1. For many Americans our historic and emotional relationship with the “native” population is our emotional template for our reaction to the Israeli/Arabic drama If we respond only emotionally to it we miss the very real differences between the two situations.
2. The cultural confrontation with the American Indian and the change it effected between two unequal and very different cultures is a very powerful paradigm that can help us to understand the clash with Islam- if we read it carefully....
The left finds a way to lament. They claim to see no difference between the moral authority of the American experiment (even as they are sheltered under its protective mantle) as compared with Caliphatist Islam. Moral imbeciles like Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and a host of others promote relativistic absurdities that equate the actions of America and Israel to those of al Qeada and Ahmadinejad and find ways to excuse the violence of those thugs and bullies.. Their arguments are based on that same fulsome emotion, dressed up to look like real discourse.
They do this by establishing certain constructs of “received knowledge” that they try to convince us cannot be challenged. This un challengability is an emotional barrier to free speech and intellectually honest debate. When you ignore the emotional prohibition they are challenged with ease and found to be nothing more than emotional absurdities.
Multiculturalism is chief among these absurdities. Originally conceived as an expression of the bland but laudable liberal impulse to “honor differences” and acknowledge the diversity of cultural influences, multiculturalism has become an overbearing burden to never offend or even “judge” the views and behaviors of other cultures. If rejecting the moral relativism of Multiculturalism seems “insensitive” to us today it is because we have been badgered into buying the premise that all cultures are equally deserving and good. This is absurd.
People like Hirsi Ali, for instance, who have lived in some of these other cultures, know how absurd it is. Hrisi Ali knows first hand the horror of being a woman in Somalia and Saudia Arabia. I have used this quote before but it bears repeating here.
“This is gender inequality: an inequality most obscene, expressed through acts such as mutilation, beatings, rape and murder--and almost all this aggression is justified in the name of culture and creed. Atrocities committed against girls and women in the most intimate setting of all: in the home; by dad or mom; by a brother or a sister; by a husband or his mother. The sort of persecution I talk about is one in which the religious leaders, the politicians, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers, all share the staunch belief that girls--that women--are born of a lesser god.”So why can’t we stand up as a civilization for women everywhere? Why do the feminists in The West prefer to quibble about salary differentials in the upper echelons of corporate leadership to campaigning to end the rape, torture and murder of Islamic women? Can they really be that morally blind? Is multiculturalism such an important idea that we have to sacrifice our moral souls and another generation of women and children? Why?
Part of it is that we are genuinely touched by the pathos of cultures like those of the American Indian which we have defeated and incorporated into our own. This melancholy reluctance to effect any change in the culture of others is illogical and misguided. It is driven by the guilt that we can’t stand to talk about, acknowledge or even think about. The guilt of knowing that our great standard of living humiliates other people who don’t live as well is the silly, racist core of the multiculturalist urge. We dearly want to be able to tell them that they are not really humiliated so they won’t be angry with us anymore but we know that this is a lie. In doing so we perform the worst act of humiliation of all, we let them off the hook. In not helping to them to see their position truly, we commit a much worse act of racism- we admit that we don’t think they are up to meeting the truth head on.
We have bought into multiculturalism because we no longer have the fortitude, the honesty or the intelligence to look someone in the eye and tell them, “Look, you are humiliated because you do not have the culture or political leaders or the education to be otherwise. You really need to stop making such a big deal about feeling humiliated. Why not try some of these simple steps toward civilization instead:
1. Specifically outlaw honor killing
2. Stop beating your wife and/or kids.
3. Send your kids to a decent school where they won’t waste their time memorizing an entire “holy book” to the exclusion of learning critical thinking skills and studying arithmetic, science and geography.
4. Forget using Israel, Jews and America as the excuse for being a looser.
5. Understand that your leader (fill in one: Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kadafy, Mubarak, Abdullah etc…) is a tyrant of the worst sort and is actually working hard to keep you ignorant and filled with rage, that’s how your feudal system works.
6. For God’s sake stop thinking of anyone who believes (or doesn’t believe in him) in him (God that is) in a different way than you do as less than human. That only makes you feel worse when you see that those “unbelievers” live better than you do.
If you take care of all that, there would be no need for you to feel humiliated anymore.”
Part I
Part II
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