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Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - 8:46pmSanction this postReply
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Poignant essay, Ed.

There is Attila (e.g., "the dictators"), and there is the Witch Doctor (e.g., "the Islamists") and then there is "everyone else." As someone who we here all know once said -- I think it was way back in 1961! -- what the world needs for true salvation today is the new intellectual ("strong voices for Enlightenment").

:-)

Ed


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Saturday, September 14, 2013 - 2:48pmSanction this postReply
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Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Isma'Il Abu Taqiyya, by Nelly Hanna is about a time and place more vibrant than today.  Cairo was far in advance of western societies of the time.  A Bosnian slave woman sued in court because she felt that some men dealing with her master had cut her out of her share.  No free woman of London or Paris had such rights. I have mentioned this before. 

The problem is not Islam. The problem is the primitive, igorant, superstitious, medievalist muscle-mystics in Washington DC. Reduce the government to protecting America and to just that and the rest of the problems go away.

That said, you cannot stop individuals from making bad choices.  Looters, robbers, thieves, highwaymen, train robbers, bank robbers, armed robbers...  They all will be with us... but an open market philosophy based on reason and reality will prevent all of these other problems hallmarked by 9/11.

(BTW: before 9/11, the worst terrorist attack on US ground was Oklahoma City. Do you have any plans for stopping zealous American Christian patriots?)

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/14, 2:55pm)


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Saturday, September 14, 2013 - 3:34pmSanction this postReply
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Just two short points:
Americans are wrong to imagine that the Islamists and their program, which brought down the World Trade Center towers twelve years ago, are simply blowback for real or imagined recent U.S. government foreign policy slights. [Empahsis mine]
I think it is wrong not to see "blowback" as part of the equation. My brother describes the various Islamic sects as crabs in a bucket. You put your hand into the bucket and they all rise up to attack your hand, even if it is the hand that is feeding them. If no one puts a hand in the bucket, they all turn viciously on each other.

But unlike crabs in a bucket, this is a clash between a millenniums-old, barbaric culture that has risen to rule large parts of the world many times in the past, and wants to do so again.

It would be in violent conflict with our civilization at some point, even if we had never entered that part of the world. And to the degree that we are free and modern and happy would be the extent to which they would hate us. But it is also true that our being over there made that conflict happen now. If we hadn't been over there, they wouldn't have come over here... now. But even though that aspect of blowback is true, it shouldn't dictate our actions.
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The Muslim Middle East is going through a wrenching transformation from pre-modern to modern, a process that took many bloody centuries in Western Europe. What it needs most desperately are strong advocates for the philosophy of reason and freedom that underlies the modern world.
I certainly agree with the last sentence. They need a philosophy of reason and freedom in that part of the world. But I disagree about the transformation being one that is going from pre-modern to modern. That process had been going on... look at Lebanon before its collapse, a Secular Iran, and look at Egypt under Anwar Sadat. Look at Israel. But that trend ended a while back and the new trend is the resurrection of the next Caliphate - the return of the barbarians - the spread of fundamentalist Islam by force.

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Sunday, September 15, 2013 - 8:20amSanction this postReply
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Do not allow other people to dictate to you your own thoughts and conclusions. See the collapse of building 7. The Federal Government and Federal Reserve are protection rackets. The defense of your own body, property, and family is your own responsibility.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores on 9/15, 8:23am)


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Sunday, September 15, 2013 - 8:28amSanction this postReply
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Mike,

You make good points.


Steve,

"But that trend ended a while back and the new trend is the resurrection of the next Caliphate - the return of the barbarians - the spread of fundamentalist Islam by force."


"[T]he return of the barbarians"? That sounds like the title of an action-thriller movie. While it leaves me disenchanted, I can see, perhaps in a century or two from now, all of this turning into a novel/movie ...


"It was 1963 and dark forces were looming in the shadows. Plans were drawn up for a fundamental transformation to a new world order. The purchasing power of workers was about to begin to persistently decline, according to the plan (the creation of a permanent underclass). A 'new feudalism' of kings, nobles, and paupers was about to take hold.

A bold U.S. president tried to carry the torchlight of reason and freedom, illuminating further into the dark cave. But the dark forces had been swelling up behind the scenes for centuries, like the water sequentially passing through locks in a canal: Plato-Kant-Hegel-Marx-Lenin-Wilson-Roosevelt-Johnson-Nixon-Carter ..."


:-)

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 9/15, 8:35am)


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