Buchanan Asks, "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."

And as for the "neocons" ruling the Earth, IMHO no one will ever "rule the earth"...they might rule what is "left" of the earth, but human nature will not allow any one person, nationality, or government to rule the earth...for long.

You got me laughing over the idea of those referred to as "neocons," in this thread, ruling the earth. The last 87 years produced two conspiratorial groups that gave that idea a good try, to be sure: The Communists and the Nazis. The former were both more intelligent and more patient than the neocons. The latter were equally impatient, but also far more intelligent than the neocons. Both the Communists and the Nazis failed because they did not really understand the profound complexity of the human experience--did not realize quite what they were biting off. They understood themselves and their strategies, but were totally unable to gauge the responses of peoples operating outside their ken.

The neocons would not have a good clue as to what I am even discussing. David Frum, the sophomorish Canadian expatriate by way of Yale, epitomizes what those fellow have to offer. Pat Buchanan absolutely annihilated Frum's intellectual pretensions in an earlier essay.

I am not attacking your response--not in the least. It is just that it struck me as really funny--the idea of the likes of Frum, Kristol or Fred Barnes, etc., trying to succeed where Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin & Hitler, failed. One cannot suggest that would be going from the sublime to the ridiculous, because the named failures were incredibly cruel tyrants. But you will get the idea. I really am not sure that Frum, Krisol or Barnes have enough between the ears to do so.

Thanks for the chuckle! I was starting to get angry over the mindless anti-Buchanan "trash talk," and you snapped me back into a sense of proportion.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

Nazism and Communism both treat women like slaves.

What utter nonsense! They treated their entire populations like slaves, if you want to define slavery as being unable to make personal decisions for yourself, that are in conflict with the plans of the collective. But Communism embraced radical feminism long before American Liberals did. The Communists started out in Russia with free love, no fault divorce, etc.. The women on road crews were not there as a deprivation--at least not under their theory--but as an abolition of sex roles--what Feminists advocate.

Also, you may be too young to remember. But one of the Nazis put on trial for war crimes because of her brutal treatment of concentration camp inmates under her command was the woman, Ilsa Koch. General Clay commuted her death sentence because she managed to get herself knocked-up while in our custody. I don't know if they ever determined whom the father was.

But all of this is beside the point. We did not fight the Communists and the Nazis to meddle in the relations between the sexes in their lands. We fought the Communists and Nazis because we were under attack and they threatened everything we hold dear--not there, but here.

William Flax

Roosevelt's "Navy Day Adress" October 27, 1941

Your government has in its possession another document made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a detailed plan, which, for obvious reasons, the Nazis did not wish and do not wish to publicize just yet, but which they are ready to impose-a little later-on a dominated world-if Hitler wins. It is a plan to abolish all existing religions-Protestant, Catholic, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.
In the place of the churches of our civilization, there is to be set up an International Nazi Church-a church which will be served by orators sent out by the Nazi Government. In the place of the Bible, the words of Mein Kampf will be imposed and enforced as Holy Writ. And in place of the cross of Christ will be put two symbols-the swastika and the naked sword.
A God of Blood and Iron will take the place of the God of Love and Mercy. - SOURCE

We are under attack by the naked sword of Islam too. Liberating women from slavery is not the reason we fight the islamic menace, it's just happy by-product.

Pointing out the difference in the way Muslims and Christians treat their women can only help our side. The natural instinct of the left is to side with the enemies of the US. They won't do this if they realize that all Americans have a common enemy in radical Islam. We must combat the idea emanating from the left that the Christian Right is the equivalent of the Taliban.

We are under attack from a fanatic internationalist group, who may draw their inspiration and motive from their religious beliefs, but are distinguished by several significant characteristics, that are extremely relevant:

1. They do not respect borders, governments or the ethnic integrity of peoples, even of their own faith.

2. They do not respect other peoples cultural differences.

3. They do not have the means to manufacture the armaments to equip armies, but must buy or steal materials produced by others.

You quote Roosevelt as to the Nazi onslaught against traditional religion, and suggest that as an argument for your own proposed onslaught against Islam? Why would you want to broaden the war to include the legitimate Islamic Governments--the original target of Bin Laden?

It sounds like you have an agenda not unlike that of which Roosevelt accused the Nazis. Why? You do not compromise your Christianity by limiting your war to the actual enemy--those actually attacking us. You do not help that war effort, by antagonizing a larger and larger segment of the population of the earth.

It is, of course, ridiculous to compare Bin Laden as an adversary to Hitler or Stalin. Those men had the means to produce--not buy or steal--to produce, and invent very advanced systems to be produced on a large scale. They had the capacity to do to us what neither Bin Laden nor those cheering him on, could ever hope to do. Do you understand the technological gap between us and this foe? Yes, they made an effective use of three of four hi-jacked planes. It was certainly a wake up call. But we are basically at war with an anarchist force. This is not Armageddonen, which was limited, I believe to peoples in the Near East and Asia Minor, anyway; and it certainly is not World War III.

William Flax [The War On Terror]

They do not respect borders, governments or the ethnic integrity of peoples, even of their own faith.

The only nation whose borders I am charged with protecting is my own. Any nation which threatens the US might as well kiss its borders goodbye.

"ethnic integrity of peoples"? This is another thing I am not concerned with. If certain "peoples" want to retain their "ethnic integrity," that's up to them.

They do not respect other peoples cultural differences.

I do not subscribe to the doctrine of multiculturalism, diversity and cultural relativism. I champion my own culture, and I insist that my own religion is the only true one.

Why would you want to broaden the war to include the legitimate Islamic Governments

I do not want to overthrow every Islamic nation on Earth, but I do not consider the Socialist government of Syria nor the Islamofascist government of Iran to be legitimate. They are our enemies and should be destroyed.

The consequences to the national security of the United States (which is what I, and the various other people you attack, are concerned with) whether he produces them himself, obtains them from others, or conjures up a genie to create them out of nothing. This is relevant only insofar as it affects the stategies to be used to choke off his potential supply.

If anything, making the point that al-Qaeda is dependent upon external support is to echo the original argument for the Second Gulf War. Having described al-Qaeda as only an arm of a greater enemy, you leave yourself with only the recourse of questioning the inferred fact situation behind the decision (i.e. was Iraq, in fact, a current or likely future source of such support?.

There are two points to be made here

One

Those that compare the alleged purism of Islamic morality are woefully misinformed. Islam gives divine license to pretty much every sin in the book - pedophilia, rape, murder, sodomy, theft & deceit.. etc. So writers who claim that On such issues, conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats. are way off the mark.

Two

There is a serious sickness in the American culture that was must address as Christians. We are teetering on the precipice of a post-Christian, amoral society similiar to decadent Western Europe, indeed it could be argued we have already fallen off that precipice.

Your response to me confuses a lot of different concepts. I do not subscribe to "Multi-culturalism," either. But that does not mean that I disrespect other cultures. Your hostility to the cultures of other races, faiths, and value systems invites endless conflict. It does not advance the interests of the United States in the slightest. We grew great, prosperous, and respected, being ourselves, but according others respect. Our present attitude of assuming that we know what is best for others--even in their own lands, amidst their own peoples--is simply serving to recruit more enemies.

Your rationalizations, turned around, are the same as Bin Laden's group use against us. It is interesting that Vattel, the great 18th Century authority on the Law of Nations, pointed out that the rationalization for the Spanish conquests and cultural repressions of established nations in Latin America, was basically the same as that which Islam used to justify its conquests across Asia. You may be Osama's soul brother, and just not realize it.

Having described al-Qaeda as only an arm of a greater enemy, you leave yourself with only the recourse of questioning the inferred fact situation behind the decision (i.e. was Iraq, in fact, a current or likely future source of such support?.

I did not describe al-Qaeda as only an arm of a greater enemy. Nor do I want those of you who seem to be seeking a religious war, to convert the real enemy into only an arm of a greater enemy. The present policy, which threatens the stability of the Near East--such as it is--by half-baked proposals, is helping that real enemy recruit.

If you are really concerned with our National Security, and not just out to wage war on Islam, you are proceeding in the worst possible way to secure it. The arrogance the Government is displaying is offending much of the earth--not just the Islamic part.

Secondly, I have not criticized the Bush decision to invade Iraq. My essay on the present fallacies, Iraq, makes it clear that I believe that the President is entitled to the benefit of the doubt on that.

William Flax

Your pretense of failing to understand the obvious fact that a person's flaws and prejudices are more likely to be raised by his critics than by his allies is not convincing. Try arguing honestly, or at least try a better grade of obfuscation.

I am hardly the one obfuscating. When you hurl ridiculous unfounded accusations at Buchanan, but ignore his actual points under discussion, you are obviously engaging in obfuscation. I will admit not a very good grade of obfuscation, but obfuscation, nonetheless.

In order not to facilitate your obfuscation, I will remind you that the actual subject was the ridiculous proposals by certain phoney Conservatives to try to use the United States to foist the Feminist Agenda on the Near East. And Pat made the point in respect thereto, that considering the moral havoc that Agenda has already worked in the United States, we do not have very good credentials to be telling anyone else how to live.

Three Cheers for Pat. There is no question, to any impartial observer, surfing by, who had the better argument, Pat or those smearing him.

William Flax

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