Posted on 12/19/2002 9:58:10 AM PST by dennisw
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:39:37 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The "Religion of peace" strikes again....
Actually, it isn't much of a transformation. It is for the most part the left that has left her, not the reverse. It is the rest of the left that is stark raving mad on the subject of Islamic facists.
You have to jump through amazingly convoluted intellectual hoops to find it "liberal" to kiss Saddam Hussein's ass, to apologize for murderous religious fanatics, etc. She just doesn't. She has the class snobby, secularist opinions of a well read New York intellectual - of about a generation ago, perhaps, and without sucking up to communism, or anti-Americanism, or more recent multiculturalist claptrap. That is all.
As many a conservative has pointed out, we finally give leftists a war against obscurantist theocratic murderers, and they are against it because to favor it would put them on the same side as America. She just doesn't react that way, not being viscerally anti-American. She hates obscurantist theocratic murderers for all the reasons self-proclaimed liberals ought to hate them, but in practice do not.
Her reaction is certainly principled and praiseworthy, but it says more about others for failing to react the same way, than about anything particular to her, let alone any ideological change. The ideological change is on the commie left. They switch opinions on any subject the moment the US takes a side, to be against it, wherever it is.
What the Fallaci phenomenon shows is merely that such knee jerk anti-Americanism has spread from the outright communists, who have always been that way, to practically the entire modern left. Who no longer have -any- principles besides anti-Americanism.
She points out that in the days of facist Italy when blackshirts were roaming the streets, ready to beat anyone who dared to raise a voice against them, there was still backbiting and ridicule hurled at them. People were brave enough to stand up to them, when they had the whole government and ruthless force to face down. But now, when "the poor little dears" (Muslims) challenge anyone or anything, everyone gets out of their way, some scared of them directly, some even more scared of being called a racist for standing up to them.
To her that is an incomprehensible intellectual and civilizational suicide, a fundamental breakdown of elementary courage. That and that alone drives her to despair - of Europe and of Italy in particular, that is, not of the US. She does not despair for the US, although she does think even our reaction is far weaker than it ought to be. She is right about that. Everything is half-assed because of the level of unthinking opposition put up by the self-hating morons of the left.
Neither can I. Mainstream Islam is silent. When polled by Pew, 75% of Arabs opposed the War on Terror.
Perhaps there is a moderate "mainstream," but it may well be a minority. The majority's silence on terrorism and opposition to America suggest support for Islamofascism.
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