I do not agree with your characterization of our previous exchanges, nor do I agree with your characterization of my posts or my attitude, nor do I think it matters "who went first," nor did I call you a terrorist.
What I did say, and what I am happy to repeat, because it is what I believe, and because it is what I have extensively argued, and because I think it is significant on its own terms, is that the mode of thinking, writing, and acting politically typified by your "Islam's middle finger" post, by the assignment of collective responsibility to all Muslims for the 9/11 attacks, by the assignment of collective suspicion to all Muslims, is the mirror image and complement of the terrorist's ideology and self-justifications.
You, personally, are rather immaterial to this argument. As am I.
The terrorists sought to justify their attack, and the extremists generally seek to justify their strategies, and seek further to advance their cause, by engineering a totalizing clash of civilizations: all of them against all of us. That is why they believe that civilians are fair game. That is how they seek to justify their attacks on fellow Muslims. That is how collectivists always work. That as much as anything else is what they have in common with Nazis, Stalinists, the Imperial Way Japanese, and even the kind of people the founders of the US of A and waves of immigrants since have fled.
The point of view you, Tav, Luka, Rick Barber, Ace, Rod Dreher, John Podhoretz, Andy McCarthy, and others are advancing fully cooperates with them in this strategy, and is, on this level, also collectivist. It is as though you yearn for a world war - not the difficult series of low level conflicts we have seen up until now, but for an all-out struggle in which 1 billion people at a minimum, as well as everyone who opposes the escalation of the conflict, is forced on to the other side.
It also is completely contradictory to the strategy of splitting the enemy and creating Muslim coalition partners that has been adopted with some success by our military, and represents the basis of all of our outreach to the Islamic world. Do you think that if one of David Petraeus' Afghan Muslim allies offers to say an Islamic prayer for the victims of 9/11, he's told that his offering is unwelcome? Do you suppose that Petraeus in fact has any difficulty whatsoever accepting the gesture with an alaykam as-salam right back at him?
Embracing the wrong strategy in the "war on terror" and the "clash of civilizations" is bad enough. The fact that it is the complete overturning of the moral values adopted by this nation in all of its wars - wars of liberation, not of conquest or punishment, warfare that seeks to protect innocent civilians not punish them for belonging to the wrong side - is also bad. Worst of all, hard as that may be to conceive since we're talking about a world war, is that the doctrine is also totally contradictory to the core and founding values of the United States of America, the core values that most of those conservatives and perhaps you as well claim to revere and pretend to champion. Because without those values, then there is no real United States of America. There's just a collectivist government like most others in the world and in world history, this one happening to occupy the territory of North America.
And that's why I have continued to write at HotAir and other places, regardless of the resistance of commenters and fellow authors.
Don’t worry. We’ll be keeping abreast of your progress. Might as well let you dig your own hole.
MadisonConservative on June 3, 2010 at 6:16 PM
One last time: Stop trolling my threads. Stop harassing me. Stop threatening me. Stop addressing, characterizing, and personally attacking me. I've asked you repeatedly. I've warned you. I was even inclined and still am to some extent inclined to grant you some latitude because I mentioned you - or, rather, mentioned actual words of yours in the form of a title of one of your posts - in my own post, but this behavior is sick, and turning into a clear, egregious, and repeated violation of the site Terms of Use. It's not OK to do this. Think about what you're doing, and stop.
(a) off-topic; (b) libelous, defamatory, abusive, harassing, threatening, profane, pornographic, offensive, false, misleading, or which otherwise violates or encourages others to violate these terms of use or any law, including intellectual property laws;
If you have a problem with my interpretation, please take it up with Ed or AP and see how interested they are in hearing all about it from you, in examining the deleted comments, and in deciding whether or not my judgments were appropriate.
Thrashing the TOS could also be construed as off-topic. Start your own thread on the topic, if you find it interesting, MadCon. I don't.
MadisonConservative on June 3, 2010 at 4:52 PM
MadisonConservative on June 3, 2010 at 4:54 PM
OhioCoastie on June 3, 2010 at 4:54 PM
OhioCoastie on June 3, 2010 at 5:00 PM
Trolling. After explicit warning. Removed. Please find your own site, post, or thread where that kind of commentary is welcome. There's a big wide internet out there waiting for you.
Your argument is confused and based on your own presumptions, not on anything I've actually argued. To review: I presented an argument – that conservative reaction to Cordoba House has been largely characterized by an invocation of collective guilt that is directly at odds with the core American values that conservatives champion – except apparently in cases like this one when those values prove inconvenient. I analyzed a selection of representative opinion to support my contention, while addressing the Cordoba House issue on its own terms only secondarily, mainly as it relates the proportionality of the conservative reaction (“looming horror,” “conquer America,” etc.).
There are numerous ways that someone who disagrees with this argument could address it. They might fault the analysis itself, on its own terms, for instance - something no one here has attempted to do (show, e.g., that Ace's comment wasn't excessive - good luck, or that the sampling of opinion wasn't truly representative of conservative reactions). They might say that it doesn't matter whether conservatives support core American values consistently, or that the "Muslim threat" is so dire that it requires we suspend American values for the duration of an open-ended and presumably escalating clash of civilizations.
In addition to being vastly oversimplified according to the same fallacious collective guilt rationale, that last position, which appears to be the one most critics are subscribing to, has its own implications and defects. I think it would amount to a declaration that the American experiment is defunct, and that American conservatism now consists strictly of cultural self-defense, traditional "rightwing" ideology rather than support for America's founding principles.
If you don't care about those principles, or perhaps don't understand their role in this context, then, even on a purely pragmatic basis, it is almost always extremely poor strategy to unite the enemy in a fight to the collective death rather than to attempt to divide the enemy coalition. Even from the most cynical perspective, the one more typical of enemies of America but which many self-styled conservatives seem eager to adopt, from which all of America's wars of "liberation" were really just wars of material self-interest alone, all along, that strategy promises to be an immensely bloody and wasteful one.
The proponents of a clash of civilizations are dishonest about what they are offering to the world, but they shouldn't be surprised when people see through their false or undeveloped pretenses, and show reluctance to join them or to accept their assumptions without question. So it is also poor strategy on the level of building the largest possible coalition against the main threat.
Getting caught up with merely personal issues, or seeking personal offense, or trying to score points in made-up little message board games, is in this context pathetic, in addition to being, as I said, uninteresting to me.
Waiting’s part of the point. Talk about a drive-by essay …
OhioCoastie on June 3, 2010 at 12:09 AM
You have some very strange notions: that you and your sophomoric "objective moral standard" argument are interesting; that it wasn't already discussed as much as it deserved; that bloggers here and elsewhere even commonly respond to insistent and impolite commenters (note: they get criticized when they do, as well as when they don't); that anyone cares about whatever point it is you're trying to make. Why don't you just assume I gave whatever "wrong" answer you're hoping will cap off your lame internet gotcha exercise, and then tell all the world about the dire and highly relevant implications?
However you choose to respond, I'm guessing it will be just about as relevant to the argument and content of my post as the rest of the comments have been.
MadisonConservative on June 3, 2010 at 6:37 PM
I do not agree with your characterization of our previous exchanges, nor do I agree with your characterization of my posts or my attitude, nor do I think it matters "who went first," nor did I call you a terrorist.
What I did say, and what I am happy to repeat, because it is what I believe, and because it is what I have extensively argued, and because I think it is significant on its own terms, is that the mode of thinking, writing, and acting politically typified by your "Islam's middle finger" post, by the assignment of collective responsibility to all Muslims for the 9/11 attacks, by the assignment of collective suspicion to all Muslims, is the mirror image and complement of the terrorist's ideology and self-justifications.
You, personally, are rather immaterial to this argument. As am I.
The terrorists sought to justify their attack, and the extremists generally seek to justify their strategies, and seek further to advance their cause, by engineering a totalizing clash of civilizations: all of them against all of us. That is why they believe that civilians are fair game. That is how they seek to justify their attacks on fellow Muslims. That is how collectivists always work. That as much as anything else is what they have in common with Nazis, Stalinists, the Imperial Way Japanese, and even the kind of people the founders of the US of A and waves of immigrants since have fled.
The point of view you, Tav, Luka, Rick Barber, Ace, Rod Dreher, John Podhoretz, Andy McCarthy, and others are advancing fully cooperates with them in this strategy, and is, on this level, also collectivist. It is as though you yearn for a world war - not the difficult series of low level conflicts we have seen up until now, but for an all-out struggle in which 1 billion people at a minimum, as well as everyone who opposes the escalation of the conflict, is forced on to the other side.
It also is completely contradictory to the strategy of splitting the enemy and creating Muslim coalition partners that has been adopted with some success by our military, and represents the basis of all of our outreach to the Islamic world. Do you think that if one of David Petraeus' Afghan Muslim allies offers to say an Islamic prayer for the victims of 9/11, he's told that his offering is unwelcome? Do you suppose that Petraeus in fact has any difficulty whatsoever accepting the gesture with an alaykam as-salam right back at him?
Embracing the wrong strategy in the "war on terror" and the "clash of civilizations" is bad enough. The fact that it is the complete overturning of the moral values adopted by this nation in all of its wars - wars of liberation, not of conquest or punishment, warfare that seeks to protect innocent civilians not punish them for belonging to the wrong side - is also bad. Worst of all, hard as that may be to conceive since we're talking about a world war, is that the doctrine is also totally contradictory to the core and founding values of the United States of America, the core values that most of those conservatives and perhaps you as well claim to revere and pretend to champion. Because without those values, then there is no real United States of America. There's just a collectivist government like most others in the world and in world history, this one happening to occupy the territory of North America.
And that's why I have continued to write at HotAir and other places, regardless of the resistance of commenters and fellow authors.
One last time: Stop trolling my threads. Stop harassing me. Stop threatening me. Stop addressing, characterizing, and personally attacking me. I've asked you repeatedly. I've warned you. I was even inclined and still am to some extent inclined to grant you some latitude because I mentioned you - or, rather, mentioned actual words of yours in the form of a title of one of your posts - in my own post, but this behavior is sick, and turning into a clear, egregious, and repeated violation of the site Terms of Use. It's not OK to do this. Think about what you're doing, and stop.
audiculous on June 3, 2010 at 6:00 PM
Oh look you got your wish.
If you have a problem with my interpretation, please take it up with Ed or AP and see how interested they are in hearing all about it from you, in examining the deleted comments, and in deciding whether or not my judgments were appropriate.
Thrashing the TOS could also be construed as off-topic. Start your own thread on the topic, if you find it interesting, MadCon. I don't.
http://hotair.com/termsofuse/
MadisonConservative on June 3, 2010 at 4:52 PM
MadisonConservative on June 3, 2010 at 4:54 PM
OhioCoastie on June 3, 2010 at 4:54 PM
OhioCoastie on June 3, 2010 at 5:00 PM
Trolling. After explicit warning. Removed. Please find your own site, post, or thread where that kind of commentary is welcome. There's a big wide internet out there waiting for you.
OhioCoastie on June 3, 2010 at 4:36 PM
Irrevelant to the topic in both versions.
OhioCoastie on June 3, 2010 at 2:58 PM
Your argument is confused and based on your own presumptions, not on anything I've actually argued. To review: I presented an argument – that conservative reaction to Cordoba House has been largely characterized by an invocation of collective guilt that is directly at odds with the core American values that conservatives champion – except apparently in cases like this one when those values prove inconvenient. I analyzed a selection of representative opinion to support my contention, while addressing the Cordoba House issue on its own terms only secondarily, mainly as it relates the proportionality of the conservative reaction (“looming horror,” “conquer America,” etc.).
There are numerous ways that someone who disagrees with this argument could address it. They might fault the analysis itself, on its own terms, for instance - something no one here has attempted to do (show, e.g., that Ace's comment wasn't excessive - good luck, or that the sampling of opinion wasn't truly representative of conservative reactions). They might say that it doesn't matter whether conservatives support core American values consistently, or that the "Muslim threat" is so dire that it requires we suspend American values for the duration of an open-ended and presumably escalating clash of civilizations.
In addition to being vastly oversimplified according to the same fallacious collective guilt rationale, that last position, which appears to be the one most critics are subscribing to, has its own implications and defects. I think it would amount to a declaration that the American experiment is defunct, and that American conservatism now consists strictly of cultural self-defense, traditional "rightwing" ideology rather than support for America's founding principles.
If you don't care about those principles, or perhaps don't understand their role in this context, then, even on a purely pragmatic basis, it is almost always extremely poor strategy to unite the enemy in a fight to the collective death rather than to attempt to divide the enemy coalition. Even from the most cynical perspective, the one more typical of enemies of America but which many self-styled conservatives seem eager to adopt, from which all of America's wars of "liberation" were really just wars of material self-interest alone, all along, that strategy promises to be an immensely bloody and wasteful one.
The proponents of a clash of civilizations are dishonest about what they are offering to the world, but they shouldn't be surprised when people see through their false or undeveloped pretenses, and show reluctance to join them or to accept their assumptions without question. So it is also poor strategy on the level of building the largest possible coalition against the main threat.
Getting caught up with merely personal issues, or seeking personal offense, or trying to score points in made-up little message board games, is in this context pathetic, in addition to being, as I said, uninteresting to me.
I'm not interested in your juvenile taunts, OhioCoastie. Further off-topic comments will be subject to deletion.
You have some very strange notions: that you and your sophomoric "objective moral standard" argument are interesting; that it wasn't already discussed as much as it deserved; that bloggers here and elsewhere even commonly respond to insistent and impolite commenters (note: they get criticized when they do, as well as when they don't); that anyone cares about whatever point it is you're trying to make. Why don't you just assume I gave whatever "wrong" answer you're hoping will cap off your lame internet gotcha exercise, and then tell all the world about the dire and highly relevant implications?
However you choose to respond, I'm guessing it will be just about as relevant to the argument and content of my post as the rest of the comments have been.