing evil requires, at least to some degree, the temporary adoption of its means and methods, if only as an object lesson to those evil entities. To those who make the “slippery slope” argument, it can only be pointed out that European Allies defeated Nazi Germany without erecting death camp crematoriums and the Pacific Theater of WWII vanquished Imperial Japan without enacting a “Rape of Nanking”. These are fundamental facts that not even shrieks about the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki can deflect. After all, the use of atomic bombs against Japan saved more Japanese lives than it did those of American soldiers. Anyone who wishes to dispute this essential fact may feel free to step forward for a serious drubbing.
Indeed, the real slippery slope is the alacrity with which so many of our fellow Westerners impulsively and impetuously assume that criticizing Islam -- or even noticing Islam -- too much will inevitably lead to that other slippery slope that haunts them.
This is what happens when a situation becomes so highly polarized that, on the tipping point’s other side, all that exists in perceived opposition is a precipice. What truly haunts people is the ghost of an extremism which challenges that of Islam itself. And this is what terrifies so many; that Islam insists upon being repaid in its own bloody coin.
For centuries now, one of Islam’s most productive tools—to Muslim sensibilities, at least—is its willingness to engage in brutality of unimaginable proportions. Far too many opponents have voluntarily abandoned the field rather than meet or exceed the bar that Islam sets for extreme violence and this, just as often, has proved to be their fatal error. Such a modern—or not-so-modern—fear of “descending to their level” or “stooping to conquer”, as many snooty academics might put it, paralyzes most Western minds; something evident in the lingering remorse over having used nuclear weapons against Japan. It beggars the question of how an enemy can be fought whose reputation alone causes so many quailing hearts.
Even thinking the thought-crime of merely contemplating, with an open mind, such a response -- by noticing the data, asking reasonable questions, and following the dot-connection of the mountains of dots that abound from around the world concerning the problem of Islam -- tends to succumb to that irrational anxiety, and is interdicted.
The dots are no longer mountainous—even Everest shrinks to subatomic proportions—they’re tectonic and are, or will be, accompanied by the seismic disruptions implied.
Zenster: I love to read your comments.
Egghead
Zenster,
Again, I appreciate and enjoy your lengthy and detailed commentary.
Only one thing nags at me when I read through them. You seem to be equivocating between two methods with which to deal with the Mohammedan menace. Forgive me, but there seems to be a having-your-cake fallacy going on in your argumentation, or what might be termed the "A Little Bit Pregnant" fallacy, whereby with one hand you ostensibly agree, for instance, that in order to defeat the evil globally dangerous megalomaniacs of the Axis Powers we did not have to stoop to conquer; while with the other hand you seem to flirt with language that implies we will have to cross the line we did not cross during that war.
Part of this, I conjecture, may stem from your apparent sublimation of the challenge of the Mohammedan menace into an existential, almost cosmic phenomenon; rather than the pragmatic danger to be managed with pragmatic means.
Thus statements like this:
Crushing evil requires, at least to some degree, the temporary adoption of its means and methods, if only as an object lesson to those evil entities.
-- where the last phrase would be beside the point of pragmatic defense.
Or:
Evil requires, nay, *demands* that it be crushed to the point where it is no longer attractive to be evil.
Evil may well requre and demand that, on an existential or cosmic level, but pragmatically there no reason to believe that in history this will ever happen -- except here and there, locally; and, thus, insufficient for our needs to manage the dangers of Islam.
Or:
And this is what terrifies so many; that Islam insists upon being repaid in its own bloody coin.
I don't know if here you mean "insists" in a sense of the logic of Islamic methods, whose gears would inexorably draw us in to cross that aforementioned line you otherwise seem to agree we don't have to cross. Even if more colloquially Islam "insists" on being repaid thus, it doesn't mean we are forced to do it in order to manage the dangers they are causing, and that there aren't pragmatic alternatives.
I've been mulling over an essay that has remained in draft form for months, entiteld "Genocide or Suicide?" It deals precisely with this problem of the apparently false dilemma -- as though those were our only choices. And what's ironic is that the PC MC worry-warts who indulge one half of this false dilemma (they exchange the "Suicide" however, with Kumbaya Getting Along, Somehow, Someway combined with Burying Their Head in the Sand along with other PC MC axioms and shibboleths) agree with the "Gates of Vienna Circle" types about the "Genocide" inevitability in one way or another (the former only appending a Big If to it). The latter, by their hyperbolic language that ratchets up the problem of Islam into an existential/cosmic diremption bringing in its train other problems -- often implied to be the "real problem" of which Islam is but tangential -- are only helping to cement the PC MC anxiety which irrationally excludes all serious means to deal with Muslims that clearly would be far short of a Final Solution, because they are deemed to be somehow inextricably tied to that Final Solution.
If there are indeed such other means and they are viable, this would be a catastrophic effect enabled by the Counter-Jihad that would seem to be incapable of promoting the rational face of the movement, notwithstanding the valiantly patient efforts of certain individuals like Robert Spencer who, however, parses his patience a bit too finely, thus paradoxically and unintentionally inviting and encouraging such misunderstandings from PC MC.
Hi Hesp: Interesting point about the potential over-dramatizing of the threat of Islam causing moderate PC MC people to further withdraw from the conversation.
However, at a time when the new head of the CIA is thought to be a 'revert' to Islam, perhaps the threat is actually under-dramatized.
Egghead
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