This examination of free expression by Salman Rushdie, excerpted from an interview in the August / September issue of Reason (print only), seems to fit well with the motif of today’s posts:
reason: Do you think freedom of speech is threatened by cultural relativism—by the idea that principles like free expression are not universal truths but simply local cultural constructs?
Rushdie: The idea of universal rights—the idea of rights that are universal to all people because they correspond to our natures as human beings, not te where we live or what our cultural background is—is an incredibly important one. This belief is being challenged by apostles of cultural relativism who refuse to accept that such rights exist. If you look at those who employ this idea, it turns out to be Robert Mugabe, the leaders of China, the leaders of Singapore, the Taliban, Ayatollah Khomeini. It is a dangerous belief that everything is relative and therefore these people should be allowed to kill because it’s their culture to kill.
I think we live in a bad age for the free speech argument. Many of us have internalized the censorship argument, which is that it is better to shut people up than to let them say things that we don’t like. This is a dangerous slippery slope, because people of good intentions and high principles can see censorship as a way of advancing their cause and not as a terrible mistake. Yet bad ideas don’t cease to exist by not being expressed. They fester and become more powerful.
Rushdie touches on a theme that I discuss often on this site —the idea that the way we think about how language functions can have certain structural effects that, as they insinuate themselves into our decision-making processes, get translated into philosophy and law and public policy.
For instance, earlier today I pointed out how an unfortunate decision made by the Swiss Red Cross in 1929—allowing their iconic symbol to be resignified in such a way that, with the best of intentions (and so as not to give transcultural offense), they essentially surrendered it to those who didn’t like what it meant to them—was a decision that at some level operated on the assumption that the offended party could not be made to understand and respect intent. That is, it conceded, on a basic referential level, that the recipient of a text is responsible for giving that text its final meaning—a hermeneutic decision that relativizes interpretation, in theory allowing for as many different plausible interpretions as the community of interpreters will accept.
And Rushdie correctly sees in such relativism the opportunity for abuse by unscrupulous leaders who learn to game the philosophical system, which happens once a given interpretive community can claim a proprietary control over their culture’s representation—a maneuver that allows them to argue that outside critiques of said culture are somehow inauthentic. This idea, which allows for a kind of critical immunization and for linguistic provincialism, is the lasting legacy of politico-linguistic thinkers like Edward Said.
But the fact is, such cultural relativism is structurally provided for in a linguistic system that refuses to allow intent to govern the utterance, relying instead on individual interpreters to give signs their meaning—and so by extension, allowing groups of individuals, by consent, to settle on a particular meaning and to claim an authenticity for that meaning that needn’t answer to outside criticism, because “meaning” has become relative. That is, because one culture adopts a particular interpretation as an article of faith, our hermeneutic relativism commits us to accepting their interpretation as equally legitimate to our own. And in fact, we have no philosophical ground left on which to fight it, having ceded control of language to whomever can make their own meanings from a given set of signifiers.
For Rushdie (as with our founders) natural rights are the universal that confounds the tenets of relativism. Linguistically speaking, that “universal” translates into “intent,” which is what makes language language —and not simply a series of accidental marks—in the first place.
Now if you’ll excuse me, TNT is running Zapped. And I’m a sucker for a young Willie Aames.
But then, who isn’t?
All this talk about the red crescent/red cross makes me wonder what you think about the Flight 93 memorial nonsense. I looked at the thing at Malkin’s site and I just don’t see it. Well, I wouldn’t see it if she didn’t have an animated gif of the thing turning into an actual crescent.
Liar. Zapped is not on TNT tonight. And this is not a relative untruth. It’s absolute.
Heh. Yeah, I made that bit up.
Matt—
I haven’t posted on the Flight 93 memorial because I dont think the design is particularly egregious (aesthetically I’m pleased), but I find the architect’s intent troublesome, in that he wanted very much to use the thing as part of some multicultural healing fest. I don’t think that particularly appropriate, but then it’s not my decision to make. However I’m not convinced he was looking to make the thing objectively pro-Islam, either.
But it looks like it bothered enough people that they complained and got the architect to alter the design a bit. And that’s fine, too.
I didn’t realize the artist had admitted he had multicultural intent. The spin I heard today was that it was just supposed to be a broken circle.
So, then, from whence come our inalienable rights?
Re: the Flight 93 memorial. If the design could be interpreted to do any dishonor to these blessed heroes, it should be changed.
Did you see the guys’ calculation of the azimuth through the center of the ‘crescent’ coinciding with Mecca?
That’s a great interview with Rushdie–it had quite a few surprises for me. In fact, I ended up with a much greater respect for the man than I did after trying to read one of his books.
As for the memorial, I don’t know if he was trying to make it pro-Islam. As a designer, I find myself wondering if I’m ever allowed to use crescents in my design without courting criticism that has absolutely nothing to do with the design itself.
I like the design.
Back when Zapped came out, I kept getting Heather Thomas and Heather Locklear mixed up.
That doesn’t happen anymore.
Also: I miss Scatman Crothers.
Also: I dug that chick with the glasses. Wonder what ever happened to her.
Also: Scott Baio’s character was named Barney.
What?
Believe it or not, the phrase “we hold these truths to be self-evident” can be understood by referring to Euclid’s Elements, which were one of the primary texts for the education of young gentlemen of the 17th and 18th centuries. Euclid’s five axioms were held to be self-evident truths — things that could be seen to be true on first examination. So when Jefferson wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident” he was saying “These are the axioms from which we proceed.”
In modern math, we know that the euclidian axioms aren’t as self-evident as they sound: play with the scandalous fifth axiom and you get Bolyai’s and Riemann’s geometries; play with other ones, and you get other weirdness, like affine systems.
In logic, similarly, we know that you can construct systems around any choice of axioms: the desirability of the system comes from how it models the real world.
So, the relativists may be right to the extent that if you choose other axioms, you get other results. But as Jeff and Rushdie both point out, make the choice of axioms that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed at their creation with certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and you arrive at a system that has turned out to be the best one devised to provide the greatest good for the greatest number.
And pie.
Oops. Something got messed up there in the edit, Charlie. All fixed now.
It’s good to see that Rushdie recognizes and places Mugabe in among the worst of the freedom tramplers.
What that guy has done to Zimbabwe is incredible.
Charlie (Colorado)–
Actually, it reads,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
and I wonder if said ingredient is critical to “a system that has turned out to be the best one devised to provide the greatest good for the greatest number.” I mean, evolutionaryily speaking, you gotta wonder if there’d been a tad less basil in the primordial stew whether we’d all look like Michael Jackson.
Pre- or post-op?
post—he wasn’t such a bad-looking kid. Kinda squirmy, though.
And the problem it all crumbles down to is who is to say that an interpretation is invalid? It’s valid to me! Are you trying to invalidate me?
Try running anything with a bunch of touchy people continuously on the lookout for slights that would impinge on their precious beliefs and reacting to any perceived jostling of the redwood-sized chips on their shoulders with all the viciousness of a rabid widebeast.
Sounds suspiciously like a modern university faculty lounge. In the (in)Humanities Department.
Perhaps the President should create a new Department of Semiotics. Granted, that’s what Rove was supposed to be so good at, but he seems to have lost his touch lately.
1. Willie Aames, now appearing on Celebrity Fat Club … I guess eight(donuts) wasn’t enough.
2. Per the spokesman for the Flight 93 Memorial organization, the original name for the design was a mundane ‘Flight 93 Memorial’. The selection committee tagged the design with ‘Crescent of Embrace’ as a way to keep track of it among the 1,000+ entrants. They kept the name once that design was one of six. Now, given the concern, they’re talking about putting the original name back on the winning design its original name.
He was serious … and I am Marie from Romania.
This was discussed during a discussion on a Philadelphia regional talk show, 1210AM.
3. When Classical Liberals Attack, or Get Bitchy, or Something
The point I {Andrew Sullivan} was trying to make remains exactly as I meant it. As for “cheap shots,” calling a classical liberal a “Kos diarist” strikes me as a little, well, excitable.
I’d characterize that more as ‘identifying’ someone as a Kos diarist. But I’m a Free Market Rosicrucian Estotericist.
This is pretty highbrow stuff for an Econ major like me, but I’m thinking the only reason anybody cares about these symbols is because they’re pretty sure they can manipulate us into caring.
I’ll bet more than one of the supposedly offended has chuckled into his sleeve a time or two when laying out his grievances.
Sponge,
I think the chuckling goes the other way. Those defending the design are the ones doing the chuckling.
The objection to the design is pretty clear and reasonably straight forward.
It’s a crescent.
An arc, really.
A big red fucking crescent
an arc, and it’s red because of the maple trees.
A big red crescent like the kind featured on all that Islamisty stuff
Purely coincidence. It’s an arc of trees that happen to turn red.
And this big, red crescent happens to point towards Mecca if you cut the angle in two and draw a straight line .. a kibble or something
A qibla, and that’s purely coincidence. Had the plane flown into the terrain at another location, I’m sure that qibla, errr, line thing wouldn’t be an issue.
What about the large patio-thing and the lined markings which look like places where people can put their prayer rugs?
That’s hardscaping – the lines are for drainage.
But the lines are all facing along with the qibla thingie.. shouldn’t drainage go downhill.
Our design is hydrodymically sound.
Okay, maybe, bu why maple trees which turn red .. why not hemlocks, or oaks, or black walnuts, or apple trees .. Apples are pretty american, why not apple trees?
Because you’re saps .. sorry, because the Maple tree is symbolic.
of what
The symbolism is deep.
but they turn red .. why not a silver maple or some other maple.
Our arborist tells us that the red maple is best suited for this particular location …
………. and so forth.
Jeff, you are a monster! This is a brilliant post, but I would like to add that one’s vocabulary is also fundamaental in “seeing” the world. They say that the Eskinoes have eleven words for “snow, each distinct from the other. What I never see mentioned though, is that the English language is just as rich in nuance as any on the planet(although maybe not for the word “snow”). Beyond the fact that the size of one’s vocabulary defines the size and content of their world, there are so many sublime distinctions that exist in the English language. I have always been fascinated by the subtlty of our language, but find that in real world conversations, those distinctions shoot right over the head of most people I know. I can say I’m mad, I’m irate, I’m irked, I’m annoyed, I am in a rage, etc., and each one of these expressions has a distinct meaning. But no matter which word I use, most listeners hear the word “mad”, so I rarely bother to use the other words. Unfortunately, the government schools (I won’t call them public schools any more), are intent on releasing barely literate people into our society. What gets a college diploma today wouldn’t have gotten you into the ninth grade when I was going to school. It’s good for the left on election day, though. I barely made it through high school, and dropped out of college, but it seems that I can run circles around most of the recent college “grads” that I know.
To get back to my point, I don’t even bother in most conversations to use any word but mad (well, sometimes “pissed off” works, too) because the distinction of meaning of any of the other words is lost on most people. I think this slow strangling of our language also bears heavily on what is happening with the left today. When I read the posts at Kos or DU, I am struck by the knuckle dragging language of most of the posters, in that it seems to show, all by itself, that there is very little critical thinking or desire for facts on the part of the posters. Most importantly, it indicates to me that there is no desire to learn anymore, either. I am on the far side of fifty(I can’t figure out how that happened), and I still learn new things every single day. I guess that’s why it is so alarming when I see the KosKids whose attitude is: “I know at least five hundred words, so I am one smart MoFo”. The left would love a country that is full of people who have 500 word vocabularies, and the scary thing is, that’s where we seem to be headed.
Thanks again for your insight. You STILL da man…
This shows why you are a civilian, and one with a shallow grasp of history. In warcraft you are not going to fight under the same flag you send the medico’s and humanitarian aid under, and this is the primary reason for the 1929 decision culminating in the Geneva Convention of 49. Moron. It’s up there with the Magna Carta, and that was 1215, so too long a time in coming to have its significance as a milestone in civilisation’s epic for me to allow you to get away with dismissing it with trite, facile glibberish posturing as intellectualism.
Yea, well, I can’t top that. The reason for the red cross on white is purely practical – signaling on the battlefield the presence of a humanitarian organisation. Why you want to fuck with the brand heritage of the red cross and red crescent and all the good they have done through history from the Knights Templier and Hospitallier and Knights of St John and the co-operation and fraternity their corresponding Islamic orders is beyond me.
The other point is, these symbols are the symbols of the guys that started the movements. Their movements. Not your’s. You are just a carping civilian, remember. Whoever told you you had a fucking vote is not your friend.
Wadard –
It is extremely gratifying to see you miss the point by..,say…five hundred miles. Thanks for the hoo-hoo…
I don’t want you to think I am being unnessarily harsh, so I shall explain further. Here you say ….
To support your arguement you seem to claim that the Swiss Red Cross allowed the addition of the Red Crescent and Red Lion and Red Sun to also signify (a bit different to re-signfy) the Swiss Red Cross, and this claim is simply wrong. The Swiss Red Cross is the flag of the Swiss Red Cross, and no other flag signifies the Swiss Red Cross. The Red Cross is also a flag of the IRC. The Red Crescent is the only flag of the Turkish Red Cross, but it is also a flag of the IRC. Etc. That’s how it works mate. No one is changing any meaning – just making communication clearer which is what you need in the fog of war. Perhaps you need to know how they are structured:
And here are their tenets:
TW: national … and international
Is it just me or did Wadard completely miss the point.
If it changed no meaning, then why was a new symbol necessary?
It’s pretty easy to see a red cross on a white flag even if you are in Turkey.
More of teh funnay, less of teh newsy!
Sorry Jeff, but your blog is just so deep anymore. Our faithful citizen journalist is all grown up now, having graduated from COCK jokes to thought-provoking insight and analysis. Sniff.
Like fucking Powerline or something.
Bring back some cock jokes, k? please?
Sean, it is at least penetrating analysis.
Oh, I see you are given to bouts of schaudenfreud, gloom-gloating, epicaricacy and/or pyrrhic triumphantilism. Take your pick …. they all mean the same. If the bouts are accompanied with hot flushes a lot you may be hitting male menopause and it’s time you take the hormone tabs.
TW: Miss. Oops sorry … … or female menopause – not very pc of me but hard to tell from your bitchy talk, anyway.
Wadard,
I waited for hours, but you never showed up. I don’t know whether to be angry, or just hurt. It’s like you don’t even know I exist! Let me tell you one thing, mister: you keep crap like this up and you’re never going to get me.
Cordially…
The sweeping tide of moral relativism over the past 40 or so years has also influenced the decline of art, drama specifically, we are seeing right before our eyes and ears.
For example, thirty years ago the ‘Star Wars’ movie presented clear lines of good vs evil, right vs wrong morality yet thirty years later an extension of the original ‘Star Wars’ movie now presents a mass of morally relative muck. BUT, the special effect were really good.
Today the good guys are bad guys because the real bad guys are cool guys with an attitude against morality.
Art is dead in America, killed by the very moral relativist who made their wealth droning out morally relative muck.
And OH YEAH, it was I, ME ME ME, who first asserted the ‘kibble problem.” All the cool maps and precise calculations that followed mine flow from my fevered rethuglican paranoiac efforts.
Not that I ever asserted it was on purpose, Some guy said it was piss-poor-geography to say the qibla was to the north-east so I made a map to bust his chops.
Because the organisation with jurisdiction in Turkey is the Turkish Red Cross and because they are Turkish, with all this great Muslim history that goes back to working with the Knights Templiers and the Knights of St John they choose to have a red fucking crescent on their flag. What is so hard to understand? No other Member of the IRC comes into Turkey w/o their say so. And if anyone in need sees a Red Cross Flag in Turkey they know they are going to get the same impartial treatment as they would from the volunteers of the Red Crescent.
We are also given to gob-smacking and pie-demanding. Don’t forget those you silly twit.
But let’s not forget amidst the general hub-bub that ‘Trying to Be Seen In A War Zone’ means that you shouldn’t be shot at and the question boils down to ‘What’s the Best Way to Do That?”
I think a color, rather than a symbol, does the trick – Volvo Safety Orange. It’s Swedish, which is almost Swiss and it’s safe, and orange.
So, Orange Banners all around. Paint the trucks orange and dole out vests and arm bands.
But the bigger news is that Andrew “Classical Liberal” Sullivan bitch-slapped Jeff (via Glenn) about the ‘Kos diarist’crack.
That’s bullshit. When George Lucas wrote the first one he say the Soviet Union as the evil empire. However this had changed for him by the last one and he saw America as the Evil Empire and GW as like Darth Vader. It does not matter what you think – many young people growing up now will pick up on the cues that Lucas left in his last film and they will start asking questions about their leader.
WTF is Waddo crapping about now?
Honestly—I can’t tell from what he wrote. It makes no sense, and doesn’t seem to connect to anything Jeff wrote.
Sometimes I get the impression he’s just here to whine, bitch, moan and distract from the real points being made.
You know, like the ones about Willie Aames.
By “bitch-slap” you must mean, in this case, that the “bitch” in question is the slappER and not the slapEE.
Wadard is a Star Wars fan. Star Wars is racist. Wadard is racist.
Big surprise. SHAME! SHAME ON WADARD! Don’t you feel guilty for hating people of color, you racist fascist? You are evil and racist, just like Darth Vader.
Actually, Waddo, Lucas (like Hollywood in general) decided he could make more off the foreign markets by playing to ignorance and bigotry about America.
How many times did you see the prequels? I’m guessing an even dozen each.
George Carlin, whose politics I usually do not agree with, did a good bit about this subject. It is never the words that one should take issue with, but rather the intent of the person using them. Which is great in theory, but harder to apply in practice.
It also takes away from the sheer stupidity of arming a weapon, handing it to your enemy in time of war and then expecting that he will use it in the way you intend. I do not think we are at war with all muslims, but it may be a blind man who does not understand that our enemy is muslim and is using his religion as a reason and rallying cry to continue the fight. To forget this, in a time of war, in favor of the idea that the ‘undecided’ will favor your intent over his, is too risky.
So intent is important, but is not always the only important aspect when considering which language or symbols are appropriate for use. IMO.
Looks like it’s true: Satire is wasted on the Left.
Bring it on you snitchy little faggot. I enjoy a bit of conflict.
So you go start your Orange People Peace Corps and hit a war zone for me, please.
Oh I get it – the big words made you angry because you don’t know them and your response to your own ignorance is the threat of violence. Neanderthal
Luckily, for people like you who don’t know many words, I’ve got a few good headbutt moves I wouldn’t mind practicing.
TW: blood. Hey, you started
So why don’t the Jews get their own flag? This current conflict isn’t about the crescent and the cross, no one has a problem with those. It’s about the star, which Israel would like to use, but the Islamic nations won’t recognize.
Your argument differentiating between the Swiss Red Cross and the IRC is a good bit of obfuscation, but it makes no sense. While trying to argue that the Swiss Red Cross flag didn’t change you make the point that the IRC flag did, in fact, change. One flag became two. Years later two flags failed to become three, so now two flags are becoming one (not the original one!) again. No one cares that during all those years the flag of the Swiss Red Cross was constant because it’s the IRC doing the recognition of the symbols.
Also, your calling Jeff a chickenredcrossguy is pretty rich coming from a non-American who has repeatedly called for the impeachment of Bush.
I love good ole American capitalism, where selling out your country is just a bottom-line decision. Go Georgie boy!
Never saw it, I’m into European & Asian Cinema. He didn’t get this bit of the foreign market.
.
John Woo a favorite, or Takishi Miike? Some actual potential common ground here!
G’day, toughguy.
“Bring it on you snitchy little faggot.”
So you are a homophobe AND a racist. Shame on you. SHAME. How can you live any longer with such shame?
Kangaroo-Fu
Wad-boy, the “hate-word”-using, ass-kicking Thunder from Downunder!
A combination of lefty talking points and finely-honed fighting skills that put him in line for the mantle of the new Chutch!!
TW “rate”, as in he dosn’t quite.
Should be “doesn’t”.
Traveling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,
“Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.”
Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, “Do you speak-a my language?”
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,
“I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.”
Lying in a den in Bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, “Are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?”
And he said,
“Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.”
Hey Wadard ‘many young people growing up now’ are only paying attention to eye candy special effects so crafted by the ‘shock and awe’ crowd of uncreative entertainment industry artists and could care less what Lucas believes because Lucas believes in the very meaningless muck he insists must have some meaning.
Do you see what I mean? Or are your eyes too sweetened by the candy passed around by the magical magicians of merrymuck movieland?
Waddard is a racist and a homophobe.
“Actually, it reads,….”
I’m sorry, Salt-lick, did some quotation marks creep in there that I can’t see?
But no, I don’t think a reference to a Creator is needed there. We Buddhists get along quite happily without it, even though Buddhist ethics and morality manages to be quite compatible with western ideas in general.
That’s new to me … is that what Jeff is harping on about (I should always read the small print)… the Israelis don’t have their humanitarian services flag? Well they are not a member state of the IRC. The Magen David Abhom (I think) operate in Israel and the terrirtories they occupy and have no internationalist aspirations.
Anyway the Red Cross and the Crescent go way back in history to the crusades from 1099 onwards, and Israel did not feature then. Jerusalem was a kingdom of it’s own ruled by a Frank (Germanic tribe). So why seek to have the the Red Star of David insinuate itself into this history? You are trying to achieve the very historical relativism that Jeff rails against.
Youhave me wrong, I don’t do american movies. i just saw an interview with Lucas where he explained how he now saw the US as the evil empire. That’s all. I was just correcting someone’s facts up above.
TW: dark. side.
WaDullard —
With every word you write, you drift deeper into self parody. You do realize that, don’t you?
You have NO understanding whatever of what I’m talking about here, so far as I can tell. And yet, that hasn’t stopped you from prattling on like a self-assured ass for a dozen or so comments. It’s stunning. Really. I am agog.
Oh, I see you are given to bouts of schaudenfreud, gloom-gloating, epicaricacy and/or pyrrhic triumphantilism.
Posted by Wadard
You still seem to miss the point, but I bet you get a woody up to your nose when you think about all the people who are just knocked out by your brilliant use of bigbigbig words. I, too, love the language, but I try not to sound like an NEA handbook. Unfortunately for your woody, content is NOT proportionate to syllables. If it were, I would nominate you for man of the year.
Language is most effect when used sparingly. The best minds say the least. Their grasp of the language is so good, that they can make their point in a few words.
I do wish Wadretard had that skill. He could display his ignorance of the world around him in a few sentences per thread and save a lot of bandwidth.
Exactly, Lew. See Strunk and White.
And why aren’t they a member of the IRC? Because the IRC won’t let them join because they want to use the MDA as their symbol. They were rejected for membership in 1949 and told that all new members would have to join with the cross as their flag. Since then at least twenty-five societies have joined under the crescent.
I can’t believe that you’re arguing that the Star of David has no historical significance. But I probably shouldn’t forget that you’re the same guy who was flummoxed by timezones.
Oh, and Waytard?
You dont “do” American” movies? Jeff is right. Just like the rest of your leftist bretheren, you have become a parody of a parody. It must be tough to be the smartest man you have ever heard of, but apparently you are up to the task.
Here’s a little word association game for you:
Left = hubris
Bring anybody to mind? Hmm?
TW – member – as in Waytards member reaches his nose when he reads his own posts….
Let’s not forget either that Israel is an aggressor in a long running low-intensity war to grab land. And their neighbours are all … Muslims. So why should they accept this desired membership? I am sure that when Israel is finally not fighing expiditionary wars, if there is a two state setlement with jerusalem as the capital of both, that the muslim world will embrace Israels membership with open arms. By then the Magen David will have had some history behind them – which you also need.
Honestly, I think some Jews just look for way to be discriminated against. Maybe feed off it. Love to loudly complain about injustice perpetrated on them – funny thing though – none of these lessons carry across the checkpoints into Palestine. Here Jews perpetrate obscene injustices against Arabs, then they cross the checkpoint and they shoulder the burden of any anti-Semetic event every perpetrated against Jews. It’s so weird. It’s psychologically fucked-up. It’s like the country was an abused child and so goes on abusing in turn. I know these things because a friend of mine is a refusnik, campaigning here aginst the IDF policies in the OT. He says that young fresh 19 y.o good Israeli boys who start out with good values join the IDF, get inculcated in hard-core Zionist ideals, do tours in the occupied territories and are ordered to bastrdise the local population. He says after 4 months of this the 19 y.o boys are running around calling each other Nazi’s as a joke after they mess up another Pali.
Can you imagine?
There is some seriously fucked stuff going on there.
Y’all need to be more tolerant, Waddy can’t help it when his incoherence flares up like that.
Didn’t mean to diss you, Charlie, but it’s my understanding that the “natural rights” which Jeff says confound the tenets of relativism are, at least speaking from the perspective of the founding fathers, derived from a Creator, which is why the word is used in the Declaration. I could be wrong, but it seems to me you take something from the Declaration when you change the wording in that case.
And in related news, tomorrow is Constitution Day!
You tell me when the Star of David was flown during the Crusades, smartypants? Sorry, but it wasn’t. You have to go before 67AD for that, if at all, and Israel was not a nation after that till 1949. We are talking about the period that lead to the genesis of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society. No Israel, no national flag during the Crusades, nor during the late Ottoman Empire. Your historical relativism is alarming.
”…I am sure that when Israel is finally not fighing expiditionary wars, if there is a two state setlement with jerusalem as the capital of both, that the muslim world will embrace Israels membership with open arms…”
Wadard, you are absolutely out of your fucking mind. Not only does your post show a total lack of awareness of the history of Palestine, but to claim that the Muslims will accept Israel with open arms under ANY circumstances is absolutely hilarious! I think it’s quite obvious (especially to the crowd here) that the only way the Muslims will EVER accept the Jews is as fish food floating in the Mediterranean. You guys on the left are a laugh a minute…
Thanks Jeff, that is quite flattering. *blush*.
mate – you said the swiss red cross changed the meaning of its flag in 1929. This example underwrote your arguement against relativism. They did no such thing. Check your history. Your arguements against relativism therefor have no valid examples to illustrate them.
If you are having difficulty understanding this Jeff, then you have difficulty being wrong. Less agog now?
Peace treaty with Egypt says you are wrong.
Let me put it to you this way, then, Wadard. If the point were your hand, your days of touching yourself would be over.
And as to this:
Forget for a moment that it conflates a religion with a country, or ascribed group motives to an entire group of people. What I want to concentrate on is the seething mistrust just beneath the surface. The loathing.
You are skating on this ice here, Wadard. You’re trying to be a bit more careful than Gandhi, but I’m not going to stand for this kind of shit.
Understood?
…you said the swiss red cross changed the meaning of its flag in 1929…
Posted by Waydard
I think you need glasses, ‘tard. You ARE very tedious. I just re-read the post, and I couldn’t find any reference to the swiss “changing” (unless down under you spell it “resignifying”) the meaning of their flag. Of course my intellect is so tiny compared to yours, perhaps I missed it. Would you be kind enough to point it out to us?
Anyway, you have achieved your disruptive purpose, so it is time for me to move on. POOF! No more Waytard! Byeeeee…
“That is, it conceded, on a basic referential level, that the recipient of a text is responsible for giving that text its final meaningâ€â€a hermeneutic decision that relativizes interpretation, in theory allowing for as many different plausible interpretions as the community of interpreters will accept.”
Is it okay (she asked in a small voice) to get a bit grumpy when this is applied to flags, but to cheerfully agree that texts are fair game for a hierarchy of interpretations to settle into a winning order? You know, judging the best interpretation to be the one that illuminatingly applies to the biggest chunk of the text?
And to discount what the author (if alive) insists was actually meant?
(Wadard’s “hip” cursing really makes me squirm. It has that self-aware Holden Caulfield vibe.)
Not at all – I was physically threatened, and then I openly speculated it was because the threat-er was doing so to cover his feeble lexicon. You are the one with the sexual imagery about the penis and probiscis. That’s your call, your gig, your predilection, your tiny peccadilo, and don’t link me with it at all.
I will never understand the sort of anti-semitism that quite obviously informs Wadard’s posts here. Just don’t get it.
Nor can I understand, leaving the racism and ethnicities aside, the mindset that views a tiny, embattled democracy, surrounded by a sea of despotic, virulent hatred embodied by failed or failing nation states, and then sides with the failed or failing nation states in a de facto war with the goal of complete annihilation and genocide.
But maybe that’s just me.
What the fuck do the Crusades have to do with anything? The Red Cross was founded in the latter half of the 19th century. The Star of David has been around a quite a bit longer than Islam. Israel’s lack of historical existence as a state also doesn’t make a whit of difference. There were plenty of Jews around throughout history, and I’m sure they would have been happy to have had a Red Cross Society of their own. Countries that didn’t exist in 1929 joined under the crescent, and Iran even switched to the crescent, so some idea that countries rights within the IRC are based on longevity doesn’t hold water.
It’s really simple so I’ll try to spell it out. First, there was the Swiss Red Cross. They used a cross as their symbol. Then, there were several other nations that had their own Red Cross Societies, all symbolized by the, natch, red cross. Then the IRC (Jeff’s wording about the “unfortunate decision made by the Swiss Red Cross” might be confusing, but I think he clearly meant the IRC’s unfortunate decision) allowed in a bunch of crescent (and Iran with the red lion and sun) countries in 1929. 20 years later they ignored that precedent and didn’t allow Israel in with the star. Now they’re having to backtrack all the way to 1929 to get back to one secular symbol.
Jeff’s point was that none of this would have been necessary if they’d just insisted, in 1929, that the cross was a secular symbol that every member had to use. I’m not quite sure what you’re arguing (other than Jews don’t get to use their ancient symbol the same way the other religions do), but you’ve based it all on confusion between the Swiss Red Cross and IRC.
You’re once again on really shaky rhetorical ground.
Speaking of secular crosses, down here in the South we had a red cross, too, but you needed kerosene to make it work, which reminds me of how David Duke endorsed CINDY, so it all comes around full circle, doesn’t it?
Oh, and Israel’s supposed expansionist military adventures are also irrelevant. MDA was denied entrance in 1949, when Israel was a fledgling nation that had just beaten back an attack by six of their Islamic neighbors in a war, literally, for survival as a state.
They were being punished merely for existing and for being Jewish.
We’ve been waiting to see one headbutt move in particular from you: removal of your head from your butt.
Look, Wad. We realize you spent the entire morning studying up on the ‘Knights Templier’ [sic] and the Geneva Convention and looking up the meaning of schadenfreude and ripping the term ‘triumphantilism’ from an old Kos post in an effort to really impress us.
But then, you completely missed the point, ran right past it and over the edge of the cliff. Like Wile E. Coyote, you are now running in place in mid-air, about to fall several thousand feet into a cloud of smoke.
The only reason Jeff lets you hang around is because he suspects you may thirst for knowledge–that, or he just needs something on which to sharpen his teeth.
Don’t go getting all Anti-Semitic on us.
http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa060401a.htm
What’s interesting is whether the crescent really is a symbol of Islam at all. Certainly it is a symbol of Turkey dating back to the Ottoman Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire
Eleven countries have national flags bearing some combination of the crescent with or without a star. They are not all Arab speaking, but are all Muslim countries.
Symbols matter, especially at a cultural level as Rushdie said in Jeff’s post. Otherwise we wouldn’t have fights over flag burning (US flags, of course) or deaths over allegations of the Qu’ran being flushed down a toilet.
The proposed monument design for Flight 93 incorporates a crescent in a manner that could be misconstrued in an offensive way by Americans. That should be enough reason to chuck the design – it’s not for the architect’s benefit, but instead to honor the heroes on Flight 93 who prevented Muslim terrorists from flying it into the White House.
Cheers – DC
Wad, so help me, your visits here remind me of a zoo baboon that wants to show his ass so bad he’s willing to press it up against hot bars.
Actually, it was a little longer than one morning. It’s called an education. And if you don’t know any of that stuff w/o having to look it up your ability to deploy concepts mast be truely shallow and narrow.
Can’t until you leave first.
Now you are just being a moral relativist. Why the fuck can’t you just accept the designers intent????? Who cares that it offends American’s – they are misinterpreting.
Gotcha!
Like I say – some people just love to jump to this conclusion. Much easier than looking at the facts.
Would all you people just lay off this poor guy? He obviously lives in his Mom’s basement. Try some compassion.
This remark coming from a guy who can just barely spell his own handle properly, I’d want a refund if I were you. If on the other hand your education was free, you certainly got your money’s worth.
Jeff assured me that the only reason he keeps Wadard around is so I can enjoy kicking his pathetic ass repeatedly.
All other explanations are just cover stories.
My comments outlined the history of the Red Cross/MDA controversy and I asked you a question, Wadard. You ignored the question, and you’re ignoring the facts, because you know you’re wrong.
If you think you’re right (and you’d be wrong about that, too, but oh well) then please tell me: What do the fucking Crusades have to do with the Red Cross?
Great! I’ve got a brick wall here with your name on it (figuratively speaking, of course. I wouldn’t want to deface a perfectly good wall with your handle).
Can’t until McGehee leaves your butt? Sounds like Waddy’s harboring some interesting fantasies, there. And by “interesting”, I mean gay.
Wadard –
We have every right to our “interpretation” and it is as valid as yours. If we choose to be offended it is not because we are wrong but because we ARE offended.
Last I checked, the memorial was meant to honor the passengers from Flight 93 who rose up and attempted to retake a hijacked airliner, losing their lives in the attempt.
I don’t give a whit what the architect wanted to portray, much less his “intent” whether it is subtle or overt. Enough Americans see something in the symbolism in the “cresent” design to make it offensive – that should be enough, especially given what the real intent should be – to honor the victims sacrifice and bravery, not their hijackers martyrdom.
And since symbols can be anything and certainly ARE important, let me leave you with a couple:
Wikipedia says the “finger” is “possibly offensive”. I’ll leave that to your sensibilities to decide, but please accept the finger from me on behalf of the rest of the posters on this blog – you deserve it and you are #1 to us!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_finger
Here’s what the Boss and Tom Petty have to say – take your pick but the symbolism is the same. We aren’t backing down.
http://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/NoSurrender.html
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/tom-petty/138493.html
Cheers – DC
[…] the real irony here is they can’t do that — and that’s precisely because their worldview is predicated on being able to control […]
[…] the real irony here is they can’t do that — and that’s precisely because their worldview is predicated on being able to control […]