Diana Hsieh received a letter from an unintelligent Muslim threatening her with eternal damnation if she does not submit to Islam. The letter is of marginal interest in that it exemplifies how faith and force go together -- in this case, force administered by Allah beyond the grave. You don’t hear proponents of reason screaming “Accept my belief or die!” Quite the contrary, Leonard Peikoff once asked those who do not fully understand or agree with Objectivism not to call themselves Objectivists.
But Islam wants more than just belief. The word Islam means submission. From the beginning of its history Islam has been about forcing people to submit to Islam or die. The religion has a political program, Sharia law, that makes it more than just a matter of personal faith.
No religion is rational, but I do not believe they are all equally bad or bad in the same ways. Buddhism is a religion of passivity on Earth, which is bad and anti-life, but as far as I know Buddhists do not have a history of forcing conversion at swordpoint. (I could be wrong, as I have little interest in the history of religion.) Islam strikes me as a particularly pernicious and disgusting religion. From everything I have heard about Mohammed, he just sounds like a gangster to me who used religion as an ideology to aid him in his quest for power. It was a highly successful strategy in the Dark Ages. Whether or not Islam is worse than other religions or just as bad, totalitarian Islam is currently in our face and something must be done about it.
It is beginning to look more and more as if the central task of our time is to demonstrate to Islam in terms every Muslim can understand that America will not submit to Islam. Instead of letting their force and threats of force break our will, we must use force in self-defense to break their will. Pragmatic appeasement, multiculturalism and leftist anti-Americanism only weaken our will and embolden the enemy’s.
Someday the sleeping giant will awake. And then, to mix metaphors, a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
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6 comments:
I share your views on Islam, but one thing puzzles me: Is there going to be a direct "us or them" confrontation with the Islamic world in the future? Or will Islam implode before that happens? (Shiites and Sunnis seem to hate each other as much as they both hate Israel)
edmcgon wrote:
"Is there going to be a direct "us or them" confrontation with the Islamic world in the future? Or will Islam implode before that happens?"
I am not sure that the alternative in the question is a valid one. What makes you think it is even possible for Islam to implode? Exactly what is there in that culture that is substantial enough to implode?
Of course, your question pretty much describes how we "won" the Cold War with the USSR. We didn't really win it so much as the bad guys self-destructed. But the thing with the old USSR is that it was industrialized, albeit in a third world sort of way and it did have weapons, plane, ships and nukes and such. All those things do require a certain amount of economic activity.
The economies of our Islamic enemies - well, there is not all that much to them apart from the fact that many of them happen to sit on top of lots of oil. As to their militaries - well, it didn't require any military at all to bring down the World Trade Center towers. They used our planes to do it. At best, their military weaponry and such is based on crumbs left over from our own - which is scary because some of those crumbs might someday be nuclear.
So if the military and economic might of the Islamic world implodes - well, how much different would it be than how it is today? They already live in poverty. And the ones that are in Europe - well, they have never had a military of their own.
The only way for Islam to "implode" would be for better ideas to take root in that culture and for it to become civilized. I don't see much sign of that happening on its own.
I think the better alternative for the question would be: Is there going to be a direct "us or them" confrontation with the Islamic world in the future? Or will the West implode before that happens?
My thought is we already are in the early stages of such an implosion - or more precisely, we are experiencing the rot that will eventually cause certain beams to give way and, therefore, result in an implosion if it is not stopped.
Has the mindset of the Islamic world really changed in any fundamental respect the last however many centuries? Is the hatred towards the West anything new among certain people in that part of the world? Haven't there always been people there who have basically felt the same way towards us that the terrorists do? If yes - then what has changed?
What has changed is our outlook. The only thing that has changed in the Islamic world is those who have always hated us have sensed our increasing moral and ideological weakness in recent decades and have become emboldened.
If the West today had the same mindset as it did 100 years ago - well, the terrorists would not be able to attract much following because people would be genuinely frightened about the consequences which the would know would fall upon them.
How on earth is it possible for a relatively small number of rag-tag savages with little in the way of military assets to more or less be calling the shots and pushing the Western world around? We could turn their part of the world into glass within hours if we wished to do so - and yet we are seeking accommodation with them. John Kerry, who hates America with the same amount of passion that most of us have for our lives and who has, for all intents and purposes, been working as an ally of our enemies in both this war and Vietnam, came within thousands of votes in one state from being the leader of the free world and our Commander In Chief. People who share his mindset now control the US Congress.
As lots of Objectivists have already pointed out, that rot is philosophical - and the Kerrys and Kennedys of the world are cashing in on it just as the terrorists are.
As to the re-stated question - I, for one, am somewhat hopeful that the rot will take a very long time before it will cause an implosion and that, long before that happens one way or another, enough of us still value our lives that we will eventually be in a direct military confrontation. But what I fear is that it will take nothing short of a nuclear bomb going off in a major Western city or some other horrible catastrophe before that will happen. If that happens, god forbid, I guess we will quickly see to what degree Leftists are indifferent to their own deaths.
"If that happens, god forbid, I guess we will quickly see to what degree Leftists are indifferent to their own deaths."
I think this is the million dollar question. And I have a bad feeling that the true Leftists will choose suicide over Fighting back. But I'm not certain how many true Leftists there will be; ie how much of today's liberals are that far gone. I just don't know.
madmax wrote:
"And I have a bad feeling that the true Leftists will choose suicide over Fighting back. But I'm not certain how many true Leftists there will be; ie how much of today's liberals are that far gone. I just don't know."
Here is another scary possibility. The ultra hard left in this country becomes so frustrated over the political need for the Democratic Party to at least pay lip service to the security and economic well-being of the country that they break with it and more or less adopt the methods and tactics of their Islamic allies.
At least right now, the terrorists are from a particular part of the world. We could if we wanted to, profile people from countries and ethnic backgrounds from which the terrorists come. We could if we wanted to bomb the heck out of Tehran or Mecca and say if you touch us again, we will take out something else.
Imagine, however, if the people flying the planes into buildings and such were members of Earth First or Animal Liberation Front - perhaps one of your college professors or someone who works in the same office that you do. That would be a much more difficult war to execute than the one we are in now if we ever choose to fight it. It's not like we can bomb San Francisco (except perhaps to bomb the offices of Nancy Pelosi's plastic surgeon out of mercy to those whose faces he might similarly botch up in the future!)
The thugs on the Left have certainly tried it before - there were several Leftist domestic terrorist groups during the 1960s and early 1970s.
The difference between now and then is they have seen plenty of examples of how we appease foreign terrorists that I cannot help but think it will embolden them into believing that they might succeed this time.
(And to be VERY politically incorrect, I have always thought we should do with the captured terrorists at Gitmo and elsewhere is bathe them at gunpoint in pig blood. And, should Leftist terrorists ever come back, we could have a similar psychological effect on them by bathing them at gunpoint in soap and water! That ought to make many a hippie think twice before they act!!)
Dismuke,
I like the way you think. And the thought of the hard left taking to armed insurrection is scary. Sometimes I go slumming at DailyKos and I would have no problem believing that many of them could become potential terrorists if the culture were to worsen. Sad thing is, I think the same can be said of some Evangelicals as well.
There is danger on all sides.
Dismuke,
The problem with Western Civilization, as I see it, is we spend too much time teaching our kids WHAT to think instead of HOW to think. I am not aware of ANY generation anywhere that had a monopoly on WHAT to think.
Granted, that is a bit overly simplified, but fix that and you're well on your way to solving the West's problems.
I would also point out that a nuclear bomb may go off in the Middle East before it does in an American city. Do you think Shiites or Sunnis would hesitate to use nukes on each other?
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