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."
Myopic? Are you speaking to yourself again? Don't worry, a lot of buchanan's bunker buddies do that these days.
You do recall, nothing you just cited holds the force of law in this country, don't you? The Constitution, however, DOES, your fantasies notwithstanding.
Pat does not, has not, would not endorse our enemies.
It may be that his writing may be a little above your head.
You're welcome to come back when you're a little more intellectually mature.
Was that the sound of a mind slamming shut?
Wrong direction there Kimi-Sabe. If pat wanted his words put to a more appropriate use he would start printing his books on two-ply...it makes it a lot easier.
I think most of us who took the time to learn anything more about our great nation than just its fine Constitution put great stock in its traditions.
With your statement above, you sound for all the world like the redneck fundamentalists on here that won't "egcep anythin" that ain't in the good book.
Hope I didn't hit a nerve there.
What debacle?
It's only a debacle to those shilling for the left.
You know, you have yet to post anything of any substance whatsoever, why haven't you?
Because you lack the ability to do so?
Buchanan should not compare the Christian culture war to the Islamic one. Muslim women really are oppressed. Christians don't treat women that way.
"Why not stand with Islam...are they wrong?" - from the article.
I guess you read in the things you want, like you do with the Constitution.
Which of those traditions has the force of law? On the same level as the Bill Of Rights?
"With your statement above, you sound for all the world like the redneck fundamentalists on here that won't "egcep anythin" that ain't in the good book."
ROFLMAO! That's as far from me as Pat is from relevance.
The FACT remains, as much as you ignore it, that even in 1789, with the country nearly 100% Christian, the Founders STILL did not write the Constitution to provide for a "Christian Nation", and in fact procribed that very thing in that document. If even THEN, they didn't think it a good idea (a wise choice, as several thousand years of the abuses of Liberty by theocracies showed), how in the WORLD can you relate it to today?
I read some of the comments from the patsies and I just can't help getting a mental image of some toothless old men somewhere in South America remembering the good ol' days of the Third Reich...fanatics to the end.
I don't see him making any "point" whatsoever. All I see is Pat venting.
Upon consideration, I think I know what really bothers Pat. The current war against Wahabiwackjobism is going to have the side effect of making theocratic politics unacceptable in polite society, just as the war against Naziism has the side effect of making genteel anti-Semitism unacceptable in polite society. Pat is aware of this on some level, and just as unhappy about the former as he was about the latter.
If you go back through this thread--or go back through almost any thread based upon a Pat Buchanan article--you will find that almost all the responses attempting to create a "Jewish" issue, or a "Nazi" issue, originate with those who are opposing Buchanan's views. Practically none of that silly hate spewing material originates with those supporting Pat's position. On the other hand some of those spewing the hatred against Pat, show signs of almost pathological hatred or paranoia.
I am sure that some of these Buchanan haters are sincere. They have been sold a "bill of goods," and are simply responding like Pavolovian subjects. I suspect, however, that some are deliberately trying to stir up the very thing they claim to be fighting--provocateurs, seeking anything but amicable relations between different religious groups, etc..
Some of us who have spent our lives fighting for traditional American values are getting very sick of this ugliness for the sake of ugliness. Enough is really more than enough.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
The very last thing any Conservative, Buchanan included, should advocate is a Communist of Nazi style monolithic world culture. The point he is making is that we should not be backing the wackos whom he quotes, advocating the Feminist agenda for the near east; that they represent the very thing which Christian, Jewish and non-affiliated American Conservatives have been fighting in our own culture war--i.e., that American Feminism is a common enemy.
Rational people do not insist upon 100% agreement, before they are able to recognize common grounds with other people. The alliance that Pat suggests--and it is really rhetorical tongue in cheek for his real point which is that the Perle approach is in my parlance, not Pat's kindlier phrases, pure crack-pot--is on an ad hoc basis; that is for the purpose of defeating the Feminist assault on reason and family values, and not for any internationalist agenda, whatsoever.
Indeed, it is the essence of the traditional American foreign policy, that we only form alliances on an ad hoc basis; that we retain--permanently--a freedom from entangling alliances.
William Flax
Well, duh. Naturally, the Patsies aren't the ones who introduce Pat's endorsement of Holocaust-denier pseudoscience, just as Clintonistas aren't the ones who introduce the parsing of the reflexive verb.
The Constitution set up the Federal Government--the Government of a Federation of Sovereign States--several of which still had Established State Churches at the time. Just as on other issues, the Constitution did not intrude on the really quite distinct State political, social and religious cultures, it certainly did not here. There was no intention to establish a Theocracy in Washington, and on that you are entirely correct.
There was not, however, any hostility to such a concept in the States, and that is why the First Amendment specifically forbids the Federal Government from passing any law that has any effect on the State religious institutions. Read it, with an understanding of English, not the ACLU distortion.
But the real point is this. The Founding Fathers did not believe that you legislate morality. They had tried that in the early days of New England, but even in Liberal New England, they had pretty well advanced beyond that idea. They legislated against things which might corrupt people's morals but that is a concept for dealing with perceived danger, not trying to legislate character. George Washington spoke for most, when he said that our whole system, our societies themselves, were based upon private morals. Morals are not a group thing. The benefit of religious teaching reaches--or fails to reach--individuals. Everything about American society, political, social, economic, spiritual, was based upon personal responsibility, personal accountability.
Pointing out that the Founding Fathers did not seek to create a Theocracy, says nothing at all about their personal value systems.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Just wanted to put that up so we know what we're talking about.
I read it, as I'm sure you do, that the United States government, and by extension the states since the 14th Amendment, cannot establish a "state" religion, nor can they prohibit the people to practice religion as they see fit. No ACLU involved.
"Pointing out that the Founding Fathers did not seek to create a Theocracy, says nothing at all about their personal value systems."
We agree. I made no comment about their personal values; which are, to say the least, to determine now, as it is near impossible to know what is in a man's heart. We do have what they DID, though, and that is above.
Quite a bit of gibberish, which intones pretty much as an inside joke among the anti-Buchanan element. That gibberish conveniently communicates nothing to those of us who have not accepted your premises. Could you please explain, if you can, what any of that mixed collection of English and newspeak has to do with the actual subject? What does it say as to whether or not Pat is on the mark in attacking the efforts by several named advocates for our sticking our noses in other people's cultures? How does any of it justify our meddling, in order to impose a Feminist agenda, that most Conservatives reject in our own culture, on other peoples?
And if you care to translate that gibberish into English that tells us just what you are accusing Pat Buchanan of, we just might get you some answers as to whether you have made any point against Pat on some other subject, whether germane to this particular thread or not.
Academic "buzz words," if that was what you intended, might work with intimidated sophomorish coeds. They don't cut much ice in this Forum.
William Flax
My point was that that clause does not say what you and others have read into it. It does not say that Congress shall make no law establishing a religion. It goes well beyond that. It says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. That obviously would include an attempt to establish a religion. It also, however, clearly includes a prohibition on interfering with existing establishments of religion.
The Founding Fathers expected the States to openly promote religious values. Jefferson, the author of the Act that disestablished the State Church in Virginia, premised his Act on the Will of the Creator, in giving man Free Will. Read the Act. He also sought to promote religion at the University of Virginia, which he considered a prouder accomplishment than being President.
For how the ACLU has distorted Constitutional Law in this area, see Leftwing Word Games & Religious Freedom.
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