Posted on 05/19/2004 2:54:18 AM PDT by Theodore R.
What do we offer the world?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 19, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
"So, how do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?" asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory will be theirs as well."
Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world" was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the "Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison.
Indeed, the filmed orgies among U.S. military police outside the cells of Iraqi prisoners, the S&M humiliation of Muslim men, the sexual torment of their women raise a question. Exactly what are the "values" the West has to teach the Islamic world?
"This war ... is about – deeply about – sex," declaims neocon Charles Krauthammer. Militant Islam is "threatened by the West because of our twin doctrines of equality and sexual liberation."
But whose "twin doctrines" is Krauthammer talking about? The sexual liberation he calls our doctrine belongs to a '60s revolution that devout Christians, Jews and Muslims have been resisting for years.
What does Krauthammer mean by sexual liberation? The right of "tweeners" and teenage girls to dress and behave like Britney Spears? Their right to condoms in junior high? Their right to abortion without parental consent?
If conservatives reject the "equality" preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary?
In June 2002 at West Point, President Bush said, "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time and in every place."
But even John Kerry does not agree with George Bush on the morality of homosexual unions and stem-cell research. On such issues, conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats.
The president notwithstanding, Americans no longer agree on what is moral truth. For as someone said a few years back, there is a cultural war going on in this country – a religious war. It is about who we are, what we believe and what we stand for as a people.
What some of us view as the moral descent of a great and Godly republic into imperial decadence, neocons see as their big chance to rule the world.
In Georgia, recently, the president declared to great applause: "I can't tell you how proud I am of our commitment to values. ... That commitment to values is going to be an integral part of our foreign policy as we move forward. These aren't American values, these are universal values. Values that speak universal truths."
But what universal values is he talking about? If he intends to impose the values of MTV America on the Muslim world in the name of a "world democratic revolution," he will provoke and incite a war of civilizations America cannot win because Americans do not want to fight it. This may be the neocons' war. It is not our war.
When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish "The Satanic Verses" – a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?
When the president speaks of freedom, does he mean the First Amendment prohibition against our children reading the Bible and being taught the Ten Commandments in school?
If the president wishes to fight a moral crusade, he should know the enemy is inside the gates. The great moral and cultural threats to our civilization come not from outside America, but from within. We have met the enemy, and he is us. The war for the soul of America is not going to be lost or won in Fallujah.
Unfortunately, Pagan America of 2004 has far less to offer the world in cultural fare than did Christian America of 1954. Many of the movies, books, magazines, TV shows, videos and much of the music we export to the world are as poisonous as the narcotics the Royal Navy forced on the Chinese people in the Opium Wars.
A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of "American values."
it was no big deal because everyone their place and that's the way they like it/sarcasm
Pat loves America.
Only in America can you run for president and get someone elses' $12 million.
Funny how both he, and they, continue to stay here and make money, isn't it?
Voluntary or mandatory?
Whose prayer?
Would every kid get to pray to whomever they are bering brought up by their parents to worship?
Remember how pat filed court challenges in Florida after the vote. Guess who his lawyer was?
His brother.
Why not, the rest of his family had been paid campaign workers. Well paid.
I think you're putting words into Pat's mouth again. He's not a big fan of the Judeos
Yes, a “Christian nation,” not “Judeo-Christian” principles
Buchanan said he talks about a “Christian nation” because the Supreme Court has “de-Christianized America.” He said more than a million students have enrolled in Christian schools over the past decade; “They are refugees from what they see as godless public schools.” Asked why he refused to refer to “Judeo-Christian” principles rather than a “Christian nation,” he said: “Harry Truman used the phrase. Woodrow Wilson used the phrase. Do you want to use accurate words or politically correct language?
What about Muslim terrorists in Kosovo?
It was done without problems until recently. And somehow after the prayer was banned, the MANDATORY worship of sexual deviations took place. Nature does not suffer vacuum.
A radical Islamist terrorist cell in Hamburg is a "democratic society", is it? I understand the need to redefine history to serve your contemporary political agenda, but when you find yourself redefining the English language for the same reasons, perhaps it's time to step back and ask if the ends really justify the means.
But THEY have "enlightened self-interests," as long as it is OUR children who are in the Armed Forces.
Oh, please. WE have enlightened self-interests, as a nation. WE are going to defeat radical Islam, and WE will all benefit thereby - and last I checked, "we" includes you. If your children can't obey their lawfully and Constitutionally elected/appointed superiors, then they don't deserve to wear that uniform in the first place.
It does look like Fritz Hollins will be receiving an autographed copy of pat's last book. ($.49 on the bargain tables at a bookstore near you)
As I've pointed out, this was the same logic used by the Holy See to block the UN attempt to have abortion declared a fundamental right in the '90s. Neither the US nor any other Western country was opposed to the effort to have mass murder declared a fundamental right: this was stopped by a coalition of the Vatican, the Islamic bloc, and some Latin American countries. Was the Vatican wrong to ally with the Islamic countries against mass murder? Was the Vatican wrong to praise those countries for their assistance?
You still didn't answer. In public schools, would it be voluntary or mandatory?
And if mandatory, whose prayer?
Just like (as Pat said) segregation was done without problems until those people got all uppity about it....
Pat reflecting on the good old days of his childhood.
Same way as it was done before Madeline Murray O’Hare staged her Communist putsch. Anyway, do you think that mandatory worship of sexual deviations is better (Celebration of Diversity)?
Mandatory prayer in schools is bad. I don't want my future Jewish kids being forced to pray to Mary Jesus. Just as you wouldn't want your kids forced to pray to Allah.
If they want to pray on their own, fine. Then the Jewish kids can recite their own proper prayers, the Hindus can say whatever they need to, and the Christians can all recite whatever they want to.
I know there are many Buchananites who would love to watch all the Jewish kids, Hindu kids, Buddhist kids, etc be forced to say a rosary, but it ain't gonna happen.
This is the fundamental problem with a public school system--forcing everyone into the same mold.
If education were privatized, as it should be, then you could send your children to a Jewish or secular school, where your own family's values would be reflected and re-inforced, and A. Pole could send his to a traditional Christian school, etc.
What we have right now is the worst of all worlds: a school system where only "values" celebrated are sexual libertinism, anti-Americanism, racial and class consciousness, and materialism.
I answered: "same way as was done before". Before the ban children were not forced to pray "to Mary Jesus". One can have simple prayer addressed to the Creator which is accpetable to Christians, Jews and Muslims. Those who wish could remain silent or to be exempt altogether.
About "dancing around it" - do you think that present worship of sexual deviations (Celebration of Diversity) is better than a prayer to God?
No, I don't think kids should be learning about homosexuality in school at all, whether it's "it's ok" or "they are going to burn in hell". It's not a schools place to either push moral or religious beliefs. They are only supposed to be pushing academics.
Exactly. And children educated in such a way, go abroad and demonstrate the new "American" values to the world. I would rather have Lyndie England to know how to pray than to do other unmentionable things.
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