Ghost of a flea

I loved the Pope's apology for the "reaction" to his remarks. I guess he bears the cross of the Islamic dark ages on his shoulders. Interestingly, I have not seen much (although some) semantic parsing of his apology by Muslims. If anything, it goes to show the priority of "outrage" in the Muslim ethos over "analysis" and, ironically, how the former can be stunted by lack of the latter. I dare anyone to figure that sentence out.

I really enjoy the word "wanker" when spoken by a strapping English chap.

Excellent post, Flea. So ah where is the sign-up sheet for the Zionist Crusader Brigade?

I am surprised by my apparent sectarianism in this matter but, as far as I can tell (and you can tell me this is not far) of all the hills to fight and die for that I have witnessed in the last few years this is one of the least likely and least compelling. That the Enlightenment is either placed now at greater risk or should now muster around the banner - or both - due to the under the banner of a slightly right of moderate Pope who may well at the end of the day not be a herald for many of the rights we love. If a person yells fire in a theatre when there is none and creates panic, that person is at fault. If a person inflames without reason (and apparently without recourse to reason) who is at fault?

Maybe it is that nothing should inflame and that all should be in peace. I wholeheartedly agree. But after five years of constant speech about a war between cultures on top of an actual war which is in large part is characterizable as a war between cultures, approval of an "erudite" insulter can go some way to inflame. I suggest that we should only hit tone Churchillian when we are assured that we will be fighting on the beaches. Rest assured I will then buy the war bonds which really ought to be on sale now. But until then, until the war on terror can still be framed as a war only on terrorism and not on the culture of the billion or so the terrorists would like to recruit, it would be nice for leaders on our side to not go about effectively writing the terrorist's recruitment pamphlets but rather work to seek a means to bring about the end we want and not the war we don't.

Further, I wonder who is to play the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth if we all end up going that way? We might was well prepare and it is interesting to note that I have a pal who is a Batory and a direct decendent. He opened for the Bay City Rollers once, too. The nun in Kracow almost fainted when he showed her his ID.

By that standard, the tone Churchillian will never be invoked as the West will not become the underdog requiring fighting on the beaches for a very, very long time. We are the top dog and merely fighting to ensure that peoples in faraway lands also enjoy basic rights of humankind. Part of that fight is a war of ideas, and if some cannot stand to have their ideas publicly criticised or impugned then it is best to wait until they take up arms to defend them?

Refraining from verbal or cosmological offense until such time as we are rendered underdogs fighting an existential war does not seem to be the wisest course of action.

That is an excellent response and one that I really have not seen being made. But my point is that the ideas must be put as compellingly as possible and not in a clumsy fashion which can only be misunderstood. As such, it is not "their ideas" that are in error but the universal idea that faith and violence mix effectively or that the first is a call for the other. Framed that way, it was an excellent opportunity for Rome to assert again that it had learned this lesson the hard way and that the way of war and terror is the way of godless tyranny. That opportunity becomes an invitation to ecumenical discourse, the apparent goal of the speech. But that was the opportunity not taken.

Giving offense is always a matter of choice if one is aware of what one is saying and there are few situations where it is the best card to play, especially in discourse aimed at reconciliation.

"Giving offense is always a matter of choice if one is aware of what one is saying and there are few situations where it is the best card to play, especially in discourse aimed at reconciliation."

That is, of course, unless the people to whom the remarks are addressed have made a fine art of grievance and are powerfully motivated by repeated concessions, appeasements and genuflections to become ever more easily offended and ever more strident in the pursuit of the "other cheek". Giving offense is then simply inevitable.

I do not think we will find any common ground with potential radical Islamists as "the way of godless tyranny" is rather clearly marked by our own sacred texts, from which our civilisation gathers much of its ideas about secular universal human rights.

When you get right down to brass tacks, our penultimate spiritual example (Jesus Christ) was a carpenter-turned-prophet who sacrificed Himself enduring torture and death, and many of His early followers suffered likewise. Whereas their example (Muhammad) was a merchant-turned-prophet-turned military commander, who successfully used warfare to expand his spiritual and territorial purview.

Christians advocating spiritual dominance via warfare are denied any example from the Gospels' account of the life of Christ, whereas radical Muslims advocating the same will find adequate examples in the suras and hadith documenting the life of Muhammad.

The respective sacred texts reflect this disparity of example and are going to be a rather large stumbling block for anyone wishing to eradicate the radical Islamist strain from Islamic theology.

Substitute the words "L. Ron Hubbard" and "Scientology" where appropriate and then try to convince me about how I should (pretend to) respect this sort of nonsense let alone kowtow to some imagined responsibility on my part to avoid poking the idiots with a stick. Better yet, convince me we should resurrect blasphemy laws to make me criminally accountable for drawing cartoons associating Hubbard with Xenu. Best of all, cap off the debate by doing so after Scientology leaders make and carry out death-threats after the latest hallucinatory offense.

Alternatively, we might all agree the Enlightenment project - best expressed in the form of the Constitution of the United States of America - has absolved us of this medieval nonsense.

This may well be where my fault lies, then. I think that there is a commonality between Christians and Muslims in the fight against and godless tyranny that can be framed against the terrorists. They are bandits who have usurped and falsified the Islamic faith to fit their cause. It may require both sides, in order to defeat terrorism, to set aside the questions of liberal democracy as godless non-tyranny and theocracy as godly non-tyranny but these are side-shows in the fight against the death cult of islamofascism. If you do that, if you take the risk of asking rather than telling, saying I know rather than you should know, then giving offense cannot arise as your example is of your own past bad behaviour rather than the other's as a means to illustrate this point of commonality.

But if you have abandoned any hope of dialogue with any government in an Islamic culture (as OC seem to be saying) or if you can find no commonality in the foundations of the culture (though plenty exist even in the language of battle which the Bible is larded with) you have allowed the terrorists to define the discourse. And you seem to be arguing the same position that says Iraqis cannot culturally take on democracy. That cannot be right. That is only the best way to ensure their recruitment drives are successful and that we are stuck looking for a Churchill when all we have are a Bush and a Benny.

"And you seem to be arguing the same position that says Iraqis cannot culturally take on democracy."

Nothing I have ever written would suggest this. In fact, the only people who have consistently argued for Iraqi democracy are the much maligned neo-conservatives. Nobody else seemed much bothered when a madman was running the place.

That said, I have another post in the works which is much more pessimistic than anything I have previously published.

Also, I am going to start deleting comments that refer to "Benny". I could care less if you wish to undermine your own calls for respect in this way but I refuse to publish that sort of discourse whatever consistent disagreements I have with Mr. Ratzinger*, the Bishop of Rome or the Pope as he is variously known.

*Perfectly polite from a Quaker point of view; unless, of course, he has a doctorate. I would check for the latter but am otherwise engaged at the moment.

I think we cross-posted, Flea-man. I meant that "you" really for OC who wrote of the inability to speak with people. I did not see your comment when I wrote mine.

I am also concerned that you are so pessimistic. When the roof collapses on the brave experiment I want to ensure you are at least merry then.

That is your right. I would be more concerned with Flea-man. But I will call him by his name as that what all, as we all, he has to a protestant.

I will only add that pointing out the differences in the life-examples of Muhammad and Christ is far from arguing that Iraqis (or indeed any Muslims) cannot also embrace the Enlightenment project. That is a rather tremendous leap to make.

You might help minimize the leap by defining what you mean, then, by "potential radical Islamists" as well as the height of the obscacle to the Enlightenment project formed by the cornerstone of their culture. I am having a hard time seeing where the line is being drawn in the sand between what is possible or impossible by way of discourse - just as I have a hard time understanding how it is not a problem that we lack of persuasive skill on this side of that obstacle.

I believe all recourse to "culture", or indeed "religion"*, is a massive red-herring in this debate. Taiwan demonstrates "Chinese" democracy while the post-war years demonstrate "German" and "Japanese" versions of the same. The impediment to the Enlightenment in the so-called Muslim world is generations, often centuries, of autocracy, theocracy, dictatorship, corruption, etc. and so forth. Precisely the same difficulties presented in the European case, in other words.**

*Or "deen" in the case of Islam.
**With the obvious exception of England which has been a much more pleasant place to live than just about anywhere else for the last thousand years. This due to the early adoption of cucumber sandwiches by the Saxon race.

I am going to differ with you slightly, Flea. German and Japanese democracy only flowered into their fullest expression after the destruction of autocratic regimes and specific social engineering by the military governors. In Japan's case it meant dismantling a rather significant cornerstone of the Shinto religion, and in Germany's case it meant dismantling the neo-pagan edifice of the Nazi party.

I do not doubt similar steps may be required when confronting and dismantling the infrastructure of radical Islamism.

I quite agree radical changes are necessary. In fact, I think Germany and Japan present the best historical cases of what will be necessary and what we have yet to seriously begin to do.

Commenting in pieces here due to work underway... My point is that neither Wagner nor Shinto were necessary impediments to representative democracy no matter how much these two examples appeared to be foundational to fascist projects in Germany or Japan. Symbols may carry multiple and even contradictory meanings and associations. Runes, for example, have stood for Nazi racial supremacy and New Age universalism and these are different projects no matter some of the current Pope's writing on the subject.

At the risk of entirely clogging, I am still adrfit, though the analogizing is extremely helpful. I think, however, the call for Enlightment is really a call for a Reformation. Without disassembly of the structures of theocratic society, you will not get to representative democracy. Wagner and Shinto were only non-obstacles once the liberty to treat them as such because possible. You also face a far greater challange than you might imagine as Enlightenments can be humoured by those in power. Reformations require more than a few toppled hierarchies (whether internally sources or imposed) but are a necessary step to legislatures.

The "Islam needs a Reformation" argument is another oft repeated mistake, IMHO. Wahhabism represents a Puritan Reformation within Islam. A counter-Reformation in the form of Al Qaeda or whomever else will not do the trick. Once again, it is the continued universal project of the Enlightenment which is called for.

As for toppling governments and institutions, I have called for nothing else these last several years. Often in disagreement with people who preferred the status quo or who thought the mote in our own eye to be of infinitely greater interest. These people shall remain nameless.

I think I am coming closer to the centre of the maze...but one always does. It is a Whig Revolution you ask for. I think you dance upon a very thin thread (as only you may be able given your training) distinguishing between Reformation and Whiggery as it relates to communities with differing degrees of theocractic tribal rule. Enlightenment itself, of course, is not a political or religious movement but one of reason that extends into those realms after the groundwork was established by Luther and the great fire of London as much as anything else. Who, then, would play Al Hume-i and refuse to attend the Mosque of whatever town replicates Edinburgh what will all the sinners located there. That will take a very skilled mind and the establishment of pre-conditions that keep him from simply being shot. Who has such powers?

I think Jonah Goldberg offered a good analysis of this latest in a continuing series confrontations (N.B.: not an infinite series). The West, or at least influential segments of the West, want more than anything to be liked, particularly by groups that are hip and progressive (i.e., anti-western and undemocratic; fundie Christians, home schoolers, and so forth don’t have much leverage with enlightened types). If they don’t like us, then fundamentally it’s our fault. There are any number of problems with this view, but the point at issue here is that some people—including pretty much everybody in a position of power in western Europe—think that apologies create a spirit of reconciliation and harmony. In fact, the Islamofascists and others more sensibly regard them as a declaration of weakness and a refusal to stand up for much of anything. They’ll continue to demand apologies from Benedict, the Denmark cartoonists, and anyone else they can extort one from, because they feel each apology strengthens their position and weakens their enemies—that’s us, and no amount of apologies will ever make them like us. Although a little more oderint dum metuant in our foreign policy might at least make them respect us.

Late to the party, but, hey, someone mentioned Churchill.

Let's remember that 'Churchillian' should not just refer to the hanging-by-a-thread war leadership, but also refers to prescience and his dire public warnings of 'the gathering storm' as far back as November 1932.

WSC, writing in Daily Mail, Nov17'32: "Do not delude yourselves. Do not let His Majesty’s government believe—I am sure they do believe—that all that Germany is asking for is equal status. I believe the refined term now is equal qualitative status by indefinitely deferred stages. That is not what Germany is seeking. All these bands of sturdy Teutonic youths, marching through the streets and roads of Germany, with the light of desire in the eyes to suffer for their Fatherland, are not looking for status. They are looking for weapons, and, when they have the weapons, believe me they will then ask for the return of lost territories and lost colonies, and when that demand is made it cannot fail to shake and possibly shatter to their foundations every one of the countries I have mentioned, and some other countries I have not mentioned."

So, Churchillian tone can indeed be invoked now.

Now that is how to correct a fella.

...the Bishop of Rome or the Pope as he is variously known.

Hey, that's MISTER Pope to you, buddy!