The Lessons of Mumbai- Too Long for a Bumper Sticker

The rage and frustration I feel as the full dimensions of the Mumbai attacks become clear is dangerous. I was walking through a supermarket parking lot when I saw this bumper sticker.

This was even worse than those imbecilic "coexist" stickers with all of the religious symbols. It took me a while to figure out why. There are so many levels on which this message is ignorant and dangerous that I had to sort them all out. First and most obvious is the fact that it is an obvious slap at “God Bless America”. But, no, that wasn’t the cause for the rage- I’m used to seeing that kind of fuzzy ignorance that passes for political thinking.
I live, after all, in Newton, MA- a very liberal community- so fatuous drivel like this generally just irritates but doesn’t enrage me. So why, suddenly, did I find it difficult to contain my revulsion? The tide of rage I felt was all but overwhelming.

Well, for one thing, I had just read a report on the Rediff India Abroad web site about the particularly cruel and deliberate attention with which the Mumbai terrorists tortured and disfigured the Israeli and Jewish victims of the massacre. An extended quote is instructive:

Doctors…, said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatized. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Now, listen, I am married to an operating room nurse. I am all too familiar with the ability of medical professionals to compartmentalize, neutralize and discuss in a cool and detached way, things that make mere writers like myself flinch and even retch. The very idea that this hardened physician could not bring himself to contemplate what he had seen struck me to my very core. I found myself, temporarily, without a way forward.
Seeing that bumper sticker put me on a knife-edge between despair and rage. I stood there and stared at the car with my heart pounding. I don’t know what I would have done had the owner of the car walked up at that point.
“No Exceptions”?

What does that mean? Does it mean they would call down God’s blessing on the stinking swine who apparently did their reconnaissance in the Chabad House by posing as travelers and accepting the food, hospitality and blessings of the Rabbi and his family while they plotted their torture and death?

Does it mean that they can see no moral or spiritual difference between the Rabbi who welcomed and served them with an open heart and the filthy, lying murderers who rewarded his kindness by killing his wife before him and letting him suffer her death, tenderly wrapping her body in his prayer shawl, before murdering him?

Don’t get me wrong; I will admit that I knew, even in my turmoil and anguish at that moment, that the owner of that car would not be in favor of any of those things and would, probably think me very unkind to associate him with them.

I know very well that most of the people who have those bumper stickers have put them there because they were moved only by an urge to get in the face of people with “God Bless America” bumper stickers. I’ll admit, too, that I am very much in the God Bless America camp myself. I believe that America is a blessed country. I count among my friends and family a number of people who gave up everything they had and the lives that they had lived for many decades in order to come here and be free.

There is the lovely seventy-year-old lady and her husband who came here ten years ago from Russia along with their daughter and her husband. They still don’t speak much English but recently she proudly showed me around her neat little apartment and paused for a long moment at the end of the tour with a wistful smile on her face, clasped her hands together, looked at me and said with a gusty sigh, “God Bless America”! Having seen the former Soviet Union in depth and first hand, I know exactly what she means.

The reason we have a political battle about immigration in the first place is that anyone in their right mind would rather be here than in any other country on earth. And what country on earth is more free and open? I don’t understand the people who live here and are so alienated, embarrassed by our power and sulky that they feel they can’t let “God Bless America” stand as a sentiment without making a public display of distancing themselves from it.

Is it just moral blindness, and spiteful disenfranchisement that moves them to miss the important point that America, while not perfect, is by far the finest, most democratic, most humane and least Imperial “greatest power in the world” that has ever existed?

America, after all, has come forward over the last one hundred years and, with the help and support of the rest of the western powers, saved civilization from two militarized totalitarian movements that threatened to immerse the world in their respective fascist nightmares.
Now, even as we engage yet another murderous totalitarian threat with our traditional allies severely compromised by infiltration and the degenerate influence of moral relativism and multiculturalism, here is a person who thinks it more important to express their petty snit with America than to consider the implications of their stance. I have to wonder how can anyone think it possible that the ideal of multiculturalism that is (even if accidentally) conveyed by this bumper sticker is not deeply immoral- and self-destructive to the point of being suicidal?

There have been a number of times when I have not even known how to start thinking and writing about the utter horror of the actual events and conditions of our world. At those times, I will turn to the blogs of those I admire most. Robert Avrech who blogs at Seraphic Secret is one of my great comforts at those times. He has a huge range of moods and subjects but, whether he is writing about horror or Hollywood, Robert brings a wisdom and sensibility that has the power to help restore strength and faith.

So after wandering home from the parking lot I fired up my computer and found Robert quoting that same article that had stopped me in my tracks. Then at the end he added this- quoting from the brilliant Melanie Phillips:

Phillips comments:
The atrocities demonstrated with crystal clarity what the Islamist war is all about — and the western commentaries didn't understand because it simply refuses to acknowledge, even now, what that war actually is. It does not arise from particular grievances. It is not rooted in "despair" over Palestine. It is not a reaction to the war in Iraq. It is a war waged in the name of Islam against America, Britain, Hindus, Jews and all who refuse to submit to Islamic conquest.
What of the terrorists' treatment of their Jewish targets? Phillips writes:
They went to some lengths in addition to single out a centre for observant Jews. Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were murdered not because of Palestine but simply because they were Jews. That is because hatred of Jews as Jews is fundamental to the Islamists' hatred of the west — and of Israel.

Oh, how exactly!
I would like to presume to add some detail to Phillip’s “things Mumbai makes obvious”:
1. Islamist rage is not our fault. It is endemic to their culture. It has no regard for humanity, sex, age or innocence.

2. If you are not one of them it will seek you out and get you no matter how nice you are to it.

3. Even if you are one of them, once they kill all those who are not, they will find a reason that you are not quite one of them.

4. If you are not the strongest and the quickest and the most ruthless, you are eventually doomed.

The lessons we must learn and make sure we teach to the morally weak like the guy with that bumper sticker are:
1. If you have power over them today, use it now – tomorrow it may be too late.

2. Even if you kill someone who is innocent, as much as that disturbs you, you may take comfort in the certainty that they will die a less painful death than you and your family will if they get their hands on you.

3. The “hostages” of Mumbai had not absorbed the lesson of 9/11. The captives that were taken, tortured disfigured and murdered in Mumbai were no less doomed than the passengers on the airliners on 9/11. They allowed themselves to be taken and abused by captors who did not want anything from them but to use them as instruments of terror. Only the brave passengers of flight 93 understood and acted on this. Let no westerner ever rationalize ignorance of this from this day forward. If the Munich slaughter seemed to you acceptable, if flight 103 did not convince you, if you were able to harden your heart to the fates of Robert Dean Stethem and Leon Klinghoffer, and 9/11 failed to impress you and Madrid and Beslan and all of the theatrical, internet promoted, beheadings could not reach you, surely this atrocity cannot be denied.

4. We have seen in the Western Mass Media’s unwillingness to widely distribute the telling and ghastly details of the torture and murder in Mumbai, their dehumanization of Jews, Israeli, Americans and all other victims of the attack. and their studied avoidance of connecting the violence to Islam or Muslims that the blindness of our friend with the bumper sticker is reinforced by the very cultural institution that should be providing us with warnings and dependable information about the threat.
The Mainstream Media will not inform you, you cannot rely on them for full information; so you need to inform yourself. Do not allow yourself to be soothed and co-opted.

There is but this warning to add:
When (and unless we wake up and do something, it is not a question of “if”) you are attacked, you are going to have to fight as hard as you can, for as long as you can if you want to have any hope of surviving. We have seen what they do to captives so you must never leave yourself at their mercy- they have none. Remember that they are cowards. Suicide, no matter how many innocent people you take with you is a sign of weakness. They are so afraid of the impotence and ineffectuality of their culture and their pathetic individual enslavement to the honor/shame drama of that culture that they are willing to sacrifice themselves (and you!) to avoid the shame. They will murder you gladly rather than admit that they do not have the moral fiber to see how purile and ineffectual their society is. They are willing to accept their own deaths so you must assume they will gladly give you yours. The only defense is in strength and persistence. As Churchill said, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never- in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

I propose a different slogan- even if it’s a little too long for a bumper sticker- “God already blessed the whole world- God gave us America- too bad so many of us make exceptions of ourselves.”

UPDATE:
I have condensed the message of this post- I might have been more direct just writing this:

The Ultimate Lesson of Mumbai- Save the Last Clip for Yourself and Your Family

The “hostages” of Mumbai had not absorbed the lesson of 9/11. The captives that were taken, tortured disfigured and murdered in Mumbai were no less doomed than the passengers on the airliners on 9/11. They allowed themselves to be taken and abused by captors who did not want anything from them but to use them as instruments of terror. Only the brave passengers of flight 93 understood and acted on this. Let no westerner ever rationalize ignorance of this from this day forward...

....When (unless we wake up and do something, it is not a question of “if”) you are attacked, you are going to have to fight as hard as you can, for as long as you can if you want to have any hope of surviving. We have seen what they do to captives so you must never leave yourself at their mercy- they have none....

WHO IS TO BLAME FOR EVIL?

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here. William Shakespeare,
The Tempest, 1. 2

It is fashionable in some circles to blame religion for the evil that men do. Hitchens, Dawkins and others are leading a new resurgence of aggressive atheism that seeks to vilify all religions as the source of a large part of the chaos and misery in the world. They specifically negate the value of all religions and blame them for most of the violence and misery of the human race.

This bothers me, partly because I have a strong personal religious inclination, but it also bothers me because it is totally illogical. Ironically, I love reading Hitchens on most subjects and find his style, logic and command of fact and history impressive on just about everything with the exception of religion and Israel. I think it possible that his blindness on these two issues is a combination of negative personal history with religion, a vestigial (and erroneous) leftist belief that Israel is a colonialist enterprise and an unfortunate inability to see Israel apart from his prejudice against religion. More about Hitchens later because he is the exception that proves the rule.

I ran across an article about the French philosopher Rene Girard on the blog CUANAS a while ago that got me thinking about this. Since then I have read a lot of his work and I have been inspired by a couple of very clear and original insights, For one thing, Girard saw that it was not that religion caused the evils of human sacrifice but that religion evolved to govern and channel the natural competition for resources, jealousy and fear inherent in the human condition that led to the violence and horror of sacrifice. Girard exposes an important and much denied view of human nature. CUANAS writer Jaco Pastorius quoted this from Girard, “"When we describe human relations, we lie. We describe them as normally good, peaceful and so forth, whereas in reality they are competitive, in a war-like fashion."

Of course religion is not the only “culprit”, if you don’t happen to have strong religious faith, don’t worry, whatever cultural institutions you respect and depend on in this world, there is likely some nut-job who thinks your positive values are the cause of mayhem, madness and destruction. There is someone out there who will be happy to tell you that the fault lies with (pick one or more-) government, marriage, society, money (capital), science or some mixture of these. They make passionate cases for their allegations but can they all be right?

Without becoming involved in the numbingly arcane objections, squabbles about definitions, speculations about theology, theories of economics and hair splitting about psychology into which discussions about these matters tend to degenerate, allow me, please, one general anthropological observation. All of the above mentioned supposed causes of evil (and any others of which I am aware) have one thing in common- they are all systems or conceptual frameworks that were created by people.

Think about that. Leave aside the obvious question of how several different systems could be The Source(s) of All Evil; could any single one (or combination) of them actually be The Source(s) of Evil? Does it not stand to reason that any evil that is in the systems ultimately derives from the people who created and inhabit these systems?

Like the old comedy routine in which someone floating in a small boat notices a bit of water in the bottom of the boat and essays to let the water out of the boat by drilling a hole in the bottom so it can run out, it is a curious and quixotic spectacle when we see these attacks on western institutions and culture by people who under any other known system on earth would be outcasts, imprisoned as traitors or burned in the streets as heretics. In the West they are educated, protected and given a platform by the very same institutions they decry.

This inverted protest- in which the blame for humanity’s violence, misery and pain is projected onto the institutions which, of all the similar institutions in the world, have the best record of managing and minimizing the violence, theft, hatred, xenophobia, abusiveness and uncontrolled rage about which they are complaining- is the diagnostic symptom of western cultural anomie.

We have already discussed the most obvious signs (anti-theism, moral relativism, political correctness, post modernism, liberal cognitive egocentrism and post-colonialism) of this anomie at length. But, somehow, there has always been the nagging question of how so many, otherwise intelligent and well-educated people could be blind to the obvious internal contradictions inherent in their behavior and thought-process.

This unconsciously self-destructive behavior is a special case of what Richard Landes calls Demopathy. Demopathy, is the cynical and calculated use of the ideals, language and institutions of democratic western civilization to weaken or destroy it. Under Landes’ definition, someone who indulges in the form of blindly suicidal behavior described above is referred to not as a full-fledged Demopath but, rather, a Dupe of Demopathy. A Dupe takes up the arguments and reframing of true Demopaths and in a well-intentioned but overly emotional, and sub-rational state, they can not see how the ideas they profess weaken the very fabric of there own culture.

The question has remained open- what could possibly motivate people with no obvious mental incapacity to want to weaken and possibly destroy the culture that made them who they are- the only culture in the history of humankind that would have a place and tolerance for people who think and behave as they do. The energy source for this powerful screen of denial lies in the deeply disturbing idea that the source and magnitude of the evil of human nature is not an aberration but an inherent part of every individual.

This is the wellspring of demopathy. The Demopathic westerner has a very personal, deeply emotional investment in projecting the evil within himself (which otherwise he has to recognize as analogous to, if not identical with, the evil behind all the atrocities and horrors committed by the whole human race) onto his closest support system.
To make this work, he willingly believes that all individuals are either good or totally neutral until they become trained or enlisted by one of these (evil) institutions. This is what makes it seem like a good idea to some people to weaken or try to destroy the very structures that make us free and safe. There is not even a corresponding assumption that we are not as safe or free as we might be under a system that denies our true nature and attempts to turn us into totalitarian tools.

And this is where I must return to Hitchens. I have to stress that I use him to stand for all who, like him, want us to believe that belief in a supreme being is not essential to living a principled existence and is even somehow retrogressive.

Humanists would have us believe that secularism, rationality and “universal values” will suffice to safeguard our liberty and guide us to the next stage of human liberation. Humanism embraces a variety of related philosophies, according to Wikipedia, “…that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities – particularly rationality.” This faith in human beings and their intellectual devices would not seem justified in the light of what the antitheist regimes of the last century have done to the human race. One would think that Hitchens, as a substantially reconstructed Trotskyite, would have an idea about that.

To depend only on human values and reason- to claim dependence on universal moral values is itself an exercise in faith. Viewed only from the human perspective, though, there can be nothing truly universal about those morals and the effect of it is to deny that evil exists in the human nature. The greatest evils in the history of humankind have been a result of the denial that evil exists in the human heart- that it is only governments (like the monarchy of Louis XVI) and systems (such as capitalism) that need to be eliminated (along with thousands or even millions of arbitrarily selected people) to allow the reign of reason and humanistic values (from each according to his means, to each according to his needs) to prevail. In 1911 Joseph Conrad, in Under Western Eyes, Wrote “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”- And that goes for institutional, cultural and social sources of wickedness too.

The greatness of the American off-shoot of the western tradition is that in its foundational spiritual sources the society of Freemasons, farmers and frontiersmen who framed the republic were deeply involved with the “Old Testament” and had made a commitment to responsibility and self-reliance in preference to the soul deadening interpretations of original sin so prevalent in the old world of Europe. This hopeful, productive and democratic strain of the Judeo-Christian tradition acknowledges that evil (as well as righteousness) is part of what makes us human. Its greatest innovation is that it saw that the only good reason for religion, government and tradition is the to make it difficult for the any one group to gain too great a proportion of the power. We need all the help we can get to keep us from acting in ways that are (in the long run at least) counter to our own interests- it does us no good to sanctify humanity and project our evil side onto God and religion (and our freely elected government) we need to continue to try to live up to our best understanding of the goodness, order and balance that are the visible manifestations of Godliness.

The constant battle between The Judeo Christian West and the various retrograde Western ideologies, (Nazism, Socialism, Communism, Utopianism, religious fundamentalism, etc...) of which I believe Humanism and its corollary, Progressivism is one, is the same battle that divides the west from Islam. It is the conflict between utopian approaches that believe the human being is neither good nor evil but can be molded and remade in a political or religious image and the liberal western approach that acknowledges the human character accepts the good and the evil, acknowledges the human freedom to take responsibility for choosing between them and attempts to devise a system that balances and restrains the two sides of human nature in the most liberating and productive way possible.

Balance, indeed, is the signal innovation and genius of the Constitution of the United States of America. The framers of the Constitution were men versed in scripture. They well understood the problem of evil. They built a system with so many redundant safeguards that even the demopathic paranoid fringe that feigns courage by calling the current president Bushhitler and accusing him of being a fascist thug do so in complete confidence that they will not wake some night to a raid by the Secret Police and be “disappeared” into a mythical American Gulag.

It reminds me of nothing so much as the paranoid bravado that I (yes, even I), like many of my generation, felt in 1968 about what we would do “when the revolution comes”. We had convinced ourselves that a revolution was required to stop the evil we saw around us- and that our ascendance as leaders was Inevitable because of our own youth and purity. We fancied ourselves important in an adolescent and grandiose fantasy.

The revolution never came nor will today’s progressives be rounded up and turned into lampshades by the Bush administration. In time, we will gain enough perspective to see today’s pathetic attempt to appear heroic by challenging the most benign and open democracy on earth to suppress them with just as much condescending nostalgia as we do the “when the revolution comes” fantasy of 1968. But the similarity is no accident and it is important to see that they are both analogous to “feeling ill, calling a doctor, letting the doctor treat you and then blaming the physician for the disease”. They are quintessential expressions of that same human urge to avoid the reality of the chaotic evil that is present in all of us by projecting it onto the very institution(s) that have evolved to balance it with the good in each of us.

Our Judeo-Christian Western experiment is a flawed and human enterprise. Any human endeavor is doomed to embody a mixture of good and evil. But it is unique in human history as the one that has most productively valued introspection, fostered intellectual honesty and supported the dignity and rights of the individual. We can only continue the evolution and perfection of these powerful forces for good by, at last, putting away the childish omnipotence and imaginary purity of the extreme ends of the political spectrum.

As embodied in the US constitution, balance is the key. The rights and dignity of the human race can only be defended and expanded by first understanding the human being and respecting his qualities- both the positives and the negatives- then the checks and balances we devise will be felt as fair and effective and we can stop hating them and helping our enemies (the Demopaths of all stripes) to undermine them.

It is not, after all, the fault of religion or government or George Bush, Osama bin Laden or even Dick Cheney that there is evil in the world. It is not even the things that are done that seem evil. The things that seem evil to us are the violence and the hatred and the fear that are inherent in the human soul. Rene Girard offered a singularly brilliant insight when he observed that the source of evil was not the institutions but the nature of the human being. He falls short, however in carrying that insight through to its full meaning. In my next post I will discuss what Girard missed. In doing so, I will also show that progressivism and Islamism are actively engaged in behaviors that multiply and spread the violence and pain (and the denial that causes them).

Cultural Insanity - Part I - The Diagnosis

I’ve been quiet for a week and as you might know by now that means I’ve been working on something big Here is the First of a two part essay-

In a recent post on his own blog Richard Landes printed a letter he had received from someone who had heard him interviewed on the radio. The letter cited numerous “facts” that were obviously false and claimed to point to evidence that was clearly “cooked” and kneaded into a pungent soufflé of anti-Israel canards.

Landes, never one to miss a challenging “teaching moment”, wrote a lengthy reply. In the course of his reply, he addressed the superficial reasonableness of the letter writer’s arguments. He wrote:

“The important point here is not that your position isn’t “reasonable” — and as supported by evidence as mine. It’s a legitimate one. And under normal circumstances, we could agree to differ, just as Ptolomean and Copernican astronomers could differ without grave consequences in the 16th century. But don’t try to send a space ship beyond the solar system using Ptolomean calculations.”



It might seem that Landes goes a little too far in his charitable concession that his interlocutor’s point of view was “reasonable” and “just as supported by evidence” as his own, but Landes is following an honored and sadly neglected academic method, one that is designed not to merely support a point of view in a contest but rather to test it against alternatives and see which one is more successful at describing reality. So without looking any further than the narrow frame of reference in which the letter writer framed his point of view, they seemed just to present competing and equally valid ways of looking at the situation.

Landes’ then proceeded to widen the frame around the argument to show that, like the Ptolomean system, the narrow view taken by the radio listener does not work once you expand the frame to a wider and more comprehensive view of reality. The Copernican system is, of course, much more useful in space travel because it more closely approximates the real positions, relationships and movement of the heavenly bodies; and Landes’ view is much more robust and able to account for the reality of the conflict between Western Civilization and those who wish to rule the world with collectivist systems.

That point, elegantly stated, traces the stark fault line between the strangest sets of bedfellows the world has ever seen and the most successful civilization in history. The fatally conjoined, murderously quarrelsome twins of the Sunni and Shia Caliphate Cults and the liberal/socialist/communist/collectivist bastard children of The West (fascists all !) all have this in common, that they simply lack the ability to see the cultural frame of world events in any but the narrowest perspective. This is more than a willful blindness and it is not a product of stupidity of ignorance either. As I observe the smug, suicidal behavior of the progressive/socialist/liberal left and compare it with the belligerent, intolerance of the Caliphate Muslims seem to me to be in the grip of a similar kind of mental illness. They are all “collectivists” and there is something about people who believe in giving up one’s rights and prerogatives to a group of any kind that renders them unable to behave in a broader self-interest- even while they believe that they are doing the righteous thing. One way to explain this apparently inexplicable behavior is that it represents a cultural analog of a mental illness known as Borderline Personality Disorder.

I am not in favor of criminalizing or dehumanizing people because of their ideas and I believe that calling anyone that disagrees with you “insane” is an intolerant and unproductive tactic. I also Acknowledge that, just as it is dangerous and inexact to apply models of animal behavior to human beings, and that it is perhaps even more tricky to project individual psychology onto social and cultural groups Nevertheless, the parallels here are striking and, I believe, very instructive.

Wikipedia defines Borderline Personality Disorder this way:

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is defined as a mental illness primarily characterized by emotional dysregulation, extreme "black and white" thinking, or "splitting", and chaotic relationships. The general profile of the disorder also typically includes a pervasive instability in (1) mood, (2) interpersonal relationships, (3) self-image, (4) identity, and (5) behavior, as well as a disturbance in the individual's sense of self. In extreme cases, this disturbance in the sense of self can lead to periods of dissociation.[1]

Dissociation is the key. The leftist and the Islamist (infact collectivists of any stripe) are dissociated from their own very natures. They deny basic human truths in a defensive but doomed effort not to have to deal with issues that cause them tremendous anxiety.

Wikepedia continues:


“The disturbances suffered by those with borderline personality disorder have a wide-ranging and pervasive negative impact on many or all of the psychosocial facets of life, including employability and relationships in work, home, and social settings. Comorbidity is common; borderline personality disorder frequently occurring with substance use disorders and affective disorders. Suicidality and completed suicide are possible outcomes without proper care and effective therapy.”

Whether it is the abrupt and violent suicide culture of such diverse groups as al Qeada, Hamas and Hezbollah or the slow cultural/intellectual suicide of multiculturalism, it is compellingly apparent that the definition applies in both cases. Caliphate Islamism and Leftist liberalism both predispose their adherents to lose the ability to see the wider moral and ethical frame of the world around them.

This explains why, even though their idiosyncratic and xenophobic ideological systems are mutually contradictory, they don’t find it important to argue with each other. That’s because at the moment the contradictions amongst them are orthogonal - that is to say, in the presence of the dominant Western and American cultural and political influence, they really don’t interfere with each other. Their common disease makes them natural allies against that larger, more psychologically stable power structure that seems to them to humiliate and mock them by its very existence.

Of course, that alliance would evaporate the instant one of them ever got into a position of power. As soon as Islamists take over in an area, whether in Iraq, Waziristan or (most recently) in Gaza, they immediately behead, shoot, disembowel and torture anyone that represents moderation or reasonableness. The left, given the opportunity, in the USSR, China, Korea and Cambodia has always done the same. But while Western civilization is the common enemy, an Islamic Caliphateist who believes that women are inferior to men can accept (or at least ignore) the ranting of an anti-Israel socialist woman who believes that no human being is any more deserving than any other because she, as he does, finds it so much more important to deny the reality and moral superiority of Israel- a country whose founding principals are not orthogonal to but directly opposed to his. Indeed, the very existence of Israel is a challenge to his most basic beliefs and desires. She, on the other hand, remains blind to the plight of Muslim women and the lack of even the most rudimentary freedom of expression in the Muslim Caliphate because she has dissociated those things- split them off from her reality because they are intolerable for her and her illness has so weakened her that she cannot contemplate them.

Wikipedia provides this a list of diagnostic criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR). The presence of five out of nine of these is considered diagnostic of borderline personality.

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment…
A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, promiscuous sex, eating disorders, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). [Again, not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior.
Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
Chronic feelings of emptiness.
Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

I’ll admit at the outset that my definition of the progressive/socialist/liberal left is pretty broad and fuzzy around the edges. To try to define it down would be to miss the point. My point is that beyond a fairly narrow band close to the center of the political spectrum, the left has so swallowed the failed progressive agenda that they all suffer from the same cultural malaise. Here are the symptoms I see for the left:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment…
a. Objections to the Israeli Security fence and the Mexican border fence.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
a. The idealized view of Caliphate Islam as “freedom fighters” and “non-materialistic religious devotees while at the same time devaluing them with the “racism of lowered expectations” by not holding them to the same high standard in human rights, public discourse, child welfare and civil governance as expected of other people.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
a. Self-hatred:
i. Concentration on the “human rights record of Israel” while the Arab/Islamic, Chinese, Korean, Zimbabwean and Rssian records are orders of magnitude worse
ii. Public displays of disgust with America even though it is the greatest country and most finest democratic experiment in the history of mankind
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, promiscuous sex, eating disorders, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). [Again, not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
a. Advocacy of sex-education that emphasizes techniques and birth control and derides abstinence and relationship counseling.
b. The introduction of legislation to control the content of food beyond basic safety standards. The move to outlaw trans-fats in some locals is symptomatic of food-faddism and group eating disorders.
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior.
a. Multiculturalism leads to the inability to discriminate between right and wrong and to protect the culture from death-cult attacks
b. Persistent belief that “War is Not the Answer” even when an enemy has sworn to destroy and rule over you.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.
a. Conspiracy Theories (9/11 truth movement, Bushitler stole the election)
Well, there’s six, a diagnosis plus one. I’m sure there are a lot more- suggestions and additions are welcome …

Here’s my take on the symptoms of The Caliphate:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment…
a. Objections to the Israeli Security fence
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
a. Humiliation and rage over everything The West is and does stems from the dissociation of the knowledge that their culture is actually inferior.
b. Honor killings
c. Rampant child and sexual abuse
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, promiscuous sex, eating disorders, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). [Again, not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior.
a. Suicide martyrdom raised to a cultural ideal
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
a. The “Arab Street” in general
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
a. The two Intifadas
b. The Cartoon-ifada
c. The Pope-ifada
d. The Paris street riots
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.
a. Jew Hatred
b. Dhimmi laws
c. Conspiracy theories (9/11 was an Israeli plot, etc)
There’s six there too. It’s only six because of time restraints- suggestions and additions welcome here too.

Let me make it clear, I’m not a psychiatrist or psychotherapist so I don’t know what the prognosis is for individuals with this disorder or what price their family members and neighbors pay for their proximity to them. I do have a degree in anthropology, however, and I am able to see into the cultural scale of the problem. It is not hopeless but is is frightening.

Loren Eiseley who was a great anthropologist and paleontologist of the old school, knew the pathology of culture well. In his great essay The Star Thrower he wrote, “Man would kill for shadowy ideas more ferociously than other creatures kill for food, then, in a generation or less, forget what bloody dream had so oppressed him.” That is culture on a rampage. My next post will focus on the hope for recovery and reconciliation.

A New Name for the Beast

Well, I’m still working on another big post but this idea actually came out of that one the other night. When I say "came out", I mean, it tore it’s way out like one of the baby aliens in the movie of the same name. The problem is that I have become very frustrated at the lack of what I feel to be a truly accurate and descriptive name for the enemy. Here is my attempt to solve that problem. I’d like to know what you think. If anyone would like to add new warning signs to the list at the end, I’d like to see them…

Despite my defense of the term Islamofascism (which I stand by as a definition of the repressive and terrorized totalitarian condition of much of the Islamic world) I have been unable to settle on a terminology that adequately describes and isolates the strain in Islam that poses a grave danger to freedom and liberty in today's world. I like “Islamofascism” still but I’m afraid that the word fascism has lost a lot of its impact, not because it is not accurate but because its meaning has become blurred by the constant misuse it receives. I have also used “Islamism” but it strikes me that it is not informative enough- even something of a tautology. Political Islam has some value too. It is especially good in that it reminds us that the politicization of any religion leads to the same place. Thus it also suggests a commonality with the Presbyterian and Episcopalian Churches, in their movement to divest from Israel. In fact, all the mainstream liberal churches seem to be having an attendance problem because of their political nature LINK . However, in the sense that it does not specify the violence that goes along with the current variety, of political Islam, Political Islam too does not satisfy. Radical Islam has been somewhat useful too but the word, radical, is also over-used and as become fuzzy with constant misapplication.

I have come to believe that we still lack a title that focuses on the critical difference between the kind of Islam that gives rise to terror and intolerance and the rest of Islam that to some degree is amenable to living in the modern world with co-operation and tolerance.

The name I keep coming back to is “Caliphate Islam” (or Caliphatism). Here is my reasoning. As far as I am concerned, anyone is entitled to believe that their religion (whatever it may be) is the “one true faith”. What they are not entitled to is, in any way, to believe that non-members of that blessed faith should have any fewer rights or less human dignity than “the faithful”. It is the underlying assumption of those who believe in The Caliphate that the entire world should live under Muslim rule and Shari’a law and you can only be a good Muslim if you believe in bringing it about.

The Caliphate, by the way, is not the jolly, rollicking world of Walt Disney’s Aladdin. Nor is it even the hell on earth that was Afghanistan under the Taliban or the Insane purgatory of today’s Iran. The world-wide Caliphate is the entire earth gone mad. Women being beaten, hung and stoned to death for no other crime than having been raped by a gang of perverted Caliphists who have been raised to think of women not as human beings but as “meat” or weapons of the devil. The Caliphate will be a place where the ancient dhimmi status will be revived. Dhimmi-hood in the ancient Caliphate meant that Christians, Jews and anyone else who is not a Muslim will have protection under the law only in so far as the mercy of the local mullah allows.

It is Caliphate Islam that won’t accept a Jewish state in the Middle East because it is considered an affront to the will of Allah that Jews should not only not be subject to Islamic rule but might have Islamic citizens living in a Jewish country. It is Caliphate Islam that so stultifies the lives of its people that they have to emigrate to western countries only to reject the values that make those countries better places to live. Belief in the Caliphate justifies the mass murder of innocent office workers in Manhatten, school children in Beslan and tribal rivals in sub-Saharan Africa. The belief in and desire for the Caliphate is the difference between conservative Islam and the pernicious terrorists that endanger all of mankind for the sake of a utopian nightmare.

Is it fair to call it a Utopian nightmare? A cursory reading of Islamic history proves that the Caliphate idea deserves to be thrown into the same garbage dump of bad ideas and hideous failures that now holds Communism and Nazism. Would it be peaceful as they claim? Well, we know that the track record is not good. The Prophet Mohammad established a vast and secure Caliphate across a great expanse of territory, yet as soon as Mohammed died people began murdering each other to determine his successor. Right down to the present day, the issue of who the true leader should be (and should have been) is the primary divider in the Islamic world. Shias and Sunnis kill many more of each other than Americans do of either over it; and the Sunni,/Shia divide is entirely derived from the original disagreement about who should have been the first Caliph after Mohammed. Still, some Muslims continue to believe that as soon as they get Israel out of the way and they take over the western governments by demographic means there will be a world-wide peaceful caliphate. That way lies ruin and madness.

A word of caution, Caliphists are sometimes aware that this belief may be a red flag. Often their belief is so strong and insensitive to reality that they acknowledge and talk about it openly. The ones who are most dangerous know enough not to mention this belief in public. In these cases it is important to know how to recognize them by other behavior. At the risk of being accused of behavioral profiling, lets look at a few of the indicators that come to mind:

1. Dehumanizing language- calling non-Muslims names like kuffar (nonbeliever) or referring to them as pigs, monkeys dogs etc…

2. Inability to engage in reasonable discourse without flying into a rage- see my post Don’t Just Stand There, Dhimmi, Humiliate Me about Imam Al Husainy. (below)

3. Refusal to accept the existence of Israel.

4. Extreme Misogyny and gender inequality

5. Blaming all of the incompetence, inefficiency, misfortune, and rage in the Islamic world on: a. The Jews, b. America, c. The West, d. Women, e. Anybody else, f. All of the above

I know there are a lot more but you get the idea… Send me your suggestions!

No, Its Not All Their Fault...

It's up to all of us to insist on a free world.

Islamism, Islamofascism or just plain Islam- however you feel the definition should be framed, is a problem but it can only be as big a problem as we allow it to be. Western civilization, like any other natural phenomenon, contains the seeds of its own destruction that exist as part and parcel of the properties that make it grow and thrive. People grow and learn only to become old, brittle and moribund. The object of the game in civilizations, as it is for living creatures, is to accentuate the healthy properties and minimize the effect of those defects as much as possible for as long as possible. The challenge is to survive, fight entropy and create a greater and more satisfying life in the process.

The west has been driven by an engine of dynamic change tempered by ethical benevolence greater than any other the world has ever known. It is not necessarily the case that the world-wide Jihad has been so damaging, it is just that it has found was of taking advantage of our vulnerabilities. It is these vulnerabilities that we have to address before we can stop the process by which the Jihad threat has accelerated the sapping of the moral courage of our entire civilization.

Dr Jacob Bronowski identified the key aspect of the problem back in the early 1970’s. It is crucial for us to understand that, as evil and immediate as Islamofascism is today, it has only been able to make the inroads in the west that it has because of the crucial flaws that Bronowski eloquently exposed in his brilliant BBC series, “The Ascent of Man”.

Islamofascism, of course, was not even on anyone’s radar screen at the time, and Bronowski’s concerns centered on the “popular”, non-rational intellectual fads of the day, but Bronowski’s words are prophetic. Long before Islam re-emerged as a threat he had a clear vision of the vulnerability to it that was, then, in its embryonic stage. His words echo across the decades with a warning and an exhortation.

“And I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into--into what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely profound questions about, are we not really just animals at bottom; into extra-sensory perception and mystery. They do not lie along the line of what we are now able to know if we devote ourselves to it: an understanding of man himself. We are nature's unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex. Knowledge is our destiny. Self-knowledge, at last bringing together the experience of the arts and the explanations of science, waits ahead of us.

It sounds very pessimistic to talk about western civilization with a sense of retreat. I have been so optimistic about the ascent of man; am I going to give up at this moment? Of course not, the ascent of man will go on. But do not assume that it will go on carried by western civilization as we know it. We are being weighed in the balance at this moment. If we give up, the next step will be taken- but not by us.”

It is a striking passage. Leading up to this point, through twelve preceding episodes, Bronowski has dramatized the critical intellectual and scientific personalities and their discoveries that have brought western civilization to the pinnacle of human progress. He is neither apologetic nor tentative. Even in speaking of his reservations about the use of the atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki he never wavered from his full confidence that the intellectual honesty, tolerant respect for new ideas, adventurous thirst for discovery and rigorous insistence on testing in reality that are the strengths of western science will lead to continual advancement and higher evolution. Now he confesses a deep concern for the continuity of that evolution.

Although it is true that Bronowski was a Jew, his real faith was in science and rationality. Born in Poland and raised in England he mounted a passionate defense of science even as he cathected personal loss and anguish in another memorable scene. This one filmed in Poland, standing by the swampy shore of a pond.

“Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality--this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we *can* know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."
(Now, as he begins this next sentence, he seems to forget that he is wearing a suit and dress shoes and walks, as he is speaking into the water at the edge of the pond) We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. (Here he squats down over the shallow water and reaches down to pull up a hand full of muck) We have to touch people.”

How sickened he would be to see what is happening in the Country he loved, where political correctness and multiculturalism have allowed the world’s most irrational and repressive ideology to use the tolerance he so prized to allow intolerance to gain a foothold. Bronowski understood better than anyone that tolerance is a two-way street. I has to lead to real debate and genuine give and take. If you agree to tolerate, you must insist on being tolerated in return. If the west continues to grant unidirectional tolerance to Muslims who refuse to accept western values, persist in anti-western behavior (in which classification I put such activities as wife beating, plotting terror attacks, honor killing, advocating the institution of Shari a Law and advocating the overthrow of the government)

“I, whom England made, whom it taught its language and its tolerance and excitement in intellectual pursuits, I should feel it a grave sense of loss (as you would) if a hundred years from now Shakespeare and Newton are historical fossils in the ascent of man, in the way Homer and Euclid are.”

Unless we in the west find a way to restore our own faith in the values that have made our civilization the shining light of humanity, that day is coming- and soon.