But for many security experts, the men’s motivation is what serves as the starkest warning. ”The animosity felt toward the United States isn’t something just outside our borders,” says Bruce Hoffman, a professor of securities studies at Georgetown University in Washington. “There are obviously people inside this country who have the same hostility and are prepared to use violence.”
We see this hatred every day from nutroot bloggers and trolls.
Reality-based confirmation bias:
Somewhat related: Bush Told War Is Harming The GOP
Sorry, dudes. I just happen to think the country’s more important than the party.
UPDATE: Britain’s Blair says he is resigning
Sure he is. BLIAR!
UPDATE x2: Free the Friggin’ Film
UPDATE x3: Starbucks & Croissant
We have an academy that seems hell-bent on destroying the capacity of young people to reason (postmodernism, relativism), and instilling in them a level of self-loathing that no civilization can survive.
Is it any wonder that people can come here and pick up that very meme.
Didn’t the Weathermen and the SLA come into being about forty years ago? This isn’t particularly new info.
With regards to hatred of the US:
I can kind of understand where the hardcore Muslims are coming from. Their fear of a hedonistic, godless future coupled with their belief that the US is pushing this culture on the rest of the world makes them want to fight to preserve what they percieve, through the lens of the koran, as the norm. What I don’t understand, and haven’t for 30 years, is the native born post-Christian, upper-middle class Americans who hate our country. I have no inkling as to how one could, through no effort or merit of their own, be born into the greatest slice of life there has ever been on this planet, and then spend your life attempting to dismantle it. From the unilateral disarmament crowd in the 60’s to Code Pink today, I can’t imagine how so many people can be such utter fools. It’s a testament to the greatness of our country that we can afford to accomodate them.
Sticky: Progressive distancing of man from what he desires coupled with a progressive disabling of his ability to get it will do the trick.
It doesn’t help that most American’s are geographically isolated from the rest of the world their whole life. If Americans visited a few third world countries and didn’t stay at the Hilton the whole time, they might gain some perspective.
Say what you want about the US but after you spend a few months working in Eritrea, the US is pretty damn good.
I guess it’s that old saying “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know”
The devil it is.
Well, we have it good but only in a relative sense now. We have money but little wealth; but we don’t lack wealth because of capitalism.
What I’m trying to say is this. It is my opinion (and Chesterton’s as well) that there are two core passions for a man: The Love of Woman and the Love of Land. Now, these things cannot be given, they must be won – or achieved – without effort they are rot.
The Love of Woman means family and community;
The Love of Land means work and influence.
Both can not be given but must be earned by blood, sweat and tears. The progressive idea is to replace them with something they can dole out equally – I.E. pleasure and pension – and then try to disable people from grabbing the real thing. The result is predictable then, self hating delusional folks – who have what they ‘want’ in the material sense, but not of the spiritual sense. To make matters worse they cannot get what they want because they have not been equipped to know how to get it, and furthermore de-equipped from the means of finding out how.
Which is to say, The Nanny State plus Bad Education.
This is in some ways just a rehash of Chesterton’s Sex and Property.
Exposure to the third world – for an unthinker just confuses things and makes them feel more guilty. So, not only do they not have what they want, now they feel guilty about it.
Getting what you want first requires to know what it is you actually want (which transcends mere materiality) and then how one actually achieves it.
In the Modern man there is possibility for both, but in the Post-Modern neither is present.
The Nanny State plus Bad Education
That was a great twin bill. I saw them on tour last summer at Alpine Valley. They RAWK!!!
I understand that some people are advancing this idea and I’m not necessarily implying that you buy into it – that disclaimer aside, this is one of the more frustrating bits of anti-Americanism. How do you FORCE culture on someone? If American movies/restaurants/music are so damned awful, stop importing them. We didn’t save Europe from the third Reich so we could build McDonald’ses in Paris. ‘Twas a happy side effect, perhaps, depending on who you ask.
Likewise, Euros like to complain that Americans “don’t hold passports” yet complain about Americans abroad. Excuse me while I not take your complaints seriously.
And by the by – great post, RiverC. Haven’t read any Chesterton that I recall, but I think I might need to.
Man, they already exist? But that was going to be my band name. So you know, when nobody shows up for the shows, I can just blame the name.
Curse you, Collins!!!!!!
About Muslims – they are afraid – and rightly so – not of the ‘degradation of our culture’ – the Muslim mindset is so primitive that it requires things to be entirely pure or not at all – but rather the power of our culture. It is so powerful, as our language with its army and navy – that when they espy it they can feel their world moving in place.
The man who doesn’t want to buy a diamond can always use a flaw in its surface to justify his disinterest.
My search-fu is weak, but I’m almost certain that Jeff discussed this very point back in the day.
IIRC, it boils down to a sense of fundamental injustice. If you look at the big winners in our society, they’re not generally those who “deserve” it (at least from a certain point of view). Great salesmen reap far greater rewards than do great thinkers. Athletes and movie stars and pop singers make vast fortunes due to nothing more than a bit of luck and great bodies. Art films languish in obscurity, while big-explosion blockbusters rake in the cash.
Taken in aggregate, the success of so many “unworthy” people can make you think that something is wrong with society. If only we lived in a more enlightened age, when intellect and taste and culture were valued above good looks and the ability to pander to the lowest common denominator!
It’s not that far of a jump from wishing that the “right” people were appreciated and rewarded (and it goes without saying who the “right” people would be) to hating the reality that consistently keeps this from happening.
It’s a mindset that neatly ties hatred of the current culture with the desire to replace it with one in which the enlightened few (again, no question about who these few would be) determine winners and losers based on conformance to a certain set of ideals. Ideals which, not coincidently, tend to match those of your stereotypical overeducated post-Christianist upper-class American.
It’s this mindset which makes me pity and fear the Proggs, and makes me ashamed to think back to when I was among them.
TW: Sorry to go on at such length, but you asked27 the question.
Taken in aggregate, the success of so many “unworthy†people can make you think that something is wrong with society.
They play Salieri to society’s Mozart, and the envy that results is every bit as deadly.
The intellectual class is often dangerous to democracy, though ironically, under a dictatorship, they’re the first against the wall.
Salieri? Oh yeah, classic error #402:
‘One cannot give up Sex for God and get Talent.’
Passione!