Comments on The IdjitihadTM rolls on by CK MacLeod

Only for informational purposes.

@ Fuster:
See, the old fuster cluck would have linked to "Hasta Siempre, Comandante."

@ George Jochnowitz:
I don't understand what you're saying. Are you accusing me of being rude? Do you know what I was referring to?

@ fuster:
Hah! As if you weren't - until your recent mellowing - a devotee of purposeful rudosity.

@ miguel cervantes:
Reconstructionism? A big deal?

Like I said, I'm not going to take that bait with you. You tell us all why we need to be afraid, deeply afraid of the Sharia menace, and I'll stand up for you when Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan come with their scimitars to cut off your head for stealing a clue.

@ fuster:
I seem to have misplaced my Love Power.

@ miguel cervantes:
As if there's the slightest chance that you'd be able to discuss Rowan Williams and Sharia courts from some other than neo-McCarthyite perspective. Not taking that bait.

There's that "they" again.

@ miguel cervantes:
You mean all of the stuff that you've proven yourself incapable of discussing rationally and honestly? The stuff you like to work together in your exercises in guilt by association, often built on false claims? That you've never apologized for?

doesn’t mention any of the controversial comments

Those would be the ones where he revealed that there's no such thing as Mother Goose and water is wet?

He's one of the main symptoms and main explanations for the decline of NR and the conservative movement generally. Andrew C McCarthy is a main "intellectual leader" of the new populist-conservatism ca. 2010.

@ fuster:
I'll have you know that that's nowhere near the stupidest or crappiest stupid piece of crap that miguel could have linked from that very same blog by the very same author, or for that matter from the opinion page he quotes. How else are we supposed to keep track of the latest outrageous outrage if narc doesn't continually link them here?

Am reflecting upon how important it is to me to keep track of stupid pieces of crappy outrage.

Fuster wrote:

Not sure that the FFs were worried about Roman practices

Gladiatorial games, public bathing, obscene graffiti, and sleeping around?

The FFs had read not only Thucydides and Gibbon, but a whole bunch of other chaps, and were, indeed, very concerned about a standing armed force becoming the true power in any land.

It's not a draft that you want, it's a return to some concept of democratic army suitable for self-defense of the homeland (no empire). Unfortunately, or anyway unavoidably, the economies of scale of the advanced industrial/post-industrial state mean that, while you and your neighbor are undergoing weekend militia training, the wealthy and powerful are equipping their full-time professional warriors who can kill you and your militia (assuming you're dumb enough to show up for battle) at ratios of 1,000 or higher without limit to 1. I say "without limit" because modern technology has busted the bank: We have the power to hold the fate of the entire world hostage.

Professional high-tech armies beat conscript armies at generally lower, but still very impressive kill ratios. You can, however, make your own society impossible for anyone to govern - that's the equalizer, but it comes at the cost of also making your own society an extremely unpleasant environment to live in, if livable at all.

The perception of "essential to survival" can be manufactured, all the more easily in a society that has submitted (for our perspective regressed) to the self-understanding required for a conscript army. The state becomes defined as the absolute state superior to the people, and anything that threatens that status become a threat to the survival of the state. Conscript army is the objective contradiction of "citizen": It's defined by the general sacrifice of full rights of "free citizen in civil society."

I'm not sure whether we've passed beyond the stage when embracing such a contradiction also equated with a realization of higher freedom through the state, but I believe the transition or return to such a stage is only conceivable amidst massive, wrenching displacement of our way of life as we know it.

@ Rex Caruthers:
Your view of the draft is conceptually flawed, and the proof is in the pudding: A society that builds conscript armies and sends them off to war is a society that puts its own collective concept decisively ahead of the needs and rights of the individual. The lives of conscript armies have been squandered in huge numbers, with the often ardent support and anyway massive objective participation of the populace. The all-volunteer force, by contrast, with its idea of the "professional soldier" and "army of one," demands constant justification for every jot, tiddle, and quiver of force - the individual's sacrifice needs to be justified in encylopedic detail, film at 11:00. We treat the losses of a relative handful of our professional soldiers with all of the solemnity and seriousness that in WW2 we accorded the losses of a whole divisions. That says nothing of the attitudes of the Russians and Germans with their conscript armies, on any given afternoon of 1944-5 spending the lives of more soldiers than we have lost in all of our fighting since Vietnam. Or the mass battles of WW1 and drawn out trench warfare: 1 million casualties in a single battle; a single day's random "wastage" also exceeding the losses we've been willing to sustain in the entirety of our so-called wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A return to conscription certainly wouldn't be preparation for greater restraint in use of force, and there's little in history to suggest that it would imply greater wisdom in choosing battles. It would be preparation for a return to mass casualty warfare on the basis of a regressive social-political concept, probably accompanying the definitive reversal and possible end of the American project at least in America.

@ miguel cervantes:
What does "religious authority" have to do with anything? Rauf presents a view that, shockingly, acknowledges that the West/U.S. are not the only injured parties in the world, and that U.S. as global superpower plays a disproportionate role in setting global conditions, and sets itself up to be perceived that way. Millions if not billions of people see the world system, to the extent they're aware of it as such, as something that harms them, and they see the world system as being led by the U.S. Why is this anything but a statement of the obvious, and why does Rauf or anyone else need to apologize for uttering it while moving onto matters that may actually require an above-room temperature IQ to discuss?

@ miguel cervantes:
Good job thinking what you're supposed to, and what makes everyone else who thinks just like you do feel justified: All that matters are losses, hurt feelings, and offense on "our" side. And that's what makes us better than "them": The fact that we are, and everyone we care about says so!

@ miguel cervantes:
This is why you're on the Idjitihad idditihad: You simply react ideologically to his statements, as you're supposed to, without actually confronting them. You've already presumed that anyone who discusses events from any perspective other than the approved one is "on the other side." How dare he suggest that there are any motivations or explanations for terrorism other than pure, subhuman evil! To suggest that Islamists are human beings or that Muslims might have a "case" against the West: Sheer heresy! They are bad and must be punished and all right thinking Americans think that and nothing else!

@ miguel cervantes:
Yes, hundred of millions of people worldwide tune their magic headgear every morning to the North Korean Instructional frequency, and get their marching orders.

No one cares what North Korea thinks about anything - and that's what the question relates to - not the actual or potential significance of NorK missile or other technologies.

George Jochnowitz wrote:

@ CK MacLeod:
There are no Islamists who have accepted gays as loose allies.

I didn't actually make any statement or conjecture about Islamists [actually] accepting gays as allies[*] - though I'm fairly sure that Islamists or those associated with Islamists have marched together with gays in American and European cities. In any event, there is a difference between the broad Palestinian solidarity movement, to which I did refer, and Islamism.

Although leftists are nominally pro-gay and pro-feminist, no leftist group accepts Israel’s existence.

What basis do you have for this statement - other than some fanciful definition of "leftist" or of "accept"? You would seem to be referring to groups so far to the left that they wouldn't even be able to serve in the Knesset, for instance. They would be to the "left" of the Soviet Union under Stalin, which recognized the State of Israel within 3 days of its declaration of independence. They would be to the left of all of the leftist governments that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, and that claim to support a 2-state solution.

North Korea is a tiny mostly insignificant country that represents very little to anyone except itself and its immediate neighbors - though I'm not even sure it has a policy on Israel's right to exist. Iran is, to say the least, not of the left. Even Hugo Chavez, for all of his virulent rhetoric, has claimed to support Israel's right to exist.

[*I meant to characterize the theoretical self-justification of far left social justice groups for participating in solidarity movements, not to offer an opinion as to how good a self-justification it was.]

Come to think of it, though I don't know anything about the particular gay group, they and other leftists may very well see themselves as forcing the broader pro-Palestinian movement to take on a more left-progressive/social justice rather than merely anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic character. In other words, Islamists are forced either to acknowledge and accept gays or lose allies.

George Jochnowitz wrote:

Calling Israel an apartheid state is not only slanderous but is delegitimizing its existence.

Why should that be so? No one - except for a tiny handful of pan-African extremists - criticizing the authentic apartheid state of South Africa was calling for South Africa to cease to exist. And where did "gay rights activists" support "ferociously anti-gay countries" and "homophobic political movements"? It all comes down again to your notion that it's impossible to criticize Israel without supporting Iran or other fundamentalist states.

As a matter of fact, it is indeed quite possible to question the fundamental legitimacy of Israel - either conceptually or with reference to the justice of the process by which the state was established - completely without reference to the politics of any other country, on pure internationalist/universalist grounds. I don't advocate that position as realistic, but I can recognize its internal consistency.

The other day, we saw you making unfounded statements about the "silence" of the left on honor killings, homophobia, and other issues. Have you even bothered to look at what this specific group or these specific groups say for themselves on these issues? What other groups on left say about them?

@ George Jochnowitz:
Excluding "liberals" and "social democrats" from your definition of the left seems to narrow your scope substantially: to the far left, which would tend to be an internationalist left, many of whose members have been subjected to vicious repression if not complete extirpation in the fundamentalist-ruled nations.

Those on the far left who have supported radical Islamists have tended to do so, to whatever extent they've done so, as vehicles of anti-imperialism: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Those who supported Palestinian militants tended to support them as a 3rd world national liberation movement.

As for gay activists, you seem to believe that people who form associations must be precluded from speaking out on on issues not directly related to their reasons for association. To the contrary, they are as free in a group to offer opinions, for however much or little they're worth, on anything they care to offer an opinion about, as they would be as individuals. In addition, a gay activist may make the determination that oppression of religious or ethnic minorities, or other vulnerable groups affects all vulnerable groups. This is a classic position of solidarity movements, and for a long time a basis of political organizing among Jewish groups in particular.

Gay activists may also make the calculation that, precisely because Israel represents a more progressive state than many others, it gives social progressivism a bad name when it also oppresses or otherwise unjustly treats Palestinians. They may argue that tension and conflict between Israel and the rest of the Arab and Islamic world tends to empower anti-modern fundamentalism, making life harder for gays and for social reformers generally.

Your argument seems to rest further on the presumption that gay activists should automatically support the policies of countries in which gay rights are respected. That would include numerous countries that are markedly more sympathetic to the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs than, say, the bloggers at Contentions think is wise. So, obviously, that's not a basis for making a judgment.

You also seem to believe that someone cannot criticize Israeli policy without in effect calling for the destruction of Israel or siding with Israel's enemies in all respects. That would mean that the entire Israeli opposition at any given time is calling for the destruction of Israel. That's obviously if not an absurdity, a very poor basis for democratic politics and civil society. One can support a different Israeli policy or have a different vision for the Israeli future without being guilty of supporting war on Israel.

I'm not sure what you're licking, but I think you might want to think about where it's been.

@ Fuster:
Don't be silly. He means "build a mosque on this comment thread."

@ Rex Caruthers:
Cuz it's not about a piece of property in Manhattan. Plus they can't be paying jizya to the evil Muslims! Rauf might buy a nuclear bomb with it and send Hezbollah to plant it in Wasila! (Come to think of it... that might be a way to interest the left in the plan... )

@ Rex Caruthers:
Though the Republican gubernatorial candidate in NY has promised to use eminent domain to squelch the project, though the constitutional scholars commenting at HotAir are hard at work, and though a few others have sought government relief, anti-mosquers are not generally advocating government action. To the extent the anti-mosque forces can be taken at their word - that is, that they merely represent what they claim they represent, not what the open "rational Islamophobes" among them say - they mostly want to convince or pressure Rauf et al to back off.

Rex Caruthers wrote:

1)So we need to amend the Constitution to restrict Islam from the Freedom of Religion part? And to Consecrate the 9/11 Hole to be sacred ground, defining sacred as consistent with any Religion except Islam?

A hot topic under discussion today at MadisonConservative's internet home, in the discussion under Morrissey's post. Nice to see MadCon's keeping the flame of CK MacLeod-disgust alive, too, while displaying his own immensely impressive powers of observation and interpretation, of course. Kissy-kiss to my biggest fan!

miguel cervantes wrote:

they are not authentic muslims

Your phrase, not mine. I wouldn't call Noam Chomsky an "inauthentic Jew" or the dude off the street an "inauthentic American" or MadisonConservative an "inauthentic conservative." Whether and to what degree they may happen to represent anything, make interesting or sensible arguments, write intelligible English, etc., is open to discussion.

miguel cervantes wrote:

When has Journalista Yglesias, been right about anything,

Do you ever actually deal with an argument directly without attacking the person making it?

It's not in my power to excommunicate Fatah. It is in my power to wonder whether Fatah is representative of anything more than Fatah. No "good Muslim" can afford to remain silent on this one, it seems. Let him, and Schwartz, and Jasser, and every other one speak, sensibly or not, but that doesn't make them any more representative of anything other than themselves in their positions than anyone else.