In The Suicidal Pursuit of Perfection I described a young woman whose political absolutism and demands that the world function the way she wanted it to rather than the way it actually did placed her in significant, real, danger. Once she was able to recognize what she was doing to herself, she began the difficult work of Psychoanalysis and was eventually able to discover the self-destructive nature of her own rage at the unfairness of the world she was born into. In effect her anger at the world's unfairness became a boomerang that threatened to harm her more than it would ever hurt anyone else.
There is now a mountain of evidence that we are in fact, as a culture, doing the very same thing to ourselves. This extends from the most overt, liberal attacks on the NSA surveillance program despite no evidence of any harm to any Americans from the program, to more subtle attacks on the legitimacy of our culture.
I am going to range far and wide in this post with a particular aim in mind, to show that there is a cultural point of view that remains exceedingly powerful in Western culture, a derivative of liberalism that is no longer liberal, which unwittingly and unconsciously, demands that we disarm ourselves and surrender to our enemies.
As you read this post, keep in mind the question of risk and risk/benefit assessment, a perspective which is noticeably lacking in most MSM news reports. As a Physician, I am always forced to make risk/benefit analyses; for example, is a particular medication worth the risk of side effects? As a Psychoanalyst, I recognize that all of our behavior involves the negotiation of internal and external conflict; a patient wonders if he should give in to his libidinal desires and have a proffered affair despite his guilt or rather deny himself such immediate gratification in the interest of a longer term goal of marital intimacy and thereby have to tolerate frustration? In effect, we are all always making risk/benefit assessments. However, those who define many of our current conflicts and issues of the day are derelict in their duty in this regard; they almost never present the conflicting desires, needs, fears, of our conflicts. Start with cartoons:
Starting with the Cartoon War, it is clear that too many in Europe and here are ready to surrender. As Charles Krauthammer points out in Curse of the Muslim moderates, this is no longer about cultural sensitivity (if it ever was) it is about intimidation and fear:
The mob has turned this into a test case for freedom of speech in the West. The German, French and Italian newspapers that republished these cartoons did so not to inform but to defy — to declare that they will not be intimidated by the mob.
What is at issue is fear. The unspoken reason many newspapers do not want to republish is not sensitivity but simple fear. They know what happened to Theo van Gogh, who made a film about the Islamic treatment of women and got a knife through the chest with an Islamist manifesto attached.
The worldwide riots and burnings are instruments of intimidation, reminders of van Gogh's fate. The Islamic "moderates" are the mob's agents and interpreters, warning us not to do this again. And the Western "moderates" are their terrified collaborators who say: Don't worry, we won't. It's those Danes. We're clean. Spare us. Please.
Sigmund, Carl & Alfred, Interplanetary Self Delusions, points out the utter hypocrisy of the Muslim rioters:
SC&A are waiting for Muslim outrage, directed at the vile and despicable Muslim world portrayals of Jews, Judaism, Christians and Christianity.
No word yet of Muslim outrage at the regular bombings, shootings and church burnings in Pakistan- with worshipper inside.
No word yet on Muslim outrage and mass, violent protests against the beheading of non combatants in Iraq and elsewhere.
Have any of the doyens of our news rooms calculated the risk of surrender to the Islamofascist street versus the risk of upholding free speech? Wretchard documents the race to surrender by the Europeans and, sadly, our neighbors to the North. Meanwhile, Charlie Munn at the Officers' Club wonders why we only see Muslims rioting almost exclusively in authoritarian countries, rather than news reports of Muslims protesting against Islamic fascists hijacking their religion:
Freedom from oppression remains the answer to this strategic gambit. If people can be given a choice other than a fascist dictatorship or an 8th century theocracy, they’ll probably take it. That is why OEF and OIF are important, but that also ties into why the world in general and America in particular sees the Islamic world in such a singularity. If we, as a nation, were at all interested in actually solving this problem and working together instead of trying to blame stuff on George Bush or justify a bias, here’s what we would see happen: Every night, on the news, we would see moderate Muslims protesting “not in my name” across the world. We would see Muslim dissidents in oppressed countries elevated to celebrity status in the American media, and vaunted by the international community for their work in reform. We would see proposals about how to solve the problems in the Mid East instead of worrying about the status quo and talking about “stability.”
Has anyone in the media or in government assessed the long term risk of treating radical Islamists as if they were moderates instead of offering a megaphone to those Muslims who may actually support democratization and tolerance?
At home, the NSA leak is scandalous and has harmed us; people are going to die because the New York Times thinks they should decide, based on anonymous leakers, where our national security rests. Daniel Henninger (HT: The Anchoress) asks, Can We Talk? His answer does not inspire confidence:
If al Qaeda phones, tell them we can't take the call.
Let's start with the one thing we know for sure about the Bush administration's program to listen to al Qaeda's phone calls into and out of the United States: It's dead.
After all the publicity of the past two weeks, does anyone think that the boys working on plans for Boston Harbor, the Golden Gate Bridge or Chicago's Loop are still chatting by phone? If the purpose of the public exposure was to pull the plug on the pre-emptive surveillance program, mission accomplished. Be safe, Times Square.
AJ Strata is outraged and thinks the opponents of the NSA program are dangerously naive. He titles his post Rebuilding ‘The Wall’ & Death By Warrant:
The theorists think a process is going to stop Al Qaeda and protect us. These people are so dangerously naive it is clear we cannot allow them to call the shots. I have said over and over to focus on the wrong subject on this topic will result on us losing the capability.
Have the New York Times and the Washington Post editors, let alone any of the Senators involved in grandstanding on this issue, done the calculation of how many innocent deaths are equivalent to potentially compromised civil liberties?
Meanwhile, as part of an ongoing effort to make sure American children are unable to think critically, since to think critically requires making distinctions between bad-good-better-best, and political correctness, the philosophy under which our children labor to not-learn requires equivalency of all cultures and equality of outcomes for all identity groups, our schools are hiring terror apologists! Pamela has some of the details:
These are not good days for our education system, I must set up an interview with Efraim Karsh, Professor and Head Mediterranean Studies Programme, Kings College, University of London. Our last meeting was thrilling and enlightening.....................rapid fire speech almost to self strangulation. Karsh explained most emphatically the perversion of the truth in university study as systemwide, university-wide, these "victims of intimidation". The problem is "if you throw Massad out, Massad will get another job so fast they will be lined up".
"Imperialism is not a 'western' concept, but an arab one. History bears this out...the Ottoman, Byzantine, Sassanid- all Arab empires (even before Rome)."
And yet in the "Middle East - the Arabs are always the victim" and to say anything else is "not a good career move".
She has a lot more in this post; our academics seem to have a fetish for defining extremists as moderates, just like their cousins in the media. MaxedOutMama points to yet another way in which our pursuit of perfect equality threatens to destroy our culture; lawyers are now suing to prevent the use of a test of competency as a requirement to graduate high school in California; MOM writes:
The real tipping point into disaster for a culture comes when it ceases to make demands upon itself, which necessarily entails making demands upon its members. That would include demands like passing a test to graduate from high school.
Nowhere is there any evidence that the lawyers recognize or care that the outcome of such a suit will be to graduate even more children who don't have minimal competence to function in the real world, and even worse, these children won't even know that they lack competence; luckily their faux self-esteem will be preserved.
What is common to all these assaults on our ability to think critically about the current dangers facing our culture and our way of life is the lack of the simplest questions:
What are the risks and benefits of any action that we take?
Should we safeguard everyone's absolute inviolability of electronic communications within the borders of this country if it will cost the lives of innocents? How many innocent lives are worth preserving such absolute civil liberties protection?
Should we protect children from the knowledge of their short-comings in order to perpetuate a false sense of competence? What is the danger of doing so?
Should we allow Islamic radicals to define "Moderate Islam" while more tolerant and democratic Muslims are marginalized by our universities and our media? Isn't it time to determine if there is a population of "Moderate Muslims" rather than accept the inevitably of Civilizational conflict which is inherent in the attitude of the very people who are ready to surrender without a fight?
Until such questions are asked, and asked repeatedly, our MSM, Universities, liberal pundits, and all too many Democratic politicians will continue to posture and preen over issues that are devoid of meaning and context. Their insistence on contextless stories and refusal to offer credence to the complex risk/benefit calculations involved in current real-world problems is dangerous and irresponsible. Just like my young woman patient, their inability to recognize that the world is not arranged in a manner most to their liking leads to a denigration of reality in favor of fantasy in ways which endanger them and us.
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