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I think once we reach out to Muslim immigrants here, and help them integrate and assimilate into our society, the other prongs of how we won the Cold War will help here.

If we start picking at the radical Islamofascists, showing how they DO attack Muslims as freely as they attack non-Muslims, and things like that, it'll help.

But possibly most effectively, our western way of life is in itself rather appealing. That's why countries like China and Iran have to work very hard to shut it off. Blue jeans, Coca Cola, The Terminator, and all the rest are pretty hard to beat by any ideology.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

Mass-appeal secularism and commercial culture will ultimately defeat religious conviction?

absentee

Communism was (is) an economic model. We fought against it and defeated it economically.

Islamism is a theocratic model that says everything gets sorted out later by Allah. Cokes and jeans are not competitive to believers.

If we start picking at the radical Islamofascists, showing how they DO attack Muslims as freely as they attack non-Muslims, and things like that, it'll help. Neil, I really think this comment is beneath you. Go get a cup of coffee. The news media report, on a daily basis, that rI's are butchering Muslims in Iraq at a much greater pace than non-Muslims. It doesn't seem to mean squat.

This is not a cold war. It's a hot war, and it was started and continued by Muslims. With absolutely no word of complaint by "mainstream" Islam. The jihad may not be actively supported by everyone at Friday prayers, but it is certainly supported by a wide swath of Imams and by virtually every influential Islamic group like CAIR. Jihad is an acceptable way of life to these folks. And that's why they are our enemy.

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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Communists were supposed to be impervious to the decadent west, because the luxuries produced by our freedom were supposed to be merely distractions used to quell the discontent of the working class.

Meanwhile Communism was also said to be dead-set against religion. Atheistic Soviets, opiate of the masses, and all that stuff?

So this was more than just economics we were fighting over. They opposed our way of live, they opposed the fundanmentals of the western tradition, and by contrast those were all things we were fighting for, along with mom and apple pie.

And as for news reports, again, that's exactly the same thing that could be said about the Communists. Anyone with eyes should have been able to see the brutality in Ukraine, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Peru, you name it. We still had to keep talking about it, though, and people threw as big a fuss when Reagan said "evil empire" as when Bush said "Islamofascist."
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

OBL et al are.

The leaders are true believers in the ideology. They aren't simply using it to achieve an ends.

The true believers are not going to be seduced by Levi jeans.

Ever heard Gorby talk? Or Putin? They miss the old ways.

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that was effectively of, by and for the bureaucracy. By the time they grew up, registering as a Communist and at the disposal of the state was something everyone had to do to be anybody. Boris Yeltsin was part of that, too, but he sure never missed it.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

Those parties tend to state their policy goals very plainly.

At least if you talked to them, you could skip the "what did you really mean..." part of the exchange.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

Neil, this perception of mine may be an effect of my so-called less than kindergarten reading comprehension level, but aside from criticizing CAIR, are you simply advocating that we endorse what is, more or less by default, the status quo of American assimilation as our solution to the ideological problem? Or are you advocating some fundamental change in our society?

John E.

I'm advocating a refocusing of our efforts, as a nation and specifically as Republicans. I'm advocating that we follow more closely what worked in the Cold War in terms of cultural interactions.

We keep wondering how to support anti-Islamofascist activists in Iran. Well, if we got in touch better with immigrants from Iran and their offspring here at home, we might be able to do figure it out.

Things like that are what I want to see.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

Yesterday, I was searching for a history book on Amazon that analyzed specific historical cases of one ideology defeating another in the minds of adherents. I didn't have much luck. I'll try narrowing it to cultural interaction strategies in the Cold War.

Specifics, like the one you provided, are helpful, perhaps necessary elements for developing such a strategy.

John E.

who because of political or religious, or both, convictions have formed the idea that at some point or because of some inciting event they would take up arms or make a bomb - Westerners aren't much on suicide or martyrdom. It wouldn't take much beyond slipping in a few of the right buzzwords to get a conversation going in a bar most anywhere in the West and South on things that might get the "boys" to "lock 'n load. Now whether they'd actually do it or how much incitement it would take is another matter.

We live in a culture that has a long history of not rewarding violence as a means to solve political or religious differences. Even though there's a streak in us that might have some admiration for the vigilante or agreement with him, the societal consensus is that we will put that behind us and punish him if he uses violence for other than true self-defense.

I see no evidence of such a culture in the Islamic world. While, as is the case with us, most are peace-loving people, there is no evidence of any condemnation of those who resort to violence and in many instances there is open admiration of those who do.

In Vino Veritas

Seems to me that we only stopped having our own religious riots in the 20th century.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

in the 7th century, do we have to wait 1,300 years for the Religion of Peace to really be peaceful?

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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

And I don't think we will. I think that a steady dose of killing the islamofascists, combined with greater communication and cultural interchange, will round off those rough edges much faster than Christianity got the benefit of.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

We've had our "border skirmishes," e.g., Catholic v. Protestant in Ireland, but even there civil authority was turned against those who resorted to violence. I don't think you'll find examples in our colonial or republican history of actions outside established authority and processess being approved whether the basis was religious or political.

Even our Civil War was as much a "religious" dispute as anything else, for the sides were chosen on belief founded outside established law, e.g., natural or higher, as the phrase was at the time, law. But even in that conflict those who acted outside established processes were condemned and prosecuted, e.g., Jayhawkers, John Brown et al., and the Old West "outlaws" after the War many of whom were just continueing the war by "other means." When it came time to finally settle that dispute, it was done solemnly and, usually, regetfully by established processes and authorities.

Of course we have had, and at times still do, disputes that had religious underpinnings and sometimes the lines drawn were based on religious affiation, but the greater society has never approved actions outside the processes established by civil authority. The anti-abotion violence referenced above is a good contemporary example. One can make a religious or philosophical argument justifying violence to prevent violence toward the unborn, but neither the established religious or civil authority will tolerate acting on those arguments.

In Vino Veritas

The religious problems I'm talking about happened right here in America through a most of the 19th century. We had terrible religious bloodshed in our cities as Catholic immigrants butted heads with Protestant establishments. If I recall correctly the fighting was mostly over schools and church property.

The American party, aka the Know-Nothings, ran on this stuff at its peak, though I think later the KKK got involved, too.

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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

how much those disputes were religious and how much economic. Granted, this was an overwhelmingly Protestant country until the great Irish migration of the '40s onward, so any conflict with the Irish and later European immigrants would be Protestant v. Catholic, but it was not a conflict over the conversion of one group to the faith of the other. The conflict was over whether ones' being of one faith could act to exclude one from jobs, housing, and secular political power.

In Vino Veritas

One of the core debates was over prayer in schools, and the mandatory use of one specific Bible in schools. Catholics didn't want to be forced to worship from the King James Bible.

But anyway, I think we would agree that the 20th century was clear of this stuff in America, and that's better than nothing, heh.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

between what you see as our own religious conflicts and the present one? If so, do you then see this as a historical mine from which we can extract the gems of a strategy for suceeding in the current conflict without the use of violence? Perhaps one might also be prone to conclude that history predicts violence. Of course the particualrs of each belief system cannot be safely elided. As you pointed out in your original post, Western ideologies share points in common that may not exist with Near Eastern ones.

John E.

The lesson I take from our previous sectarian violence was that in time assimilation can take hold.

But I don't think that helps us in the short run in the War on Terror. We need to actively reach out to our domestic Muslims and learn from them. Stir up the melting pot a bit.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

if this comment seems like fruitless hair-splitting let it go, but...

I am a poor historian, so I am asking: Do we rightly attribute the resolution of these sectarian conflicts to the effectiveness of assimilation? To what extent was it the result of our classical liberal values which institutionalized religious freedom. Perhaps it is those institutionalized values which permit assimilation without eradication.

If you grant that, does strategic assimilation work with those ideologies which reject those foundational values? Maybe you see our cultural interaction with communism as an affirmative proof case, I don't know.

John E.

It was actually a group Protestants who first promoted the secularization of public schools. With the influx of Catholics in the Northeast, they feared that public schools would soon be teaching the Bible from a Catholic perspective.

Separation of Church and State
by Stephen F. Smith, First Things, December 2002

Believing that they, unlike Catholics, acted as “individuals,” not a “church,” Protestants did not understand separation to prevent them from taking their religious beliefs into the public square. Consequently, it was deemed proper, for example, to teach nonsectarian Protestantism, anti-Catholic propaganda, and the King James Bible in public schools. The wall of separation was breached only when Catholics sought, in effect, school vouchers for paro?chial schools to escape Protestant indoctrination in public schools. These Catholic claims prompted state constitutional amendments nationwide dictating that public funds for education could not be controlled by “any religious sect,” language carefully chosen to halt the Catholic drive while preserving public school instruction in nonsectarian Protestantism...

Nativist groups, including the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan, enthusiastically adopted the anti-Catholic conception of separation. A Klan-inspired movement, supported by anti-Christian secularists, prompted passage in the 1920s of compulsory public school education laws intended to take Catholics out of parochial schools and “Americanize” them.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

The holy books of Christianity forswear violence. The holy books of Koran command it.

Only two major religions in the world have the "perfect man" model.

Christianity and Islam. You can be Jewish, and think Abraham had faults, David was headstrong, and the Moses screwed things up.

There are only two major religions in the world that hold a human person above reproach.

In the case of Christianity, that person turned the other cheek, rendered unto Caesar what was Ceasars, and warned that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword. You can insult Jesus, and while people will get upset, you wont be confronted with physical violence.

With respect to Islam, Muhammed was very much a military leader who did kill people. You can't question anything he did without being threatened with a death fatwa. People who want to commit violence, enslave, etc. can site the Koran, Hadith, and Sira to support their positions. He killed, conquered, and took slaves.

Throw in a PC post-modern culture, and you have a really really big mess.

I pray for an Islamic reformation, but there is little reason to hope. The Chrisitian Reformation worked because what the holy books said were positive, we just weren't following what the books said.

With respect to Islam, I fear that there are many good people who are Muslims, but they are good because they AREN'T following their holy book.

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I think I agree with all the points you are making. It is good to try to determine where we are mirror images of the other guys and where we are not. There may indeed be many similarities and correctly discerning the pecise points of difference could have large effects on our perceptions of how to deal with the potential conflict.

Actually, George doesn't seem vigilante in nature either. But he seems to say that his convictions involve jihad at the direction of his religious authorities.

I can relate to that in the sense that I am willing to take up arms in the service of my nation to defend my civilization.

As I see the difference, his beliefs involve jihad to bring about a right social order described by his religious tradtitions.

My beliefs involve defending (with violence as necessary) our present liberties from assualt and assisiting others in their struggle to achieve them. At some level, even this seems like a mirror image. Except as you say, my tradition says we should strive to work out our ideological differences through non-violent, though perhaps competitive, interaction and institutions. But when the other uses violence, we will also settle it with violence.

John E.

I can't tell, given that both Islamofascism and International Communism sought to bring bloody revolution by any means necessary to all parts of the world...
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

Neil I agree with your comparison in terms of using all of the tools and tactics and opportunities the communists and the islamofascists can get to destroy the west. I have never read where you contrast the one big scary difference between the two. The communists were contained for years with the MAD principle because they lived for the here and now. The islamofascists are not deterred by the MAD principle because they don't care about living NOW. This difference is huge, and makes them more like the Japanese kamikazis than like the communists.

Even in postwar Japan we found a way for Japan to maintain its traditions while still eliminating the bad stuff.

They kept their Emperor. They kept their religion. They lost the right to fight.

You might be on to something there. I'm reminded of what Paul mentioned over in his article, about the contrast between greater and lesser jihad.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

is as close as we are going to get to the nature of the problem we are having with Islam. The Japanese approached life and death with absolute fatalism in service to the Emporer, slightly different that the same obligation to an abstract ordered by God, but close enough. I suppose I would upset the applecart by observing that the change in Japan and their approach to life and death came as the proximate result of the complete and utter destruction meted out during the war. They had no choice but to comply with our demands, they were beat into dust.

In contrast today we have the intelligensia telling us that we are the root cause of the problem and we have groups such as CAIR successfully playing the victim card. We have political and religious leaders pandering to the abysmal 7th Century behavior of significant numbers of adherents to Islam. We rightfully discarded the buring of religious apostates a half a millenium ago yet to this day we are treated to the sight of people marching and rioting in the streets demanding the beheading of anyone who insults Islam; we are treated to the stoning to death of teenage girls who transgress the imam's stone age view of what ought to be life in the 21st Century.

Get the Muslims past that, get them to take to the air and vigorously denounce this kind of behavior and then maybe we have something to talk about.

John
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Why would God invent a thing like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.

Two points of what I consider to be MAJOR dissimilarity.

First, as John well notes above & I won't beat the horse, the Japanese Empire was throughly and completely defeated.

Second, and of more long term importance, the Emperor, before the war, WAS god. The Japanese got to keep their religion, but only in a highly modified way. The Emperor was no longer god. Douglas MacArthur said so and Emperor Hirohito acknowledged the fact.

Those two facts make the Islam/Japanese analogy a real stretch. Unless of course you are suggesting that we beat Islam into submission as we did the Japanese, and then get them to deny Allah/Mohammed.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

I'd like it if we beat the Islamofascists into submission as we did the Japanese fascists, and get them to deny violent jihad. Let's say that.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

on Iraq and Aghanistan, most people on this site chastised me.

I specifically raised the Japaneses example.

Thanks!
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

That sounds like a very appropriate idea to me. It probably ougth to be vetted a bit more but I am presently ready to promote it...seriously enough to get involved in some kind of political lobby to put pressure on our politicians...

John E.

My understanding is that should the pastor of a church advocate for a particular candidate, the church would quickly loose it's non-profit status.

Technically that's how the law is written, HOWEVER... the number of organizations that have actually been investigated is a small number and I'm not sure anyone's ever lost their non-profit status. Complicating the matter, the law is so unevenly applied - see Democratic candidates appearing at Black churches and winning the endorsement of the pastor - I'm not sure it's an effective approach.

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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

Technically that's how the law is written, HOWEVER... the number of organizations that have actually been investigated is a small number and I'm not sure anyone's ever lost their non-profit status. Complicating the matter, the law is so unevenly applied - see Democratic candidates appearing at Black churches and winning the endorsement of the pastor - I'm not sure it's an effective approach

I think you are missing the point. The law exists. It is consistant with Islamic policy and teaching.

About 80% of the mosques in this country were founded by or funded by Saudi Arabia. They function practically as if they were a foreign embassy. This law that is on the books could be used to undermine a threat to the country. Some mosques played important roles in the planning, execution and funding of both attacks on the WTC. As it stands it is nearly impossible for the government to deferentiate between those that are threats and all the rest. This law gives us the right to audit the finances and monitor the services and teachings of these "castellum". If a mosque refuses, they can be de-certified, giving IRS auditors and investigators access to the activities and finances of the mosque. If a mosque complies, they have to open their activities and finance to audit and monitoring by IRS and other investigators.

Either way, America is safer.

If it did nothing more than dampen the enthusiasm of fanatics who have used the secrecy of the "castellum" to advance their agenda, it would be a great victory.

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Exsolvo Orbis Terrarum

If CAIR, for example, objects on the basis that the law is being used to unfairly single out Muslims by citing examples where churches aren't prosecuted, can we cleanly defeat that objection. To be clear, I don't think it is a legitimate objection, but will their propaganda turn this into a nightmare by diverting the debate from the fundamental point, that some practice Islam as politics. Once that fundamental point is accepted, it ought to be generally accepted that consequences such as this should follow. By using this legal tool, we could obviously create a springboard for propelling this point into the public debate. The question is, how do we avoid the trap, the diversion into a dialogue about discrimination, that Becker posits. Then again maybe it is inevitable that we have to deal with the objection that Christianity is every bit as political as Islam. That's really the issue and their likely defense isn't it?

If CAIR, for example, objects on the basis that the law is being used to unfairly single out Muslims by citing examples where churches aren't prosecuted

The defense is that it is the principles of Islam that they advocate that disqualifies them as a non-political organization. According to Islamic teaching one way that Islam differs from Christianity signficantly is in the matter of separation of religion and government. Christianity supports it, Islam rejects it. By law, in the US, non-profit status requires acceptance of separation. In Islam there is no difference between religion and government. They cannot argue against this without argueing their own teaching is false. Dare they risk that?

For decades I have observed that the Islamic jihad has sought vulnerabilities in our system to use against us. I have searched for an opportunity to turn the table, and believe that this approach provides an excellent opportunity to use a system vulnerability of Islam to weaken our enemies.

The simple fact of turning their own teaching against them is worth the effort. Imagine the impact of close government scrutiny on mosques in this country. I have considered the effect it would have on the churches and synagogues in my area.

Support the Mission - Honor the troops
Exsolvo Orbis Terrarum

Maybe the more important question remains, how would these arguments actually play out in court?
John E.

Islamo-Fascists have a quite a few useful idiots---people who aren't really on the bad guys side, they just don't realize the true nature of the enemy.

There were some Nazi sympathizers during WWII, but those folks were of the following categories:
(1) run of the mill racists
(2) isolationists who just didn't want the US involved

In contrast, Communism and Islamo-Fascism are very effective at recruiting home grown Americans

Not a philosophy major, but reasonably educated in it. At some point faith and reason cannot coexist. That is the major conflict between those of us who adhere to a Platonic view of the Universe and those of us who adhere to a post-modernist view.

Nazi Germany is the best example. I can construct a pretty compelling argument that everything the Germans did, including the Holocaust, was both rational and the will of a democracy. In fact, Germany in the '30s and '40s was far more democratic than the US, GB, or USSR. Only faith as demonstrated by a belief in some moral absolute allows us to condemn what the Nazis did.

There are limits to reason.

In Vino Veritas

it is also minority rights--basic human rights.

Nazi Germany was not more democratic than the US or the UK in the 30s and 40s.

That said, I agree there are limits to reason.

I disagree that basic morality necessarily requires faith or that Nazi Germany was rational.

Your history is off - Averroes was not killed. He was banished for a period but was allowed back before his death. And of course he never inhabited the middle east at all.

Aquinas did not come around to Averroes way of thinking, while he was clearly influenced by his works he did explicitly argue against some of the underlying premises in Averooes (like the notion that philosohpic turths are found in reason rather than faith). Maimonides was closer to Averroes thought (at least in Guide to Perplexed), was a contemporary of him and they interacted with each other. Whether they directly influenced eachother, came to similair conclusions independently or were both influecned by an earlier philosohper is debated. For closer Christian disciples look at Siger of Brabant (and read up on the condemnation of 1277).

I posted the reply months ago, possibly in 2007.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

I'm trying to figure out what respawned this discussion today, I thought it was you, my fault, heh.

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posted the initial new posts that brought this back up

Unless there was some weird technical glitch that caused something to appear more recent that it was. I didn't purposefully dig into the archives, I know that much.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

Why would Americans trust someone who promises "change," but who does not trust Americans enough to tell them exactly to what kind of change he is committed?

receptive to a president of Morocco, whose wife hates Morocco.

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www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson