Contradictions

As the barbarity and inhumanity of our enemies continues to reveal itself, there is an interesting contradiction at work among our elites.  Whether we examine the leftists in academia, the left/liberal prevailing wisdom in the MSM, the shrill, unexamined left/liberal mindlessness of much of Hollywood, or the ongoing drift in the ethos of the Democratic party, the disconnect between the versions of reality described in the blogosphere and that described in the house organs of the PC culture, as exemplified by the New York Times, becomes increasingly incongruous. 

Yesterday, Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, and today, Bill Roggio at the Fourth Rail wrote about a horrendous incident in Iraq.  Iraq TV is now showing confessions from captured terrorists and MEMRI provided the translation.  A policeman was kidnapped, whipped, beheaded, and then had his abdomen sliced open, his internal organs replaced with explosives, and then set out as  a trap; his body was blown up, killing the policeman's father and two other policemen.

There is little to say about the depravity of people who would do such a thing, and the TV show is apparently quite popular in Iraq and instrumental in de-legitimizing the insurgents there among the bulk of the Iraqis.  I would add that all evidence suggests that this kind of depravity is shared by many if not all of the Jihadis under the sway of Islamofascism.

The reaction of he western elites is instructive, as well.  Bob Herbert, who writes for the newspaper which used to be considered "the paper of record" but is now losing circulation almost as fast as the network that used to be known as the leader in giving us the news ("and that [was] the way it is"] is losing viewers, has repeated a story, which apparently grows in the re-telling of American troops happily shooting unarmed prisoners.  Since others in the blogosphere (New Sisyphus has a reasonable take on this story) are looking into this further, I would only add that if there were these kinds of atrocities going on all the time, as suggested, it is hard to imagine the New York Times and CBS, along with Reuters and the AP, have somehow missed such a juicy story.  Other pundits on the left have continued to construct more and more fantastical fantasies about how the Bush administration is imperialistic or the Dominionists are, any day now, going to take over and create a Theocracy here.

Paul Mirengoff, Deacon from Powerline, writes in Argument By Metaphor, about the failure of discourse on the left:

For a while now, the left has been fond of argument by creative metaphor--Zionism equals racism; pornography equals sex discrimination or even rape; and, more recently, Bush equals Hitler. In this way, a controversial phenomenon is equated with one that everyone agrees is bad. Leftists in the academy particularly favor this show-stopper approach, since they are used to having their theories evaluated not for their objective validity (a hopelessly passé concept), but rather for their creativity.

John Hinderaker, another of the Powerline writers, noted a conference being held in New York called "Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Far Right," which was co-sponsored by the New York Open Center, the City University of New York, and People for the American Way. He does a ice job deconstructing their arguments (which are little more than name calling and paranoid fantasy).  He comments on many of their statements, including this one by Joan Bokaer, founder of TheocracyWatch.org, who

"compared the Federal Communications Commission's threatened crackdown on indecency on television with the Taliban, the repressive Islamic rulers of Afghanistan who harbored Osama bin Laden's terrorist network until toppled by a U.S.-led invasion."

Hinderaker concludes:

In Afghanistan under the Taliban, girls weren't permitted to attend elementary school, and large numbers of people were executed before crowds in soccer stadiums. In "theocratic" America, the FCC thinks that women's breasts shouldn't unexpectedly pop into view while millions of children are watching a sporting event. SAME THING! NO DIFFERENCE! These people, by the way, pride themselves on "nuanced" thinking.

This would be just another example of the kinds of things that is passed off as sophisticated thinking in some circuits on the left if not for the fact that  a few days ago, I received an e-mail form an old friend who lives in Westchester, New York, 30 minutes form where I live.  We have known each other for many years and have both been fairly traditional Democrats, basically buying the conventional New York liberal wisdom that Republicans are robber barons, only interested in their own self interest, and Democrats, along with being peace loving, caring for the environment and the poor, are also wiser, better educated and smarter than Republicans.  There was no need to question these assumptions (despite the obvious and continuing slow erosion of the Democratic Party's reality testing in terms of taxes, political correctness, affirmative action, and other issues) until 9/11.  Since then, it has been incumbent upon people to take a serious look at the world we live in; reality has mugged us. 

Back to the e-mail.  After a brief exchange about the impact and influence of the Christian right and the possibility of a theocracy in America he wrote:

I do not hate the Christian right, that said I do not trust their motives and I think they should keep religion to themselves and out of the public domain.

I am forever a moderate and will never support the Republicans as long as they continue to suck up to the Christian Right political activists. James Dobson is not someone I would defend and after the Terr Schiavo mattter I am totally disgusted with the bunch of them.  The judge they villified is a Conservative Republican who chose to do the right thing and not be bullied by these people. including Jeb Bush. (and  Jesse Jackson)

I am tired of Republicans imposing their big brother ideas on the American public.

I am posting this not because it is intemperate and paints all religious conservatives with the same brush, but because it is so unexceptional in the circles where I work and socialize.  I would add that it is also not at all unreasonable, given the provincialism of so many who live around here.

If your information comes from The New York Times and the rest of the MSM, the world you live in features Islamic radicals whose grievances must be better understood in order to be addressed, where abu Ghraib is the defining image of our efforts in Iraq, and where a Christian, intolerant Theocracy is just waiting to assert itself (though why it has not yet done so, even after Bush, their tool, has been re-elected, is a mystery.)

We will only win the war on Islamofascism and their allies on the left, if we win the information war.