[Tolik]

James Lewis:

...Politically Correct history is nonsense, as ordinary people have known for a long time. But it is important to set the record straight.  Understanding the human proclivity to violence places American history ... in a more accurate context. ...

...Acknowledging human violence is not the same as excusing it. Just the opposite --- precisely because we have the capacity to destroy, we must be taught to act morally. That is the basic view of Western Civilization going back to the Code of Hammurabi. Civilized armed forces like the United States insist on high levels of restraint in their warfighters, even in the face of direct personal danger. But the civilized world is constantly faced with aggressive enemies willing to kill and die for some bizarre cause, from the heavenly glory of the Emperor to some Mullah's weird obsession with hanging sixteen year old girls who fall in love. Not to mention yet another Marxist scam to create a perfectly egalitarian paradise on earth, as is underway in Venezuela today.

Weird, aggressive regimes are hardly unusual in history. Germany and Japan were merciless, power hungry nations seven decades ago. Their soldiers were ordered to suppress any feelings of sympathy while killing innocent civilians. Those nations engaged in unprovoked genocides and endless cruelties, just as jihadis do today. It is vital to understand that, and to grasp that the democratic Anglo-American response was truly defensive, as it is today. We represent civilization against primitive savagery. Pacifists only talk about being civilized; nations that defend against primitive savages actually do something about it. That makes all the difference.

One of the oddities of the Left is its constant sabotage of defensive warfare, even when the facts are as plain as the assault on the Twin Towers on 9/11 ...

...Telling the truth about human nature, about the need for rational defense, the crying need for courage and honesty in the face of lies and propaganda, is therefore very, very important. In this book, a famously leftist New York Times staffer is telling it like it is. For Nicholas Wade, the Noble Savage of socialist fantasy has been exposed as a delusion.

It is a sufficiently rare event to celebrate.

Nailed It!

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention. You can see the list of articles I pinged to lately  on  my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about). Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.  

[Tanniker Smith]

I have to recommend Orson Scott Card's "Pastwatch" at this point, if only for the observation within that human slavery, while distasteful, was actually better than what it replaced: human sacrifice. Somewhere, sometime along the way in history, someone figured out that it was a waste to kill all the prisoners and captives of war with other tribes and states. They could be useful if alive.

It's interesting to note that the Americas had no slavery before the Europeans and Africans came over. Before that, they just killed everyone.

[NonValueAdded]

"Let's hope [Germany] get[s] over it - because if they don't, they could be setting the stage for yet another imperial adventure."

Well, if they do have another adventure, I say they can have France this time. But then they have to stop. And hands off Poland, or else.

[Michael.SF.]

From the headlline, the first thing I thought of was that this guy had gone off the air (not that that would be a bad thing):

[Mr. Jeeves]

...the Gandhi-esque Hindus, Buddhists and Sufis...

Such people did exist - the Left's mistake is in assuming that because the Book in question advocates a peaceful philosophy, all people who lived under its laws were paragons of pacifism. Most humans aren't very spiritual and thus let their egos and minds drive their decision-making, so it's no shock to see nominal Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, or even Christians butchering each other, no matter what their Books call for.

[RebelBanker]

Excellent article as well as recommending an excellent book. Wade's Before the Dawn represents a giant leap forward in understanding prehistoric Man. It shows what can be learned when different scientific disciplines talk to one another, in this case anthropology and genetics. Of course the YECers dismiss it out of hand, but the genetic part of the synthesis supports significant portions of the Old Testament in terms of bloodlines.

[gonzo]

"... Pacifists only talk about being civilized; nations that defend against primitive savages actually do something about it. That makes all the difference.
One of the oddities of the Left is its constant sabotage of defensive warfare, even when the facts are as plain as the assault on the Twin Towers on 9/11. Today Europe is going through yet another revisionist version of its own bloody history, trying to deny the undeniable facts of the 20th century. Big German media like Stern and Der Spiegel loudly equate the American overthrow of Saddam Hussein with the war against Hitler. That version of history involves not just one but two Big Lies -- One, that Saddam was an innocent victim of American aggression; and Two, that Hitler was, too. It's too weird for words..."

Sorta sums-up my thoughts about the 'creatures' in Washington this past weekend. And the words of 'Hanoi-Jane', now 'Jihad-Jane', should be quoted posthumously, if at all. ........... FRegards

[driftless2]

The old canard about strictly Europeans being responsible for murder and pillage is easily dismissed by studying the Mongols and (gasp) the Muslims (Arabs, Turks) who invaded Europe repeatedly as recently as three hundred years ago. In the Americas Indian tribes like the Aztecs were busy slaughtering (and eating) their neighbors by the hundreds of thousands.

The myth about Europeans inventing mass carnage was established by self-loathing European and American professors who romanticized the non-European lives. The non-Euros were pure, wonderful people who were mercilessly conquered and slaughtered by the evil Europeans. The fact that all the peoples of the world have been guilty of conquest and mass murder was ignored by the academia nuts.

[x_plus_one]

Politically Correct history is nonsense, as ordinary people have known for a long time.

"Ordinary people" and their common sentiments aren't welcome in academia.

[Basheva]

Our close cousins, the chimps, are also murderous. Goodall documented this. They had a war which last several years.

American Indians were not adverse to keeping slaves - wasn't Sacachawea one?

As I also recall, the stone age tribe that was discovered fairly recently (I think it was near Borneo) made constant war with another stone age tribe across the river.

Perhaps it is part of the plan of natural selection.

As for Michael Savage...I do agree with some of his stands such as illegal immigration, but his statements are all too often simply too inaccurate for me. One instance was during the aftermath of Katrina, he said that Pres. Bush should be impeached for not ordering in the Louisiana, MIssissippi and other states' Nat'l Guard.

Well, first of all the president of the United States is not in charge of the national guard of a state - the governor is. He would have to formally nationalize it as Eisenhower did in Little Rock. From what I remember - the president can only do this in the case of an insurrection. Eisenhower could make that case since the State of Arkansas was not obeying a Supreme Court Order - with the governor himself (Faubus?) blocking the doorway of Little Rock High School.

I also get hearily tired of Savage's constant bragging. Rush does it with humor - Savage does it seriously.

But that's beside the point of this thread. Sorry.

I think it is fair to say that we have made some strides in our abilities to live in large groups in a mostly civil manner. We have institutionalized our response to "evil doers" whether they be local (street corner thugs) or outside the border (from abroad).

What we haven't been able to do is agree on the response.

[Popocatapetl]

War is one thing, cannibalism is another.

I have read one of the better critiques of cannibalism, which made a bold statement: cannibalism is almost never proven, it is always assumed.

For example, anthropologists would find a tribe and ask if they were cannibals. They would say no, we aren't, but the next tribe over are cannibals. So they would go to the next tribe over and get much the same reply: we aren't, but that tribe you were just talking to are.

So they would note down that both tribes are cannibals.

When cannibalism does happen, it is usually under three circumstances, either respectful cannibalism of cremated remains cooked to ash; or isolated instances of a warrior after a pitched battle, tearing out some enemy flesh, like their heart, to eat, and only once. It is a heat of battle thing and individual act, not a cultural tradition.

The third circumstance is starvation/deprivation. In a society that strongly lacks protein, and also has periodic cycles of starvation, there is some incidence of last resort cannibalism. But only as a last resort.

Ironically, a single Jeffrey Dahmer probably makes up for many years of cannibalism as it existed in primitive societies.

Finally, as far as war goes, "there is war and then there is war." For example, I suspect that a lot of "primitive" war was conducted much like tribal war in old Africa.

The men of two tribes face off against each other, loudly shouting and screaming, and throwing things. Then a few from each side charge the other, have a brief contact, and fall back. Usually there are some injuries, and every now and then a fatality. But nothing too dramatic.

What you *don't* see is like with chimpanzees, where one troop will suddenly become hunter-cannibals, and migrate to find other troops of chimpanzees, that they will as a group, raid, kill and eat on the spot.

[Zionist Conspirator]

The "scientific" enlightenment's exaltation of the "noble savage" (and all his superstitions) while railing against the Bible is a truly fascinating phenomenon.

[LonePalm]

One reason that the Anglo-American countries don't like war so much is because we are so very, very good at it.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Jamais reculez á tyrannie un pouce!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! Never give an inch to tyranny!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[jordan8]

That is the basic view of Western Civilization going back to the Code of Hammurabi

The code of Hammurabi may have had some vague influence on Western civilization but it can hardly be called a part of that civilization.

[CDHart]

Interesting article.

Carolyn

[Tribune7]

bump

[twigs]

I call it original sin.

[Billthedrill]

Politically Correct history is nonsense, as ordinary people have known for a long time.

The professionals have known it as well. Some of the currents in the academic history community in particular seem to me representative of the battle in academia in general. One of my favorites, Gertrude Himmelfarb, wrote of this in The New History And The Old, which I just learned is being published in a revised edition.

The single most corrupting influence in all intellectual disciplines is a sense of what should be true as opposed to what the bare facts state. It is, after all, the business of academics to work overall theories around such facts but a fondness for a particular theory tends to make it work the other way. The academics associated with the sciences know to avoid this because sooner or later an inconvenient but undeniable fact brings the whole house of cards down. "But it does move."

Where, however, the underlying discipline has been altered to declare facts malleable, entirely subjective, and important only insofar as they advance a particular "narrative," then we have a serious challenge to the credibility of the subject field in any minds other than true-believing insiders. Postmodernism in the American academy is one example of this - an intellectual curiosity that has assumed cult status and produced a mountain of unusable intellectual rubbish.

And it does matter. Where such disciplines exist in a vacuum they are academic curiosities - at some point there must have been a last chair of Alchemy somewhere. But where they pretend to be normative and attempt to drive social policy they may prove very harmful indeed. To a great extent the institutional multiculturalism that is gripping certain governments in Europe at the moment (and is attempting to do so in America as well) is an offshoot of an academic cult of wishful thinking. It is not in the least harmless as it is laying its host societies open to prostration before a determined cultural enemy.

Government will be influenced by academia and I thank God for it. But we cannot be so afraid of a chorus of derision that we are unable to tell its wilder inhabitants "No, we don't want to live like that." There are worse things than being called stupid.

[Old Professer]

He's just an old meanie; and he doesn't want peace.

[bert]

I've tried to tell you lots of times. War is nnatural selection in action.