Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

[Eindar]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

Some interesting comments in this thread. Most muddied by personal comments firing from multiple directions. Reminds me why I've considered removing this board altogether.

Why can't we have a meaningful discussion on these boards without people resorting to mudslinging, or at the bare minimum, condescending attitudes?

I really think our boards are a microcosm of the country right now. I'm a young guy, but never in my life have people been more at each other's throats over the liberal vs. conservative issue, and personally, I find the whole thing disgusting.

[Los Angeles]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

Hicks and Eindar.

I know I'm one of the posters you are referring to. I'm sorry.

Able said it better than me. "The Enemy Within" is lifted directly from the Nazi Party. It's purpose was to defeat political enemies and create unquestioned and unilateral power.

Are able and I the only ones that see this?

This book introduction makes me angry, ashamed and frankly terrified at the thought that nobody has a sense of its mirror to fairly recent history.

Sure, I said a couple of insulting things but there are bigger things going on here.

[Eindar]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

Hicks and Eindar.

I know I'm one of the posters you are referring to. I'm sorry.

Able said it better than me. "The Enemy Within" is lifted directly from the Nazi Party. It's purpose was to defeat political enemies and create unquestioned and unilateral power.

Are able and I the only ones that see this?

This book introduction makes me angry, ashamed and frankly terrified at the thought that nobody has a sense of its mirror to fairly recent history.

Sure, I said a couple of insulting things but there are bigger things going on here.

Oh, I think if you go back and read any of my posts, I think you'll find that I was the first person here to say, in print, that the conservative approach is eerily similar to how the Nazi party came to power in Germany. But, here on PD at least, where the focus should be on the Pacers, with politics being an afterthought, we can at least agree to disagree and hopefully each go our own way once things reach a point where people are belittled based on their views.

[Los Angeles]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

I'm just not very good at the Socratic method. I seem to be incapable of leading people into choosing a path. I just say - "this is the correct path." Sometimes it comes out "This is the correct path, idiot." I know that last version goes too far. I really am sorry.

Sometimes individuals NEED to be taken to task for thier viewpoints.

Sometimes condescension is warranted.

I'm going to let my posts stand for now, but will delete them if an admin requests that I do, and I will do so without complaint.

[Bball]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

I'm not going to quote it all (you can follow Putnam's link) but I'm surprised at some of the bombs thrown back and forth in light of my further reading of the piece in question. At first I read what Putnam quoted and thought I understood the point. But there was much more to be gleaned at the linked website.

So I wonder how many here actually took the time to read the piece in it's entirety? Or how many read the initial paragraph (or title) and flew off the handle without taking it in the context of the whole article?

There are IMHO some points worthy of discussion. I may not agree with everything in it but there are certainly points I agree with. I'm going to quote more of the text below altho there is so much more to be read at the site that even this doesn't do things justice.

Now, onto another point. The eliticism and hypocracy of the liberal argument really turns me off. It seems like anything goes as long as it's the more liberal point of view. But the conservative point of view is allowed to be ridiculed and shouted down. It's only when the conservative tries to defend him/herself that we see the axe fall.

And I certainly agree with Bat Boy that we saw some hypocracy from a mod in this thread. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander.
....Unless this is the "Liberal Politics Forum" where it's encouraged that only liberal issues can be discussed and never challenged. I sincerely hope that is not the case.

I don't really have a problem with some heated discussion IF it is allowed BOTH ways. But if it isn't going to be allowed one way, it shouldn't be allowed the other either. And certainly we don't need hypocracy from a Mod.

-Bball "But what do I know?"


by Dinesh D'Souza
http://www.dineshdsouza.com/books/enemy-intro.html

Further, the cultural left has routinely affirmed the most vicious prejudices about American foreign policy held by radical factions in the Muslim world, and then it has emboldened those factions to attack the United States with the firm conviction that ?America deserves it? and that they can do so with relative impunity

The early statements by the Bush administration reflected this unified belligerence. The terrorists are stateless outlaws. They are not Muslims. They are apostates to Islam. True Muslims must denounce them. They are fanatics. They are lunatics. They are suicidal maniacs who don?t care about their lives. These themes were echoed across the political spectrum. Now, with reflection and more information, we can see that these statements are false. Specifically, the terrorists were not stateless outlaws. The Al Qaeda training camps were supported by the Taliban government in Afghanistan. As their diaries showed, the terrorists were deeply pious Muslims. Traditional Muslims were reluctant to denounce them as apostates to Islam because they were not apostates to Islam. Nor were they lunatics or even suicidal in the conventional sense. By definition a suicide is someone who doesn?t want to live. The terrorists wanted to live, but they were willing to die for a cause that they deemed higher. Not that they loved their life less, but they hated America more.

Once the initial shock subsided, so did the national unity it had produced. Soon a heated debate broke out in America about the meaning of 9/11 and the ongoing ?war against terrorism,? a debate that quickly broke down into partisan camps: the left versus the right, the liberals versus the conservatives, Blue America versus Red America. In a moment of genuine indignation, left-wing activist Michael Moore conveyed how large a chasm separates the two Americas. Reacting to 9/11, Moore posted the following message on his website. ?Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back to Bush then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, D.C., and the planes? destination of California?these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!?[i] Moore?s eruption, read with hindsight, seems slightly comic. It?s hard to imagine Bin Laden and his associates distinguishing between Bush supporters and Bush opponents for the purpose of launching attacks. The most striking aspect of Moore?s statement, however, is its implication that Al Qaeda hit the wrong target. According to Moore, they should have hit Red America, not Blue America! However objectionable this may seem to many Americans, Moore?s statement is important because of the connection it instinctively makes between two apparently disparate events: a) the 9/11 attacks, and b) the internal divide between Red America and Blue America. I believe that the significance of this divide for understanding 9/11 and the ?war against terrorism? has not been adequately appreciated.

On the other side of the spectrum, the fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell confirmed in equally strong terms his perception of the political divide, even while invoking God?s wrath on the sinners in Blue America. ?The Lord has protected us so wonderfully these past 225 years,? Falwell said. He worried that something ?has caused God to lift the veil of protection which has allowed no one to attack America on our soil.? Falwell did not shrink from specifying, ?The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say: You helped this happen.?[ii] Unlike Moore, Falwell was fiercely denounced for his comments, and he promptly apologized for them.

These words are not insightful in the theological sense that Falwell intended. I cannot make sense of Falwell?s suggestion that God used 9/11 to punish America for its sins. If God was aiming for the abortionists and the feminists and the homosexuals, it seems He mostly killed stockbrokers and soldiers and janitors (some of whom may have been homosexual, but few of whom probably had second jobs as abortionists.) The real issue raised by Falwell?s comments is entirely secular. What impact did the abortionists, the feminists, the homosexual activists and the secularists have on the Islamic radicals who conspired to blow up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Unfortunately this crucial question got buried, and virtually no one has raised it publicly.

Why is it so maddeningly difficult, even years after the fact, to make sense of 9/11? One reason is that the very terms used by both sides in the debate are misleading. Consider the very name of the war America is fighting: a War Against Terrorism. But America is no more fighting a ?war against terrorism? than during World War II it was fighting a ?war against kamikazism.? No, during World War II the United States was fighting the armies of Imperial Japan. Kamikazism was simply the tactic or strategy used by the enemy. In the same vein, America today is not fighting against ?terrorism.? There are terrorist groups all over the world: the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Maoist rebels in Nepal, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the Shining Path guerillas in Peru. Is America at war with all these groups? Of course not. The war is against a virulent species of Islamic radicalism. Terrorism is merely the weapon of choice used by the enemy to intimidate and kill us. In this sense Bin Laden is not so much a terrorist as he is anreligious ideologue who has chosen terrorism as the most effective way to achieve his goals.

It?s time go back to the drawing board, and the logical place to start is the debate over 9/11. On the left, scholars like Edward Said, Richard Falk and Noam Chomsky have argued that 9/11 was the result of Islamic anger over American foreign policy. In this view, echoed by politicians like Ted Kennedy and liberal magazines like The American Prospect, the radical Muslims don?t hate us because of who we are, they hate us because of what we?ve done to them. As leftist commentators never tire of pointing out, the West has a long history of colonialism and imperialism. Even today, they say, America one-sidedly supports Israel and props up dictatorial regimes (notably Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) in the Muslim world. The left-wing view can be summed up this way: they are justifiably furious at us because we are the bad guys.

The word that deserves our most careful attention in the previous sentence is ?we.? When the left says ?we? it doesn?t mean ?we.? The left?s ?we? is not intended as self-incrimination. This is why the conservative complaint about ?liberal guilt? is so beside the point. Liberals do not consider themselves guilty in the slightest. When a leftist politician or blogger bemoans ?how we overthrew Mossadegh in Iran? or expresses outrage at ?what we did at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib,? the speaker does not mean ?what I and other people like me did.? In formulations like this, ?we? really means ?you.? The apparent confession is really a disguised form of accusation. The liberal?s point is that Bush is guilty, conservatives are guilty, America is guilty. Specifically, the liberal is saying to the conservative, ?Your America is responsible for this. Your America is greedy, selfish, imperialist. Your America extols the principles of democracy and human rights, but in practice backs savage dictators for the purpose of maintaining American access to Middle Eastern oil.? Thus without saying so directly, the left holds the right and its conduct of American foreign policy responsible for 9/11.

On the social and cultural front, the American left clearly does not approve of the way of life in Muslim countries, partly those under the sway of Islamic fundamentalism. It is common to see left-wingers walking around with clothes featuring the swashbuckling visage of Che Guevara, but you will never see liberals and leftists wearing T-shirts displaying the raven?s stare of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Indeed, the left detests the social conservatism that is the hallmark of the whole swath of cultures stretching from the Middle East to China. Those cultures are viewed by many Western liberals as backward, hierarchical, patriarchal, and deeply oppressive. And of these cultures none seem to be more reactionary than Islamic culture. Indeed the regimes supported by the Islamic fundamentalists are undoubtedly the most illiberal in the modern world. In Iran, for example, the ruling regime routinely imprisons its critics who are dubbed ?enemies of Islam.? Public floggings have been used to make an example of women found guilty of fornication. Homosexuality is harshly punished in fundamentalist regimes. The Taliban, for instance, had a range of penalties. As one Taliban leader explained, ?One group of scholars believes you should take these people to the top of the highest building in the city, and hurl them to their deaths. The other recommends that you dig a pit near a wall somewhere, put these people into it, and then topple the wall so they are buried alive.

Even so, it is rare to see the illiberal practices of Muslim cultures aggressively denounced by American or European liberals. There are a few notable exceptions, such as Christopher Hitchens and Paul Berman. But in general liberals seem to condemn illiberal regimes only when they are allied with the United States. Nor do liberals seem eager to support American efforts to overthrow hostile, illiberal regimes. Berman, who supported Bush?s invasion of Iraq, counts ?maybe fifteen or twenty? liberals who shared his position on this issue.[iv] If the case of Iraq is any indication, most liberals actively oppose American efforts to use military power to install regimes that are more pro-American and pro-Western and embody a more liberal set of values, such as self-government, minority rights, and religious tolerance. Indeed the central thrust of the left?s foreign policy is to prevent America from forcibly replacing illiberal regimes with more liberal ones. This is a genuine mystery.

Liberal resistance to American foreign policy cannot be explained as a consequence of pacifism or even a reluctance to use force. With the exception of a few fringe figures, the cultural left is not pacifist. Its elected representatives?the Clintons, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer?frequently support the use of American force. For instance, President Clinton ordered systematic bombings in Bosnia and Kosovo during his terms in office. Clinton?s airstrikes were warmly endorsed in speeches by liberal Democrats such as Boxer, Paul Wellstone, David Bonior and Carl Levin. Cultural liberals routinely call for America to intervene, by force if necessary, in places like Haiti and Rwanda. So liberals are not in principle opposed to ?regime change? or to American intervention.

How, then, can we explain the mystery of liberal opposition to American foreign policy acting to secure liberal principles abroad? Superficially, the left?s position can be explained by its attachment to multiculturalism. In other words, liberal antagonism toward the beliefs and mores of traditional cultures is moderated by its conviction, ?Who are we to judge these cultures?? This concept of withholding judgment is a product of multiculturalism and cultural relativism, both of which are based on the theory that there are no universal standards to judge other cultures. Our standards apply only to us.

[able]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

Ah, able, hypocrisy writ large, and from a PD Administrator no less. Its clear you haven't re-read your own sticky note, regarding the need for courtesy and avoiding insulting posts. Or if you have read that sticky, you have-- once again -- ignored it. You frequently insult other posters, as you have done with Putnam here (Hey Putnam, how do you like being called an "extremist" by able? And do you think being accused of "bending your answer," of your inability to see what is before you, and "your outright nonsense" is praise from him? Me neither, but rest assured that some of us find your posts enlightening and well thought out, and we consider you the farthest thing from a non-entity.)

So, able, I guess its safe to assume you are not going to give yourself a warning, or maybe ban yourself for 30 days? Or will you simply follow your normal course of locking down the thread because you don't like the discussion or the sentiments of some posters with whom you disagree?

I suggest you read post 25 and the answer it receives in post 29 before you "judge", which if you had done that before you wrote this little piece of trash aimed at me above would've saved you a lot of emberassement.

Your post above is furthermore so far out of line that you are at the very least solliciting.

If someone chooses to (whether it is born out of ignorance, stupidity or spite doesn't bare imporftance on the outcome) insult every European by generalizing remarks that show about little or no knowledge of Europe or Europeans in general and culture in particular then one can expect to be "washed".

Of course the Dutch still get all their energy from windmills, wear clogs and dance on the street in those clogs every day of the week, like the french eat nothing but cheese and wear garlic around their neck wearing a black baret and the english all wear pinstripe suits, wearing an umbrella and dance on roof tops in between the chimneys while says "jolly roger".

Spare me this line of thinking, it is exactly what makes Anthem and LA so right in this thread.
I leave it to you to conclude why that line of thinking makes them right, because even if I spell it out you will explain it differently anyway.

Stop the personal and mod attack, because if that's the only way you think you can "win" a discussion then indeed this board has lost ANY right to exist and instead of being the last and ONLY admin still in favour of this board I will support Hicks & Co immediately with closure, as it is obvious that "friendly" warnings heed you none.

[DisplacedKnick]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

How do you know this?

Reading.

[Mourning]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

And, as far as the Europeans go, they would like nothing more than to have their music and cultures spread throughout the world. I know this because Europeans have said it to me. But, have you ever seen the Eurovision Song Contest? Europeans are resentful, but nonetheless eager to buy US music and movies. And its no wonder: their movies are all about the circus, and their music features the accordion.

Virtually every culture wants to spread its area and scope of influence, nothing amazing there, but the way you talk about Europe... let's just say that IF I were to talk about the US like that in a similar manner I would be slammed within NO-TIME.

You may have spend some years in Europe, obviously you either learned or don't know anything about it or you willingly want to spread out a really strange picture about Europe.

How you can not AT THE VERY LEAST differentiate between more then 300+ million individuals in 35+ countries is truly something beyond me. Especially considering the diversity is enormous.

I think I will just swallow my initial reaction here, I don't think it would do me, the discussion and atmosphere in the general board and this part of the board specifically any good to escalate this I just want to state again that I was really appalled by the above statement.

I'll just cling on to basically what L.A., Able and big parts of what Einder have stated in this thread. What also bothers me is that EVERYTHING in the US these days is pulled into partisan territory and when that happens it seems like it's almost a pride thing to not want to admit you might actually support a Republican viewpont if you are democratic voter (normally) and viceversa. That's just moronic. If that's the case then why are there even discussions? Let's just let the partyleaders decide which view is most popular and then vote and consequently not debate openly about ideas anymore.

Personally, I think it would be a real loss if this part of the board would be "cut". I generally like to read about other Pacers fans political opinions and views on society.

Regards,

Mourning

[Arcadian]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

I do believe a lot of what is going on is cultural. The US military and influence in many parts of the world and no where else is our relationship as explosive as it is in the Middle East. So I can't say that it is simply a matter of US presence although I do think that plays a part.

Having said that it is cultural however the is a temptation that we have to resist. That being the temptation to look at the parts of Western society which we disagree with and say that is the part which fuels the conflict. I think the cultural conflicts are much broader than American politics. What fuels the conflict are cultural perspectives like the rights of an individual, a separation between church and state, how governmental authority is granted, the place of personal expression, the pursuit of happiness...Any number of issues that two Westerners of different political opinions would agree on much more closely than a Westerner and a Middle Easterner.

[skyfire]

Re: Liberal politics = Islamic hate?

I'd just like to make a few points about the long passage that Bball quoted.

American military presence in the middle east has been there for decades. It isn't a matter of republican or democrat. US or British troops have been trying to assert western dominance over the region for far longer than one Republican presidency. The borders of Iraq were arbitrarily drawn by the British a loong time ago. To say that left wing commentators using 'we' only refers to the right is a flawed conclusion.

I would denounce an oppressive regime regardless of whether they were supposedly our allies or not. Micheal Moore doesn't speak for me as i'm sure Jerry Falwell probbly doesn't speak for all Christians.

The Taliban were an extremist regime, I dont think you can conclude from their giving sanctuary to Al Queda that 'traditional muslims' wouldn't denounce them. The people of Afghanistan were being oppressed and the people of one of the poorest nations in that situation hardly has much of a voice.

I think that the reasonings in his book takes too great a leap for any useful conclusion to be drawn.