Freedom Kills

National Review ^ | 12/12/01 | Jonah Goldberg

[Mahone]

The logical conclusion to the "no absolutes" way of seeing the world, is always chaos and anarchy.

[RLK]

But pluralism is not, to borrow a phrase, a suicide pact.

--------------

A good critique.

I suspect Walker's siezing upon radical Mohammedism was an attempt to find a somewhat anger-derived alternative to the structureless lunacy his liberated parents existed in. Unfortunately, it was the wrong alternative. He lacked guidance from the mindlessly pluralistic culture or any source to find a rational alternative.

[The_Expatriate]

The libertarians think all ideologies — so long as there's no governmental component — are equal.

In the case of Goldberg vs. The Straw Man, I find you, Mr. Goldberg, guilty of fraudulent assertions and ineffectual assault and do hereby sentence you to an obscure career at a fading magazine where polite society will be spared your ill-conceived attempts to mimic logical argument. Bailiff!

[x]

It's hard to pigeon-hole religious fanatics like Walker, especially if the form of religion they take up is one hostile to the civilization they were born into. The desires to classify Walker as "right-wing" or "left-wing" tell us more about those who want to pigeon-hole than about anything else.

It was clear from the first that Walker was a product of California permissiveness, as to where one would place him on the political spectrum himself -- why bother? What does it add in understanding or discriptive power if we put him in this or that niche? Labeling Walker left or right puts him further away from one's own camp in one's own mind, but doesn't do much more than that. What does calling McVeigh left or right do to explain him? Calling Manson left or right simply skirts the issue of his evil. I suppose it's how we make sense of the world, but it's a lot simpler than the world is.

Even the Walker-Spann contrast doesn't really explain much. If Spann had been an Ivy Leaguer from California and Walker had been a military deserter from Alabama it would be spun in a different way. Spin is pretty meaningless in the end because the personal elements may be as important as the socially determined ones.

For the rest of this, Jonah's right about Nick Gillespie, who used to publish anti-Catholic rants on suck.com (a satirical, rather than a porn site). Gillespie is a pretty loathsome character. But Jonah's gets rambling, unfocused, hard to follow and over his head. He sensibly condemns moral relativism and cultural libertarianism. But any sane and responsible person would. Our country has a tendency towards "cultural libertarianism" that's been growing over recent decades.

Without great misfortunes or an external enemy, it doesn't look like our society can overcome that inclination for any length of time. I can't help thinking of Jonah and NR as Nixonians in such questions: they perch themselves one step to the right of their opponents and pick up conservative support, just as their opponents nest one step to the left and pick up the left constituency, without either clique going further and proposing real changes or real commitments. Maybe I'm wrong or maybe we're all the same way, but it looks like product positioning more than anything else. Anyway, it would be interesting to hear how libertarians respond.

[The_Expatriate]

Goldberg alert! Goldberg alert!

Know any other "cultural terrorists" that might need a good laugh?

[Pistias]

God isn't necessarily the issue here. But the principle is the same. Humans, especially children, very much want to believe in things. If we don't bother to teach — or impose — certain Western values on our own people, they will embrace values that are neither open nor tolerant

Yeah, who cares if they embrace "values" that are true, just so long as they're tolerant...seems to me like this guy agrees with the cultural relativists more than he thinks.

[Mortimer Snavely]

Walker would have thrived in Japan had he gotten into aikido as a kid. He may well have turned into another Steven Seagal. Japan's full of Western kids like him, just out of college, interested in "Zen Boodism" and shinto, of all things. All they need is someone to tell them what to think, do, say, and feel for the rest of their lives and they'll do just fine.

[ravinson]

It's hip and cool to say, "Be whatever you want." But — as in the case of the Boy Scout with the pocketknife — it's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.

I find it quite amusing that a person who supports a political party whose leaders enthusiatically enlisted the Taliban as mercenaries in their phony War on Drugs now blames libertarians for the fact that the son of liberals joined the "drug-free Afghanistan" campaign.

[Dat]

Care to elaborate?

[pattycake]

This is a HAHAHAHAHAHA article, if that

[Dat]

Well, I'm convinced.

[ravinson]

The logical conclusion to the "no absolutes" way of seeing the world, is always chaos and anarchy.

I agree; the Bush Administration was absolutely wrong when they enlisted the Taliban as mercenaries in their phony War on Drugs. But I wonder where you, Goldberg, and the rest of the Johnny come lately anti-terrorists were when this report was issued seven short months ago:

 May 22, 2001 

   by ROBERT SCHEER  

   Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban

   Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-US terrorists, destroy every vestige of
   civilization in your homeland, and the Bush Administration will embrace you. All that
   matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this
   nation still takes seriously. 

   That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of
   Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today.
   The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other
   recent aid, makes the United States the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that
   "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the
   Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this
   administration's attention. 

   Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the
   leading anti-American terror operation from his base
   in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he
   launched two bloody attacks on American
   embassies in Africa in 1998. 

   Sadly, the Bush Administration is cozying up to the
   Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at
   US insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan
   because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin
   Laden. 

   The war on drugs has become our own fanatics'
   obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How
   else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has
   subjected the female half of the Afghan population to
   a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of
   women? 

   At no point in modern history have women and girls been more systematically abused than
   in Afghanistan where, in the name of madness masquerading as Islam, the government in
   Kabul obliterates their fundamental human rights. Women may not appear in public without
   being covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the burkha , and they
   may not leave the house without being accompanied by a male family member. They've not
   been permitted to attend school or be treated by male doctors, yet women have been
   banned from practicing medicine or any profession for that matter. 

   The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an extreme religious theocracy
   that prescribes strict rules governing all behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may
   be grown. It is this last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush White House. 

   The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at the breaking point,
   and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and cash from the Bush Administration, they
   have been willing to appear to reverse themselves on the growing of opium. That a
   totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising. But it is
   grotesque for a US official, James P. Callahan, director of the State Department's Asian
   anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban's special methods in the language of
   representative democracy: "The Taliban used a system of consensus-building," Callahan
   said after a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very
   religious terms." 

   Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't obey the theocratic edict would be
   sent to prison. 

   In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on the spot by religious
   police and others are stoned to death, it's understandable that the government's "religious"
   argument might be compelling. Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the
   farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That's because the Afghan
   economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the Taliban, making the attraction
   of opium as a previously tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming. 

   For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the United States is willing to pour far
   larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy. 

   As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven Casteel admitted, "The bad side of
   the ban is that it's bringing their country--or certain regions of their country--to
   economic ruin." Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other
   crops such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that
   no longer exists in that devastated country. There's little doubt that the Taliban will turn
   once again to the easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power. 

   The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war zealots, but in
   the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our long sad history of signing up dictators
   in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic
   obsession. 

[ouroboros]

bump

[SusanUSA]

"The Taliban used a system of consensus-building,"

Yes, I guess if the opposition is killed off, then a consensus of sorts would be built.

Thanks ravinson, I haven't seen that article before.
Thanks for the ping, o.

[Fiddlstix]

Thanks for the Ping

[Tauzero]

What a load of shiite. Expat has the right of it.

[Tauzero]

Actually, I'm surprised Jonah would give this article a title so honestly reflecting his actual belief.

[annalex]

I agree at least this far: Indeed there are cultural libertarians and, simply, libertarians. The former would embrace anything non-conformist without further analysis. The latter would remember that in a world of free individuals in absence of government coercion there still is right and wrong.

[Mahone]

Oh yea, I'm sure we could have gone in and taken out the Taliban without Osama as a good reason. The world, especially the Arab world and their sympathetic liberal European/Asian/and the rest of the world would have been happy to see us do that one.

[mafree]

Bump- good links in the article.