From “A Failure of the Press,” today’s WaPo oped from Bill Bennett and Alan Dershowitz:
We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities. To our knowledge, only three print newspapers have followed their true calling: the Austin American-Statesman, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. What have they done? They simply printed cartoons that were at the center of widespread turmoil among Muslims over depictions of the prophet Muhammad. These papers did their duty.
Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind—images that struck at our effort to win support from Arab governments and peoples, and that pierced the heart of the Muslim world as well as the U.S. military.
The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects—stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.
In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation’s efforts—and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike—the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.
But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London—never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles—included signs that read, “Behead those who insult Islam.” The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.
The Boston Globe, speaking for many other outlets, editorialized: “[N]ewspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance.”
But as for caricatures depicting Jews in the most medievally horrific stereotypes, or Christians as fanatics on any given issue, the mainstream press seems to hold no such value. And in the matter of disclosing classified information in wartime, the press competes for the scoop when it believes the public interest warrants it.
What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists—their threats more than their sensibilities. One did not see Catholics claiming the right to mayhem in the wake of the republished depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, any more than one saw a rejuvenated Jewish Defense League take to the street or blow up an office when Ariel Sharon was depicted as Hitler or when the Israeli army was depicted as murdering the baby Jesus.
So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty. At bottom, this is an unacceptable form of not-so-benign bigotry, representing a higher expectation from Christians and Jews than from Muslims.
While we may disagree among ourselves about whether and when the public interest justifies the disclosure of classified wartime information, our general agreement and understanding of the First Amendment and a free press is informed by the fact—not opinion but fact—that without broad freedom, without responsibility for the right to know carried out by courageous writers, editors, political cartoonists and publishers, our democracy would be weaker, if not nonexistent. There should be no group or mob veto of a story that is in the public interest.
When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press—an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms—would be among the first to surrender.
[my emphases]
Note again the initial bolded passage, which was first brought to my attention by Allah, who sent along the link:
The Boston Globe, speaking for many other outlets, editorialized: “[N]ewspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance.”
Quips Allah:
The ultimate Enlightenment value is tolerance? I thought it was, er, knowledge. Free inquiry. With a dash of secularism. Which would seem to point in favor of publication of the cartoons.
Or am I being intolerant again?
Well let’s give the Globe the benefit of the doubt for a moment and suggest that by “tolerance” they meant something along the lines of “a freedom to hold an array of opinions or positions, one of which includes the kind of religious conviction that makes it an heretical sin to forge images of the Prophet Mohammed [itself a dubious assertion, even from an overall Islamic standpoint]” Then could we agree with the Globe and its brethren that refraining from publishing the cartoons a decision that represented, as they seem to want to self-importantly suggest, the epitome of Enlightenment consideration?
Of course not. Because nothing in that (rather strained) definition suggests that the freedom for others to hold a particular position dictates that the rest of us must avert our eyes and ears at their command. In fact, the only philosophical explanation for the Globe, et al’s actions is that it has redefined Enlightenment by way of that term’s (now pedestrian) deconstruction, and having done so, it has somehow managed to then shoehorn it into multiculturalist / Orientalist creed preached as gospel by Humanities departments for the last quarter century—namely, that the only persons fit to criticize or “offend” the Other is some “authentic” member of that group.
The layers of irony here are almost too thick to hack through with my dull wit, but I’ll give it go nonetheless. Because what is being advocated for here in the name of Enlightenment is so pernicious to classical western liberalism and its attendant elevation of the individual that it needs repeating again and again: when we surrender (to borrow the Bennett/Dershowitz characterization) those things—freedom of expression, freedom of religion, a truly free press—that set our philosophical system apart from other systems that have shown themselves amenable to manipulation by interested groups who will themselves to power on the shoulders of a muscular sophistry that guards the structural heart of collectivist philosophies (here, defined as those that privilege the rights of the “group” over the rights of the individual), we surrender, albeit not always consciously, our capacity to defend ourselves and our way of life.
And nothing makes that more clear than this frankly stunning admission by the Globe and its major media allies that tolerance is the “ultimate Englightenment value,” especially when “tolerance” has clearly become, to the press’ way of thinking (and this thinking now permeates the academy and has insinuated itself into vast swatches of public policy), an unwillingness to offend those whom they believe they have no right, as cultural outsiders, to offend.
Can this really be? Is Edward Said the new Alexander Hamilton?
Citing a piece by Eric Raymond the other day that notes the use of memetic warfare by the Soviets meant to weaken western liberalism and prepare the ground for collectivist thought, I noted that such memes have simply been adopted by different interest groups (in various guises), and that they have, in fact, managed to weaken classical liberal values through a political culture presuming itself to be “progressivist,” though in many important ways it is regressive, especially from the perspective of individual liberty: today, for instance, our universities celebrate diversity of color (a group trait) over diversity of thought (which is oftentime treated as heretical). Women’s groups fight for Title IX, a bit of social engineering that is based around the idea of proportional (group-based) representation. The Supreme Court upholds bits of race-based affirmative action—a social policy clearly at odds with the Constitution, yet one that is protected by the social mores of a few activist judges who believe they are acting for the greater good. And on and on.
The point being that identity politics has provided advocacy groups not only with the ability to define their own interests and then to insist on their collective rights to those interests at the (legal) expense, oftentimes, of the very foundational principles of individualism—but that it has further allowed those groups to create litmus tests for “authenticity,” which lead directly to the absurd notion that one can be a race traitor or an anti-women woman simply for not accepting the official narrative of the group.
This process, it should be clear, is simply a domestic variant of Said’s multiculturalism—evident in the press’ thinking behind its refusal to run the Mohammed cartoons—with the “Otherness” Said made off limits to our critical faculties no longer relegated to the exotic; instead, it is now being extended to those deemed “inauthentic” or “hostile” to a particular self-defined and self-regulating identity group here at home.
Today, citing “tolerance” as the ultimate Enlightenment value, our press is able to justify what amounts to (self) censorship. Fear of offending the Other is paramount, because the western press has no “right” to inflame those to whom they must defer on matters of their own culture.
Which, sadly—but predictably—plays right into the hands of our enemies as they learn to use the same memetic tools the Soviets used against us to great effect. And so a militant variant of Islam has decided who can speak to concerns of Muslims, and those not fit to do so must respect their wishes. To republish the cartoons would be to “victimize” Muslims all over again. And our press—who has bought into this idea of Orientalism—concedes.
But allowing this strain of Islam to assume the authentic face of the group can and will have dramatic consequences with regard to our ability to effectively fight the war on terror (which is why in the past I have noted that the real battle must begin here at home, where we as a culture simply must exorcise the viral memes of anti-individualism that weaken our own foundational assumptions and give our enemies propaganda power over us—specifically, obeisssance to the identity group appeal and its attendant Orwellian conception of “tolerance,” which works to paralyze a softened west already conditioned to fear giving offense).
And indeed, it seems our enemy senses this weakness and is in the process of pressuring it. As Shrinkwrapped notes:
Islam is closing in on a “Forced Choice.” Psychologists use “Forced Choice” exams to do just what the term implies; they force the person in question to discover for themselves and for the tester what their bottom line beliefs are. An example for a Muslim-American citizen living in the United State, would be: Do you consider yourself to be an American first or a Muslim first? A “forced choice” does not allow for a non-answer; it is either-or and must be answered. Conditions are rapidly developing that are presenting the Muslim world with a forced choice: Are you going to be Moderate members of the Modern World or are you going to be radical members of a reactionary sect? Answer the question…NOW!
Perfectly articulated here are the conditions that give identity politics its power. Either join the “official” face of the identity group, or be excommunicated—which can mean anything from ostracization to being pelted by Oreo cookies to having your head lopped off or your mosque blown up.
By acceding to the “demands” of the “victimized” Islamic group expressing outrage over the publication of these cartoons, our own press has—by dint of its internalization of anti-liberal progressivist memes (the multicultural gospel)—surrendered the philosophical high ground and weakened the cause of real freedom, which requires tolerance to mean a willingness to countenance the beliefs of those you disagree with without 1) reacting violently, and 2) withougt surrendering the right to disagree with those beliefs, and to battle them in the marketplace of ideas with beliefs of your own.
Here’s Shrinkwrapped again:
Now a new test case has presented itself, where again, the possibility of this becoming another question on a “Forced Choice” test is real. The Port Deal that has evoked such bipartisan condemnation is perfectly designed to push the Muslim world toward the radical position. If the United States backs away from the deal with a storm of “Islamophobic” reactions, it can only increase the polarization that evokes a “Forced Choice.” Countries which have chosen Radical Islam include Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. The UAE may be “in play” and rejecting the deal will almost certainly push them into the radical camp.
This latter point about the Port situation I believe is largely correct: the deal itself may have been politically tin-eared, but now that it’s been publicized, any extended criticism that appears xenophobic or anti-Arabist plays into the hands of our enemies, who wish to force Muslims to choose an animating identity. We cannot afford to show our own soft bigotry now, even if we have legitimate reasons to be wary (including that the 911 Report linked UAE and bin Laden). Instead, we must show trust while redoubling our own security efforts (which can include a degree of extended scrutiny, if both the UAE and the administration are amenable to such a thing) [for an interesting take on grappling with the Port issue, see MVRWC; “see” also, Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan on the IP podcast; and the WSJ here, here, and here (via Terry Hastings)]
To win the war on terror, we must continue to push the message—as the administration has done all along—that freedom is universal and belongs to each individual. That is, we must push back against the clannish tribalist impulses of our enemies with a message of inalienable individual rights.
But to do so, we must first believe in it ourselves. And for that to happen, we must return to our strong roots in classical liberalism—which elevates the individual and stresses personal freedom.
And free press that actually believes in these things would be a good start.
****
update: This bit from the Keith Windschuttle of the SydneyLine is linked above, but as an addendum, I think it important to highlight a few excerpts (via Callimachus and Terry Hastings):
The real problem here was not the Western newspapers who published the cartoons but the Islamic response to them. Our political leaders did not blame the latter but turned the responsibility onto ourselves. Enclosed by a mindset of cultural relativism, most Westerners are loath to censure Muslims who go on violent rampages, burn down embassies and threaten death to their fellow citizens. Many of us regard this as somehow understandable, even acceptable, since we have no right to judge another religion and culture.
[…]
Today, we live in an age of barbarism and decadence. There are barbarians outside the walls who want to destroy us and there is a decadent culture within. We are only getting what we deserve. The relentless critique of the West which has engaged our academic left and cultural elite since the 1960s has emboldened our adversaries and at the same time sapped our will to resist.
The consequences of this adversary culture are all around us. The way to oppose it, however, is less clear. The survival of the Western principles of free inquiry and free expression now depend entirely on whether we have the intelligence to understand their true value and the will to face down their enemies.
[My emphasis]
The fight must begin at home. At least, that’s the strong feeling of one failed academic.
It is my right to live free. It is my duty to stand against those who would take that freedom.
How simple is that? Too self centered? No. That’s why freedom works, and why, indeed, it should be a universal goal.
TW = hall. “I’ll just wait out in the hall for the rest of this discussion. Sure I will.”
OK, let me make sure I’ve got this straight Jeff.
Publishing the cartoons knowing that it will most likely cause crazy folks to react in a crazy manner is good.
So where does that leave us in regard to the Abu Ghraib photos recently released? Should they be published as well?
Wow. You’ve managed to super-condense and paraphrase a very intelligent and thoughtful essay into a single sophomoric sentence that completely and utterly misses the point of the essay. Just to pose a poorly premised question. Well done, Davebo. Bravo.
Great post, Jeff.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I’m Catholic and have endured the secularist depictions for quite a while. The Muslim community need to grow up and take their licks just like everyone else. The current solution of apeasement doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect.
Oh, and to answer the question about publishing the Abu Ghraib photos, I doubt that the media will display any restraint. It’s a moot point.
In fact, the Abu Ghraib pictures were published without restraint, but many newspapers have declined to publish the cartoons at the center of the controversy.
Most people would note the hypocracy but Davebo instead thinks somehow he’s made a point, oblivious to the irony.
The most important question is the last sentence of the update, Do we have the Will?
I think not, we are a weak and decadent society that is sliding down the slope to obscurity and picking up speed. For that I damm the collectivists.
Davebo,
No, publishing the photos does not do any good, they are old news and will only inflame our enemies.
In fact, the Abu Ghraib pictures were published without restraint, but many newspapers have declined to publish the cartoons at the center of the controversy.
Most people would note the hypocracy but Davebo instead thinks somehow he’s made a point, oblivious to the irony.
Not in any US papers, magazines, or television stations.
And they’ve been released for some time.
Is that the “irony” you were referring to?
Sorry about that. Meant to block quote but accidently bolded.
Indeed. And Davebo would have known that if he had bothered to read as far as the second paragraph of Jeff’s quote of the Bennett/Dershowitz piece. That double standard and its causes and consequences being the subject of this entire post and all.
Isn’t that an argument for why the cartoons shouldn’t have been published, though? Hewitt’s been making that point for weeks now.
I think you guys are confusing the two sets of photos. Or at least Seanh is.
But never mind. It’s not like anyone really expected you to actually, you know, consider the question.
Excuse Me?
Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Google – “Abu Ghraib Photos”. These were all on the first page of the results.
So tell me another one.
TV (Harry)
TW: area. Blasting area; use gas mask.
Callahan,
I believe I did say newspapers, magazines, or television.
I knew you could view them online, but I have yet to see a single newspaper or magazine print them.
Oh, I know you’re talking about the second set of Abu Gharaib photos, Davebo. The fact is you’re comparing apples to oranges. The second set aren’t running much because they add nothing new to an old story. They are not news. The cartoons are new information relating to a current story. They are news.
Slowly now, the double standard is:
A.) They ran the AG photos relentlessly when that news broke without regard for the way it inflamed parts of the Muslim world.
B.) They refuse to run the cartoons when that news is breaking because they are suddenly too concerned with tolerance.
Apologize for the media decision all you want, but you’re on a fool’s errand. The fact is that if these cartoons had been penned by US soldiers the media would be falling all over themselves to print them.
I wasn’t considering your question because it’s poorly premised and unoriginal.
<blockquote>The cartoons are new information relating to a current story. They are news. </blockqoute>
See, this is where we disagree, but I suspect you really wouldn’t disagree if you considered it.
The cartoons aren’t newsworthy. They were published months ago!
The reaction to the cartoons is what’s newsworthy, and has been covered extensively.
In other words, just as the photos are old news as another commenter pointed out, so are the cartoons.
The reactions to both is the real story.
The media also refused, for the most part, to publish images of Americans falling to their death from the WTC. A decision I agree with and I suspect you would as well. European and, to an even greater extent, South American media outlets platered their pages with them.
Surely you would agree that some crude cartoons aren’t all that newsworthy.
I disagree, and think this thinking plays right into our enemies hands. It is simply not our tolerance that is at issue here, it is the tolerance of those who may or may not be our enemies. We are not the ones acting like bigots, this time.
I sure didn’t fight abroad to protect our freedoms, only to come home and have them yielded up, softly, by others.
I have the will, and I have demonstrated it in the past. If needed, I will do so again. Cringing Boston media people be damned.
I don’t know, I haven’t seen them.
Not at all. WRT the cartoons, promoting your own western liberal ideals—free speech and a belief in REAL tolerance—is not the same as inflaming your enemies for the sake of inflaming your enemies. It provided us with a chance to teach a lesson of liberalism; instead, we elected to retreat into the excuse of identity politics.
WRT the Port, the deal was struck. Again, we must show trust in the ability of others to join in to the idea of a global market and fair business dealings without suggesting that they cannot be trusted simply because of one (ascendent) face of their group identity.
At the same time, y’know—trust but verify.
I suppose, to avoid being purely contrarian, I should point out that I think most of the rest of your essay is dead on. I think the Boston Globe is lying to itself when it explains why it didn’t run the cartoons. I further think that the decision by the US government, as expressed through state, to essentially side with the ‘tolerance’ crowd, is a horribly misguided attempt to protect our troops currently in harms way. I don’t think it will help in the least.
It’s Radical Acid Test.
With regards to the soi-disant “moderate muslim” community, the guys screaming and yelling and burning shit because of some paleolithic bias against repesentational art ain’t them. Not by a long shot.
You wanna know who that is torching any handy embassy?
That’s the ENEMY, folks, right there on your TV and in your newspapers.
That is EXACTLY the enemy.
SB: today
we choose faces
The only problem here is that all the societies that have engaged us in mimetic warfare… have lost.
As hardcore followers of the news, we’re all exercised about this. A lot of people on the street don’t read the news to know it’s being censored. And don’t care, since they don’t read it. They are the key to our victory:
Memetic warfare only works if you get the meme and buy it. Most of our culture never hears it, much less buys in.
But our memes can’t help but spread themselves; that’s where the money comes from.
Result? The Islamists will meet with the same fate as the Nazis and Communists: Even as their leaders struggle to crush America’s will, their people will drift away. Not to be pollyannish, but totalitarian ideologies, for all the havoc they wreak, don’t have a very strong track record when they take on the West.
So we are to watch the riots, arson and murders happening and not have the slightest interest in what is sparking the unrest?
That’s sad.
“The cartoons aren’t newsworthy. They were published months ago!”
Davebo,
Please. They were originally published by a small newspaper in Scandinavia, not splashed on every TV station, newspaper and magazine worldwide. It took the Danish imams months – along with fraudulent cartoons – to whip this hysteria up precisely because almost no one knew about it.
The cartoons are noteworthy now not only because almost no one saw them originally, but also for comparative value – how mild the originals were compared to how blasphemous the imams’ added fraudulent ones were.
Hmmm.
1.
I think in part our culture of advertisements has something to do with this. We’re bombarded on such a constant basis it’s a wonder that anything actually registers anymore. Additionally I think the primary effect of such memes is on the coastal elites rather than those in the heartland.
2. The capitulation of the MSM to Islamic influence is a good thing.
Consider how much the MSM has damaged and discredited itself by it’s own unforced actions in the Cartoon War. Now consider how much *potential* damage is still left to be inflicted, which is much greater than what has been dealt so far. As more and more people become aware of the facts surrounding the Cartoon War the actual damage inflicted will being to equal the potential damage, and this is nothing that could either be passed off by the MSM. The many decades of the MSM screaming about freedom of the press and freedom of speech. That they are guardians of democracy in America will all come back to haunt them.
And let’s face it. The MSM aren’t America’s ally in this war, but at best an indolent enemy. By severely discrediting itself the MSM will force it’s replacement with a newer and more vigorous media, whether “new” media or not.
Is anyone really surprised that people like Davebo are playing contrarian here?
It’s what he does. It’s what actus does. He is playing a team sport while others are trying to work through serious issues in a way that they feel jibes with their observations of the world around them.
Ignore him. He’s generally over on John Cole’s site bashing conservatives (I forget the nickname he has for me, but I seem to remember him noting, among his rabid stewpot of friends who hang out in the comments there, just how very stupid I am); his being here is an anomoly. He’s trolling for “wingnut” comments he can bring back to the feverswamp to luxuriate over while he and his fellow partisan hatchet-men rub themselves raw to the mental image of their own intellectual superiority.
For the record: I haven’t read a single one of his comments, and am only aware of what he is arguing by way of your reactions to him.
This same procedure goes for actus, as well, who I believe uses my comments section as a playground to practice sophistry and fallacies of argument so that he can learn to better disguise them—though in fairness, I believe actus is far less meanspirited than people like Davebo.
Who, last time he was here, was calling out Baldilocks as a Chickenhawk, if I remember correctly.
Fuck him. His opinion is a worthless as those of the hateful snipers he traffics with.
Surrendering to intolerant thugs is the new tolerance. The Globe’s claim that not publishing the cartoons is an act of tolerance is perfect doublethink, as per Orwell’s definition:
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.â€Â
Call it “anger management.”
The media obviously doesn’t have any problem publishing images that piss off Islamists; just as long as they are incited against the proper people (e.g., the U.S. military).
The Mo-toons are taboo because, well, God forbid the nutbags start bombing us instead of some icky white trash jarhead from Nebraskansaw.
9-11 photos are even more doubleplusbad taboo; those images might piss off icky white trash jarheads from Nebraskansaw.
Those who care to see a demonstration that two wrongs, William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz, don’t make a right need only read their criticism of newspapers. For my observation on their piece, see: Bullfeathers.
It’s interesting to note that the two ‘founders’ of the current wave of Iswlamic fundementalism, Khomeini and Qutb, were both exiled in Paris in the sixties and seventies.
Indeed, Qutb’s major works have been described, somewhat simplistically, as Sartre translated into Islamic and Arabic.
I wonder if they picked up the Gramscian method along with the nihilism. The Soviets were somewhat active in Paris about that time. It’s interesting how many of the european sixty-eighters are in or around the political establishment these days.
When Wahhabism was added into the mix, along with the Saudi Petro dollars, the strategy really got going.
The long march into the institutions, memetic creep and good old fashioned bribery, supplemented by education through the mosques and madrassas.
Back that up with terrorism and the threat of violence in an Islamic street near you, and you have quite a job to counter it.
As a committed Agnostic, (I don’t know the face of God and I don’t believe you do either), I’m beginning to think, (but only in my darker moments), that a large scale outbreak of Christian, (and Buddhist, and Sikh), fundamentalism might be called for.
Kevin B
Yes,It’s going to be hard
If ‘we’ can’t criticize the ‘Other’ because we are not authentic members of the ‘Other’, how dare people of the Middle East criticize Us?
If they want to practice their civilization’s customs of murdering -excuse me, executing- homosexuals, adulterers, those who engage in pre-marital sex, and those who profane Islam, why can’t we practice our civilization’s customs and kill them for murdering people?
If there’s a philosopher in the West with a greater claim to having championed the concept of tolerance in its infancy than John Locke, I don’t know who it would be. Let us, therefore, here from him:
But then he goes on to explain why ancient Israel was able to forbid such things:
Which, of course, is precisely what the Muslims maintain: Their laws were given to them by God, and they are under his injunction to enforce them on the faithful and infidel alike. Whereas Locke could plausibly argue to Christians that toleration was consistent with the teachings of Christ, this argument doesn’t work for Muslims.
What argument will work?
Somehow the Hebrews got beyond it. Maybe they can write up a pamphlet or something, complete with instructions.
Incidentally, this argument puts me in mind of the argument made by Stanley Fish in “Boutique Multiculturalism”—that we tend to “tolerate” up to the point that it actually matters, particularly in cases where “tolerance” is described as allowing a particular culture’s rules to circumvent our own laws.
Which is why in societies that form around pluralism, bargains need be struck. And why those who resist pluralism are not worthy of tolerance to begin with.
The real issue here is the ongoing appeasement by American and Western elites, of which the mainstream media and academy are key components, of our enemies, and the elite’s disbelief in the necessity of defending American and Western values in the face of that enemy’s action. These folks clearly believe Bush is a greater threat than al Queda, notwithstanding their obvious bedwetting over prospective fatwa’s and jihadi-car-bombings of newspapers.
Their complicity in the enemy’s war against us makes our efforts to defend ourselves that much more difficult. They may think they’re only playing faculty or parlor political games for domestic effect, but the thing they are playing with, our freedoms, are much more precious and precarious than they realize. What is ironic about all of this, of course, is that if the side they’ve effectively chosen wins, no one loses more than they do.
Or do they really believe sharia provides a lot of personal space for atheist, feminist-lesbian professors of English Literature and thrice-divorced alcoholic newsroom editors declaiming the imbecility of the leadership?
I know I’ll regret this Jeff, but could you post a link to that thread?
I guess slamming my schlong in the door is getting boring.
tw: I need more action
I think it was here, Tom.
Though looking back on it, I think it was ME he was calling a chicken hawk, an anti-semite baiter, a knee-jerk partisan, etc.,—and Juliette just jumped in to point out what a cockhead he is.
Since that day, I simply delete his comments from my inbox without reading them. He doesn’t come here to argue or consider or debate. He comes here to call me names, attack wingnuts as lying sacks of cowardly flotsam, and try to to staunch the ideological bleeding by posting the latest partially-related talking point his side is able to muster to combat people pointing out the clear inanity and (oftentimes) downright falsity of his position.
I thought I’d banned him, actually.
Next time.
[wow – what timing? Buh-bye. Go play at Cole’s. You bring nothing to the table here, and I haven’t the slightest interest in what you have to say. Why you care what I have to say is something you’re going to have to work out with your significant other.]
They had help.
To be fair, the Romans weren’t exactly models of tolerance. Two theocracies in the same geographic region… it was bound to end badly.
TW: All they needed was love.
Jeff, did ya ever notice the need of people like actus and Piator to get in the last word in a thread? I’ve noticed more than a few old threads where they’ve showed up and posted “the last word”.
Creepy.
heh, tw: They’re both nuts.
heh.
timing indeed.
Which reminds me Dave, the Nebraskansaw Fightin’ Necks of Red are on ESPN 4 tonite playing the South Iowaho Injun Killers for first place in the MCC (Midwest Causasian Conference).
I know I got my tivo set.
Jesus. I called Davebo an “anti-semitism baiter”—not a Jew baiter—for accusing me of seeing anti-semitism everywhere, a tactic he and his fellow travelers use to try to paint me as oversensitive to what are phantom offenses. “GOLDSTEIN? WHY HE SEES NAZIS IN HIS SOUP, THE WHINY LITTLE BITCH!”
Truth is, I post very little about Israel, and my “Jewishness” is rather more ethnic than religious (and I’m adopted, at that; father: southern Italian; mother, German / Irish).
Of course, asking Davebo to recognize the difference is a bit like asking a dog not to lick its own balls: it’s simply against the poor beast’s nature.
Now please—off to Cole’s comment section with you. Commence braggin’ how I rid myself of you because I feared your TRUTH, though if anyone asks, please be kind enough to tell them my position is you bring nothing to the conversation by aggressive vitriol, and I just don’t want your acidic bile burning holes in my comments field.
By the way, Jeff, this has been instalinked, so you can stop whining now.
Not that you have to, but you can.
The message being sent by the MSM is that Falwell and Robertson will get more respect if a few newspaper offices are bombed after the next denunciation of them.
Wudndux –
It’s because liberal arts, multi-cultural intelligentsia and the journalists they teach cling to Dependency Theory like it’s an article of faith. Very basically, the idea is that rich countries are rich because they exploit poor countries and poor countries remain poor because rich countries exploit them. Its pretty much Marxist social-conflict theory used to explain international relations.
Middle Eastern countries that aren’t Israel are countries that this theory claims rich nations are exploiting for natural resources. So as an exploited class, people in the Middle East are supposed to have a moral foundation in their criticism of the Other that we have forfeited due to our status as members of the oppressor class.
There’s nearly 300 years worth of economic study on wealth creation that pretty soundly refutes all of that, but I doubt you’ll find many journalism schools with social-science faculty that aren’t pushing the social-conflict approach hard.
Precisely my point from the other night about Soviet memes, SeanH. The islamofascists can’t square the circle on how just about everything has gone wrong since Charles Martel crimped their style at Tours–therefore, the GREAT SATAN and exploitation are to blame.
Don’t look now but the Chinese and Indians have turned the corner on dependency theory as an article of faith. It will still rear its ugly head in the Chinese media at times (“be on guard aagaisnt liberal bourgeois ideas”–while the two tallenst buildings in downtown Beijing are festooned with “Hewlett Packard” and “Motorola.”). But it’s safe to say that outside sub-Sharan Africa, Fidelandia and Hugoville, and the fevered mutterings of rabid imams, that strain of thought will go the way of the dinosaur if we can just pull the plug on its manifest institutionalized guilt in western universities (lib arts–NOT the business schools).
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (whatever one of those is), I say again: it doesn’t matter, in the end, what argument will work on extremist Muslims to convince them that they don’t have the right to punish what they perceive as sacrilege, apostasy, or what-have-you in us infidels – or, as long as they’re citizens of a liberal (old meaning) nation, even their own adherents if the punishment contravenes the law of the land; what matters is that certain values, such as free speech, are fundamental to our (secular) “religion,” values for which we may not be quite done fighting and dying. That said, if we can find an argument that works, terrific. I’m just saying that the point is – or should be – non-negotiable for us.
Yup. That part of it is the really nasty part of the worldview. It’s not likely to be more than an inconvenience to us in the first world. The way it provides an easy way to deflect discontent for dictators and other actual oppressors in the third world is a really nasty feature though.
It’s disgusting the way they can basically tell their people, “Sure you’re poor as dirt and pissed about it, but it’s all the fault of those damn westerners exploiting all of us. See, all the western university academics say so. It’s got nothing to do with your lack of education, lack of property rights, corruption, the unenforceability of your contracts, and all the ridiculous impediments to starting a business I have in place to protect my cronies. Friggin’ neo-colonialist Americans.”
Actually, the Romans were models of religous tolerance.
They didn’t give a shit what god you worshipped as long as you paid your taxes.
… and didn’t do human sacrifice. That was pretty much Right Out.
Ahh…Protein Wisdom…one of those websites I used to visit before the Pajamas Media brouhaha, along with Steven, Bill, and Charles…and Roger occasionally.
Well, Glenn and OJ are still of interest. And you are still amusing.
What Better example of an Iron Fisted Tribe holding it’s citizens to absolute gun-muzzle rule than this.
Friday, 15 March, 2002, 12:19 GMT
Saudi police ‘stopped’ fire rescue
The Mecca city governor visited the fire-damaged school
photo
Saudi Arabia’s religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.
In a rare criticism of the kingdom’s powerful “Mutaween” police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.
About 800 pupils were inside the school in the holy city of Mecca when the tragedy occurred.
15 girls died in the blaze and more than 50 others were injured
According to the al-Eqtisadiah daily, firemen confronted police after they tried to keep the girls inside because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islam.
One witness said he saw three policemen “beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya”.
The Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that the police – known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – had stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned “it is a sin to approach them”.
The father of one of the dead girls said that the school watchman even refused to open the gates to let the girls out.
“Lives could have been saved had they not been stopped by members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,” the newspaper concluded.
Relatives’ anger
Families of the victims have been incensed over the deaths.
Most of the victims were crushed in a stampede as they tried to flee the blaze.
The school was locked at the time of the fire – a usual practice to ensure full segregation of the sexes.
The religious police are widely feared in Saudi Arabia. They roam the streets enforcing dress codes and sex segregation, and ensuring prayers are performed on time.
Those who refuse to obey their orders are often beaten and sometimes put in jail.**
[Guess we were not *Following* events in this area back in March of 02 very closely.
Let us hope the Quebec *public signs* police do not get to this level of idiotic behaviour.] TG
PS. You don’t suppose these gentle people would put out and order to the Jihadist net that they should burn embassies and kill people and riot if a cartoon should make light of Muhammad. Do you?
Lay off the ONE cartoon topic for now. It only feeds their disruption of Iraq and Afghanistan progress plot. There is no threat of losing our freedoms fo speech. TG
“They didn’t give a shit what god you worshipped as long as you paid your taxes.”
As long as you were prepared to worship the Emperor (and maybe his horse) as divine also. Which is where the Jews and their descendant sect Christianity ran into trouble, since BOTH of them took that whole First Commandment thing pretty seriously. Putting up a statue of the Emperor in the Temple was right out…
Interesting commentary. In this sentance “Which, sadlyâ€â€but predictablyâ€â€plays right into the hands of our enemies as they learn to use the same memetic tools the Soviets used against us to great affect. “ affect should be effect.
Ardsgaine: What argument will work?
It won’t fit in a comment, but, briefly, you have to bootstrap shared understanding based on their experience. That proves from experience that sometimes people believe they are correct and later discover they were mistaken and didn’t know it. It raises the question how can one know when one is mistaken… so you are obliged to engage others for your own best understanding. That’s the first principle of society. Ardsgaine, it can be done.
Ardsgaine, debate gain. The advance of everyone through products of debate. TG
That’s the problem. Too many academics on TV. Academics that are part of the elite too.
Debate presupposes the acceptance of knowledge gained through experience and reason as the arbiter of what is true. If the Koran is their only reference point for determining what is true, then how does one debate a Muslim? For us to try to enter into the context of the Koran would be self-defeating. We must adhere to our own principles, and argue from what we know to be true. If the position of Muslims towards religious tolerance is to change, it must come from within their community. All we can do is motivate the change by showing them that jihad will lead to destruction.
I wrote a long post concerning this on my blog last night. I will quote just the relevant portion here:
Yes, that is what I was referring to.
Ed, Tom and others, We have lost nothing here. Please stop the bleating dispair. Get hold of yourself!
There is a Jihadist and Hammas plot to sieze upon any charatiture of Muhammad as an excuse to riot in the streets so as to disrupt the progress of peace and a new democracy for Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cartoons are just a fuel for this plot.
We can ease off on this one cartoon theme of Muhammad for now and quit providing the Jihadists any more incentive for their plot. Cut off the fuel.
We lose no freedom of speech but do choose to behave with restraint on this one topic.
Iron fisted dictators who hold their citizens hostage via gun barrel government fear losing power more than all else.
Democracy terrorizes them, thus the need to demonize cartoons to disrupt the gains democracy is gaining in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Simple as that.
We have to stop the silly, *the sky is falling* attitude and focus on more troops getting the slow and steady ground work done properly.
Enough of this nearsighted * losing our freedom of speech* baloney. TG
I may have picked up the Powerline link from an earlier post right here on PW. Is present company aware of the plot? There is no loss of freedom of speech here.
–“This process, it should be clear, is simply a domestic variant of Said’s multiculturalismâ€â€evident in the press’ thinking behind its refusal to run the Mohammed cartoonsâ€â€with the “Otherness†Said made off limits to our critical faculties”–
Is it right to put Said in here—when the death sentence was made against Rushdie, Edward Said engaged in a pointed public reading of the Satanic Verses.
So? It’s his Orientalism that we’re talking about—his sociolinguistic theorizing. Which has nothing to do with his ostensible show of solidarity with Rushdie.
His ideas are what undergird so much that has gone afoul with western thinking on identity. That’s what he’s being taken to task for.
In the West one can insult the Prophet or display a crucifix in a bottle of urine but woe onto him that questions the sacred hololocaust cow. In Austria one will get a 10 year jail term, in the US one’s career will be wrecked.
Even the most casual observer recognizes the hypocrisy.
> Even the most casual observer recognizes the hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy does not diminish the point. It merely means there is more to accomplish.
[…] exchange, and moving on to critiques of the lynchpins of leftist academic thought, from Said’s Orientalism (whose foundational assertions lead inexorably to the idea of truth as a function of […]
[…] cartoons that provoked death threats from Islamists — defending their refusal to run them by subverting the very idea of the First Amendment. And yes — I agree with Jarvis here — I believe that US newspapers should not […]