I’m taking a day off from work next Monday, and plan to spend the day reading blog editorials and memorial posts as I’ve done in recent years, reflecting, thinking, and hopefully also writing a bit here.
I’ve been finding much insightful discussion and commentary on Pajamas Media’s excellent Blog Week in Review podcast (one of three podcasts I currently listen to regularly, together with the Glenn and Helen Show and Penn Jillette Show), and am looking forward to listening to the September 8th edition, whose topic is the fifth anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks. I’m also currently midway through watching last year’s Discovery Channel documentary “The Flight That Fought Back,” which I hope to finish later today.
It is vitally important to me that we take the intent and consequences of the September 11th, 2001 attacks seriously, and summon all the will we have to work for the survival and health of this magnificent, precious civilization of ours. I must say I feel deeply worried about our evident lack of cultural confidence, by our seeming desire to believe the seductive idea that there is no danger, and by the attacks’ apparent lack of impact on certain Americans’ scornful, derisive, and to me seemingly suicidal pre-9/11 rhetoric toward contemporary American culture and Western civilization.
What Bill Whittle said on the subject in January goes for me: “When it comes to cultural suicide, I’m aginn’ it.” We seem to be gazing pathetically at our navels when we ought to be clapping like furies. I only hope that we will come to realize what’s gone wrong in time to reverse this worrisome state of affairs.
Best wishes folks. More again soon.
Bill Whittle is back at the presses again with latest essays, “Rafts” and “The Web of Trust”. As usual, I found both to be stirring and right on target. I’m greatly looking forward to watching his new book project, “An American Civilization”, take shape.
Glenn and Helen have another great podcast interview/discussion up with Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan. Springing off from the recent news regarding the British terror busts and Israel-Lebanon/Hezbollah conflict, they discuss data gathering technology and the balance between privacy concerns vs. antiterrorism efforts, cycles of Islamic fundamentalism, and prospects for the region. Truly great stuff, as always seems to be the case when they get Jim and Austin on the show. Don’t miss it!
…courtesy of Instapundit. Something new to be concerned about, or just more of the same desperate theatrical posturing and attempts to incite divisions among Americans?
Meryl Yourish comments: “Sounds to me like they just got last season’s 24 on DVD.”
Indeed. Sounds like they’re scraping the bottom of the idea barrel. I hope they haven’t also been watching Battlestar Galactica and building poorly-founded expectations that they’ll drive us to some kind of pathetic navel-gazing self-doubt about our right to exist… Even a single attack of the magnitude they allude to would, I feel confident, put an end to such idle pursuits and galvanize Americans’ will to hunt down Al Qaeda and its brethren and unequivocally destroy their ability to ever do such things again — something the 9/11 attacks only partially succeeded in doing. But I certainly hope that any such attempts will be successfully thwarted, and we’ll therefore never get to find out.
One important thing I’ve been meaning to do, and had originally planned to get to in due course while telling my own story, has been pointing out some of the absolute best stuff I’ve had the pleasure of reading in the past few years — on topics ranging from the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror, to the economics and politics of liberty, to the characteristically American way of life and its critics and ideological opponents foreign and domestic.
I’m now thinking I’m going to try to get to that sooner rather than later, since it’s become clear that it may otherwise take an indeterminate amount of time for me to get around to it if I stick to strict chronological order. We face serious dangers to our culture and way of life now, and I think we desperately and urgently need an attitude change if we’re going to have hope of successfully tackling them.
So far I’ve been quietly stocking my sidebar with top-level links to sites that I feel especially merit readers’ attention, but I haven’t yet written much of anything about them beyond the brief descriptive comments I placed beside the links. It’s my intention to now begin assembling, and soon post, a “top however-many-it-takes” recommended reading/listening list — which at this point will involve sifting through a few years’ worth of browser bookmarks and jotted-down reading notes to make sure I don’t miss anything important…
Meanwhile, I’ll start with a positively easy first recommendation: If you haven’t already read every bit of Bill Whittle’s work, I can only say that you are missing out tremendously — by all means head over to his site and choose any essay at random from his “Silent America” series. (I hope to write more about specific pieces among them in the not too distant future.) Or, go straight to Bill’s most recent piece, “Tribes” (link updated 2009-10-13), which I pointed out when he posted it back in September, and which I just had the supreme pleasure of re-reading again with fresh eyes. No writer I have yet encountered speaks so eloquently or clearly about the American idea and way of life, and why they are every bit worth risking one’s life and security to defend and preserve. Bill lifted me up from the depths of despair when I needed it most, and for that I will be forever and gratefully in his debt. I can’t speak to whether his arguments would be persuasive to someone coming from a strongly different ideological bent, but I would certainly recommend his work as offering some of the most coherently presented and meritorious advocacy in favor of the American path in general and our present course in particular. I urge anyone who may be undecided on such matters and open to considering a different point of view to give audience to Bill’s ideas and expression of them. In my at least somewhat humble opinion, one’s time can hardly be better spent.
More to come…
(This post is no longer quite as timely as it was when I began it as a draft over a month ago — by the timescales on which the blogosphere operates, at least — but it’s still relevant I think, so please bear with me while I dredge up a bit of the semi-recent past on which to ruminate.)
Back in August, I bookmarked this article by Michael Barone that appeared in the wake of July’s London subway bombings. For such a brief piece, it managed to touch on several compelling points, but there was one 20-word quotation in particular that really reached out of the page (or browser window, as it were) and seized my attention. Citing Australian journalist Tony Parkinson quoting French author Jean-François Revel, Barone penned:
“A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
I was floored — in the way that I’m floored on reaching The Moment, the gem of expression that many a Bill Whittle essay seems to contain. Revel’s comment hit the mark succinctly and precisely, and in so doing it gave me a chill.
Revel made his remark in reference to Cold War attitudes in the West. Yet it seems as relevant as ever today, when we face enemies committed to our destruction at a time when we seem more heavily burdened than ever with one massive guilt-trip after another about our culture (both in the U.S. and, more broadly, in the West), the way we live our lives domestically, and the role our country plays in the world.
I fully believe that we can endure and prevail in the fight against violent Islamic extremism if we want to. The key question seems to be: Do we want to? Having seen everything from apparent indifference to some pretty clear “no” answers from the domestic left in the years since 9/11, I have gotten to be far more worried about our own frame of mind than anything that al-Qaeda and its brethren have in store for us.
Revel’s statement expresses so clearly what I’ve come to believe is the primary danger facing us today, and makes a point so central to my motivation for starting this blog, that I feel it belongs at the top of every page — so there I have placed it.
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Barone’s article came to mind again as I followed blogospheric and mainstream news outlet coverage of the recent riots that began in Clichy-sous-Bois and subsequently spread across France for two dismal weeks — this time for reasons more closely related to the article’s central theme. In it, Barone posed a rather un-PC but seemingly very important question: Is multicultualism’s tendency to segregate and isolate people a source of problems? To which I would add a further question that I imagine Barone might have had in mind but didn’t explicitly state: What happens to a “multicultural” society that becomes so tolerant that it allows itself to be a host for people who are anything from indifferent to it or alienated from it (as in the poor, predominantly Muslim suburbs of Paris) to committed to its subversion and destruction (as in the case of the U.K.-raised London bombers, or the transplanted 9/11 hijackers)? The answer seems as relevant to the current situation in France as it does to the broader war on terrorism or violent Islamic extremism.
Multiculturalism holds wide appeal in part because it is embodies a kind and noble sentiment: allow for people’s differences, respect them as unique individuals and let them live their own lives in their own ways.
The seming problem with multiculturalism lies not in the abstract idea but in its reduction to practice. Multiculturalist critics of the characteristically American “melting pot” approach to immigration have long complained about its expectation that people adapt or “assimilate” into their adopted host culture, in spite of the demonstrable benefits that doing so confers — both for the individuals doing the adjusting, and for the society that in turn benefits from their contributions, productivity, and solidly founded feelings of inclusion and investment in the culture’s survival and success. America may offer immigrants a place to succeed, but (there’s always a “but”, isn’t there) it exacts an unfair price, multiculturalists allege, by asking them in return to adopt and incorporate into their lives certain American attitudes, traditions, or ways of doing things. Multiculturalists’ intended purpose seems to be to spare immigrants’ feelings and offer sympathy for the challenges that go with building a new life in a foreign place. By asserting as their axiom that all cultures are unquestionably of equal value, and opposing the expectation that people adapt to succeed, multiculturalists ostensibly seek to suppress inter-cultural conflict and simultaneously improve immigrants’ lot in life. But it’s become apparent to me that this approach can and does backfire in many ways, and I suspect that the unfortunate events we’ve seen unfold in Clichy-sous-Bois and its environs are evidence of that. The social fragmentation that can result from applying such thinking has been aptly termed “Balkanization”, and it doesn’t appear to be good for anyone.
Multiculturalist ideology also provides another rhetorical tool or set of justifications with which contemporary social critics can continue to disparage us. I suspect it holds special appeal among intellecutals because its obsession with cultural equivalence provides a way to denigrate or gloss over the pronounced achievements of contemporary Western society, which competing ideologies cannot allow to stand as objects of admiration or aspiration.
Though multiculturalism claims as its axiom the notion that all cultures are morally equal, “In practice,”, Barone notes, “that soon degenerates to: All cultures all morally equal, except ours, which is worse.” I have all too frequently seen the phenomenon that Barone describes in action, and the clear hypocrisy of it has been one of the many motivators for my move away from contemporary American liberalism over the past several years. People of other cultures are to be pandered to apologetically, it seems, but it’s open season when it comes to criticism of America and her culture and lifestyles. I hate to have to say it, but I’ve really lost patience with the double-standard that others should be encouraged in celebrating their cultures but we in the United States, or in the Western world at large, should be constantly shamed. I feel justifiable pride in my own culture too, and I simply won’t abide that disingenuous double standard anymore, pretenting not to feel the glow that I do feel in the core of my heart.
I declare here and now that I have every confidence in, and every hope for, our country, our culture, and our way of life in the United States. I feel deeply proud and deeply grateful to be in the company of such a courageous group of people, who would carve a life not out of guarantees of safety but out of raw, untamed frontier. I pledge to do my utmost to contribute to America’s continued thriving and success, that she may remain a congenial home to those who cherish freedom and an authentic beacon of hope to all who choose this life of liberty that I hold so dear. To stand here and make this delcaration clearly and unequivocally — well, that in itself has been a significant part of my purpose in starting this blog, so it seems an appropriate segue for the end of this post.
Thanks for tuning in folks! Thanks for being witness to my small, but to me vitally important, declaration concerning who I am and how I will live. Hope to see more of you in the future as I get this project out of the shipyards and off to sea… Best wishes.
Enclosed with a recent letter, my parents sent me a brief clipping by regular Salt Lake Tribune columnist Robert Kirby, titled “Why the animosity? Can’t find it in the Quran”, in which the author relates his preliminary reaction to beginning to read the Muslim holy book.
Kirby’s piece begins:
On the wall above my desk is a framed quotation. I don’t know who said it, only that I saw it once and liked it.
“A book is like a mirror. If an ass looks into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look back out.”
The quote is especially poignant now that I’m slogging my way through the Holy Quran. It’s a tough read, but I don’t blame the book. So much of it is deeply spiritual and I’m not.
Technically, I should be reading something else. The LDS Church wants all of its members to read the entire Book of Mormon again this year. We’ve been given weekly reading goals and everything.
Doing this is supposed to bring me closer to God. That’s all well and good, but right now I’m more interested in staying alive.
According to the news, about a billion Muslims also want me closer to God and are eager to kill me to help me get there. It seems only prudent that I find out why.
Toward this end I picked up a copy of the Quran two months ago.
“Here’s the deal,” Kirby concludes a couple of jokes later:
So far, I can’t find anywhere in this book that says I’m supposed to be killed. There’s plenty that says I’m going to hell in a hurry, but that’s nothing new. The Bible, the Book of Mormon, and my mom all say that.
What I do find are continual references to tolerance and well treatment of others.
…
If the rest of the Quran is like what I’ve read so far, I’m pretty sure I won’t find anything that deliberately encourages violence toward me or anyone else.
Bible, Book of Mormon, Quran, they all come down to what kind of person is looking into them. It always seems to be way too many asses.
Certainly I have read similar claims before, and would like very much to believe them. This was my carefully considered reply:
I sincerely hope that Kirby is right based on his reading so far — I really do. But I must say that I feel skeptical about his conclusions based on evidence I have seen elsewhere. I want very much to believe the assertion — oft-repeated by our own embattled president, no less — that “Islam is a religion of peace”. Yet I fear that our charitable desire to be tolerant and ascribe innocent intentions to others may be putting us in serious danger, by persuading us to dismiss evidence to the contrary in favor of what we might prefer to believe, or what fits our expectations of people who think and behave as we do.
As I see it, for tragic reasons we have yet to understand, Islam either produces a disproportionate share of the world’s violent extremists, or at minimum seems disproportionately prone to being twisted into an attractive ideological recruitment device and justification by such extremists. (For how often does one hear of suicide bombers of Hindu, Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist affiliation?) There are men calling themselves Muslim clerics, rightly or wrongly, who preach a doctrine of violent holy war — not just in predominantly Muslim lands, but also in the U.K., Europe, and here in the U.S. Whatever its causes, this is a correlation that remains unexplained to me, yet whose implications seem important to honestly confront, investigate and understand. As Kirby himself says, “It seems only prudent that I find out why.” I respect Kirby’s open-mindedness and search for reliable firsthand answers, but in his conclusion he seems to verge on denying that any real problem exists beyond our suspicion itself, which I fear is a dangerous mistake that plays into the hands of the extremists. There is indeed a human tendency to see what we want or expect to see, and I’d certainly prefer not to be an ass. But I also have no desire to be an ostrich (especially not a dead one).
While I fully believe that the majority of Muslims are reasonable moderates who do not advocate or have ties to violent extremism, it’s unfortunate that the world seemingly hears only hesitant criticism from them when it comes to denouncing the acts and rhetoric of such extremists, who invoke Islam in their calls for jihad against the West and in celebration of terrorist acts. I certainly hope we will see that change, and that moderate Muslims will be successful in reclaiming their religion and reining in the extremists among them. To paraphrase a blogger whose patient, reasoned and thoughtful writing I have enjoyed this past year, I don’t feel secure in sitting on a hot stove waiting for that to happen. But I would be very happy to be proven wrong in that possible underestimation of the moderate Muslim community. I certainly hope I will be.
