Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Killing cousins ...

... There Is No God but Politics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

During my reading, I found myself swinging like a pendulum between taking Islam as a threat very seriously indeed, and not taking it seriously at all. The reasons for taking it seriously were that a large proportion of humanity was Muslim, that an aggressive and violent minority had emerged within that population with apparently very widespread, if largely passive, approval, and that the leadership of western countries was very weak and vacillating in the face of this, or any other, challenge. The reasons for not taking Islam seriously were that, in the modern world, it was intellectually nugatory, that the disproportion in power between the rest of the world and the Islamic world appeared to be growing rather than contracting, and that behind all the bluster about the certain possession of the unique, universal and divinely ordained truth for man was an anxiety that the whole edifice of Islam, while strong, was extremely brittle, which explained why free enquiry was so limited in Islamic countries. There was a subliminal awareness - and perhaps not always subliminal - that free philosophical and historical debate could quickly and fatally undermine the hold of Islam on various societies. Fundamentalism was therefore a manifestation of weakness and not of strength.

8 comments:

  1. "Fundamentalism was therefore a manifestation of weakness and not of strength."

    Has anyone told the Evangelicals? The Republican Party? The Pope?

    Oh wait ... Muslim Fundamentalism! I think I understand now.

    -blue

    ....... not really .........

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  2. Please, Blue. I haven't heard of any Evangelicals or Republicans and certainly not the Pope cutting off anybody's head lately. Or do you think that Evangelicals and Republicans - the Pope is the head of his own state - have no right to participate in the poltical process?

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  3. Intellectually nugatory: nice phrase. Kind of trips off the tongue. I think I'll adopt it as one of my stock phrases.

    Yes, Islam is a bankrupt system of thought. It has very little to offer mankind that is new or useful or that Christianity hasn't put on the table already. And fundamentalism of any sort is anti-intellectual and utterly repugnant to me and thankfully the vast majority of people in the West. Give me an enlightened antifoundationalism any day - at least if its going to kill me, it will probably be by my own hand.

    Only joking about the last bit. As someone once said, suicide is a great solace, it gets me through many a bad night (or words to that effect).

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  4. OK Frank, I'm sorry. Christian Evangelicals are pure. Our President and his party of fat cats & fundamentalists had nothing to do with the carnage in Iraq.

    Zealotry is a manifestation of weakness. I believe it. But I wish there was less blood involved.

    -blue

    **
    *

    "Did you know that it was the gays that caused Katrina? I heard it in the parking lot of the Evangelical Free Church."

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  5. I liked intellectually nugatory, too, Neil. And I certainly find fundamentalism tiresome (though, to be fair, Evangelicals are not fundamentalists - that is, they do not insist on a literal interpretation of Scripture. They are, in fact, a much more varied group than their cultured despisers think or know.)
    And Blue, you didn't answer my question: are Evangelicals not permitted to participate in the political process?

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  6. Yes. And they do. Reed's participation with Abramhoff also counts tho', right?

    Does participation include Christian ministers praying for someone to assassinate Venezuelan leaders? Why yes, it does.

    Does it include pastors blaming the gays in NOLA for Katrina? Yep.

    Votes for Bush? True. Legal training for 31 year old lawyers who fire their betters for political reasons? Could be.

    Is all this unfair mud-coating? Probably.

    -blue

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    *

    "So first we have islamo-fascists and now we're going for islamo-marxists. As if terrorists isn't bad enough."

    "I don't think we'll ever be able to understand our neighbors while we keep lying to ourselves."

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  7. Politics, being practced by human beings, reflects all of the usual human frailties. Partisans can always find examples of their opponents' venality, duplicity, etc. But serious political discourse puts aside the slogans and the name-calling and gets down to serious analysis. Like Glenn Reynolds I link to things not necessarily because I agree with them - in whole or in part - but because I think them worth linking to. I think they present a cogent argument. I am interested in discourse, in how arguments are framed and arguments marshaled. Heckling is not a form of discourse.

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  8. "Politics, being practiced by human beings, reflects all of the usual human frailties. Partisans can always find examples of their opponents' venality, duplicity, etc.

    But serious political discourse puts aside the slogans and the name-calling and gets down to serious analysis."


    Slogans and name calling include things like "Cut and Run", "Support the Troops", and now an echo of a golden oldie "Better Dead than Red"? The list is endless, huh? Just to reach out to the old cold war warriors, keep 'em from straying from the Bush family agenda? That's pretty cynical, huh? I'm sorry. But I am. Old and cynical.

    Pointing out 'discourse' that is better labeled blatant obfuscation only appears to be heckling when your son-in-law isn't in a war zone. But then, that's me who thinks that way. And I've always been rewarded with disapproval when I wonder out loud what the pols are up to when serving up non sequiturs.

    It's that I think they're Go players planting a stone way off from the main line. You just know that stone's gonna bite your butt some day. You just don't know how.

    What some things appear to be? A new round of bull-dozers looking for some traction on the 'justify the war' road. Saying so is heckling? I suppose so.

    "Like Glenn Reynolds I link to things not necessarily because I agree with them - in whole or in part - but because I think them worth linking to. I think they present a cogent argument." I am interested in discourse, in how arguments are framed and arguments marshaled. Heckling is
    not a form of discourse."


    I'm interested in those same things. I frame my arguments poorly because I'm still learning how to do it. If my brothers and I were better at it, maybe we could have won the debate on whether or not to invade Iraq. But the debate was framed by obfuscatory cabinet secretaries and counselors who knew we were going to war no matter what the evidence. All the rest was slight-of-newsorganizations, fibbing to the world at the UN and Halliburton-buddy-greed.

    Please, forgive my heckling. I apologize, Frank, for annoying you with my approach. I'll try to do better next time.

    -blue

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