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."
I'm sure next they'll say one can easily infer that all who refuse to follow their particular brand of Christinity should be relegated to 2nd class status, even though the Constitution doesn't say that. It's like that Western Hemisphere thing they pointed out.
"If not us, then who? We are the best ones to liberate Iraq."
great post. :)
Right, they live like Jesus whose kingdom was not of this world. He did not build an army to conquer for land. He chose 12 men, including a traitor, to teach truth to all nations.
Defending our nation is and our troops are doing just that.
If you believe that, you should be applauding Pat Buchanan, for nailing Richard Perle on a really stupid effort to make that job much, much harder. Can anyone imagine anything more offensive to any self-respecting people on the face of the earth, than for some foreign crack-pot to try to stir up division between their men and women?
Pat has made his point, here, and all the efforts to distract attention from the real point will not convince anyone who is not here simply because they do not like Pat. In order not to distract attention from the real point, or fan antagonisms among friends, I have refrained from responding to scores of tangental arguments, from about a dozen Buchanan detractors. I only wish that you all would get over parroting old smears, and actually address the real issues.
William Flax
Jesus was a Jew. You know....circumcision, keeping the Sabbath, kashrut.....Not the easy way out.
I'll never forget one interview I read with pat. The author prefixed with describing how when he was greated at the front door the first thing he saw was a life sized bust of buchanan. He thought it a little odd.
pat and his very inflated ego are the issue...
From your keyboard to God's ear--but it won't happen in THIS lifetime.
LOL! Yes, pointing out pat's problems will continue through his lifetime. pat should simply quietly slip away and live off his campaign money.
Oh, poor you.
All you said was that "segregation is no big deal."
Let's try changing a few things in your sentence and see what conclusions we would draw about anyone else:
Hillary Clinton on the Constitution, "That piece of paper is no big deal."
Ted Kennedy, "The Second Amendment is no big deal."
John Kerry, "Fifty cent gas tax is no big deal."
Pat Buchanan, "The Holocaust was no big deal."
John Ashcroft on the Patriot Act, "Civil rights are no big deal."
Trent Lott, "Slavery was no big deal."
If any of those people had said those things as you did, they would deserve every bit of grief they received.
So don't ask us to feel sorry for you. And don't accuse us of racism by saying, "But everybody else does it."
As far as I am concerned, today's America is a net improvement over the older days. I'll gladly deal with Howard Stern's radio show, Britney french-kissing Madonna, and some of the other problems we have today as opposed to the stuff America tolerated in the past - like the KKK, segregation/Jim Crow, and mob violence based on religious intolerance.
377 hchutch
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Agree totally. These homegrown Taliban are as distasteful as the real ones. Moreso because they apparently do not see any connection between their relative forms of opression.
Conservatives are forever digging themselves out from under the slime of these jerks.
389 posted on 05/19/2004 12:44:59 PM PDT by Long Cut
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Well put gentlemen..
For the response I made to the Buchanan smearers in 1999, see Fair Play For Pat Buchanan. For a specific address to the issues in Iraq, however, see Iraq. For a suggestion as to how the War On Terror may be successfully concluded, see War 2001!.
Thanks, intelligent posting has ceased.
Logic...buchanan? Those two words don't go together well at all. As for pat's ideas on the War on Terror...those are the greatest laugh of all. Almost as funny as him leaving up his presidental campaign website.
Yes, it ceased as soon as it started quoting buchanan.
He can live very well off his excellent bestselling books like A Republic, Not an Empire or The Death of the West
Of course, proving that old adage is true, you sure can fool some people all the time.
Many of us detest Pat Buchanan because, he made a name for himself as a former spokesman for conservative values but turned and became an angry populist who has a problem with Jews and their "amen corner." [evangelical Christians]
I guess that leaves out Catholic Pat Buchanan.
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