Searchlight Crusade

Scott Kirwin of Dean’s World directs us to Harry Stein column in City Journal, and then amplifies on one aspect, saying that he, too has a mixed marriage, and that it works very well and helps make him and his wife better people. He quotes Gerald Ford, “We can disagree without being disagreeable.”

First off, I want to corroborate his story. My wife’s family are all democrats, she marched with Cesar Chavez as a young girl. Mind you, they’ve pretty much stayed in the same place politically while the Donkeys drifted further to the left, to the point where she has actually considered registering Republican in the last year or so. Furthermore, most of the people I tend to hang out with are either Libertarian or Democratic, and they keep me from going to far towards the right.

Second, when exactly did we lose the ability to disagree without being disagreeable? When and where did people start automatically assuming that the opposition is evil? Particularly if they don’t convert to your point of view upon a first exposure to what you regard as pertinent facts?

Out of personal experience, I can trace the phenomenon back to 1976 on the left. Some members of my family are what we today call die-hard moonbats. I remember when Ronald Reagan was challenging Gerald Ford for the Elephant nomination back then them using some significantly over the top rhetoric on their part, “crazy attack dog who needs to go back to the B movies,” “He’d have us in a nuclear war in twenty minutes”, etcetera. I seem to remember him serving as president for eight years, correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t recall any nuclear wars during that period.

On the right the first I encountered it was Rush Limbaugh. I can remember the first time I listened to him, thinking, “Okay, he’s funny, he’s willing to call it like he sees it, he is a breath of something pointed vaguely in my direction politically, but he’s dangerous.” I haven’t listened to Rush in quite some time. I stopped years ago because even when he and I agree, I could detect no pretenses towards what I see as rational thought process on his part.

People are entitled to hold to different viewpoints than my own. Some of these people are rational, thinking human beings. The universe knows my own views on many subjects have evolved over time. Why can’t somebody with a different starting place be different now? Why can’t they have gone further, or not as far, or off in a completely different direction? Some of the smartest people I know think differently than I do. My father, who was beyond doubt the best man I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, was a Democratic New Deal man to the core. He voted the straight Democratic ticket every election his entire life. You could have run a Democratic slate pulled from their KKK wing and their Communist wing, and he’d have voted for them all. I loved him anyway.

Why do people believe differently than I do? First off, they have different value systems. Somebody who legitimately believes that surrender is preferable to war is not going to agree with me on much having to do with national defense. I take solace in the thought that there are a lot more people whose values coincide with my own on this point than there are of them.

Second, we’ve had different life experiences. Someone who’s family comes from Central America, for example, is going to have a completely different viewpoint on the CIA and our national defense structure, as for a large part of the 20th century the US didn’t exactly treat those countries with a whole lot of respect.

Third, we may even see different facts differently. I am completely convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the murder of John F. Kennedy, but we have major films from people who aren’t. These people have regular conventions, periodicals, etecetera. I think they’re in denial and even if they’re right, it wouldn’t make a difference today. They think I am the one in denial, and that by so believing, make myself into a Tool. Maybe one of these days I’ll come across a fact, verified and vetted, that causes me to change my mind (not likely, I’ll admit. But the possibility is there.)

Fourth, we have different competencies. I’ve got a fairly broad spectrum of general stuff that I’m pretty good at, with areas of specialization here and there. Some of these are because of college coursework, some due to vocational concerns, and a whole lot of them because I find them fascinating (For instance, the intertwining of military, political, and technological history). On the other hand, aside from marveling at the skill involved in a masterwork painting, I have no clue about painting. I can sometimes spot that “This looks like a Van Gogh” before somebody tells me, but that’s about it. I have no idea of the artistic heritage that led to Van Gogh, who his influences were, or anything else that crowd finds fascinating. Similar situations apply in other fields. It’s not that I despise these people, it’s just that I’m interested in other things. When I talk about Napoleon’s influence on Clausewitz and through him on the Prussian (later German) army, or influences on tactics derived from the advent of rapid fire weapons, and how the American Civil War was a prelude tactically to World War I, I see the same blank stares back as I give them when they’re talking about Rembrandt or Picasso. That’s okay. But it means I see things through a different prism of learning than I do. Through the things I have studied, I am going to understand background facts without needing them explicitly covered, sometimes they are. And sometimes even after we have them explained, we’re not going to change our minds. It may not be rational, but it is human. It doesn’t make us evil.

Now, how do we disagree with someone without being disagreeable? First off, to the extent practical, we can aim our opposition at the issue, not the individual. It is not the same to say that “2 plus 2 equals four” as it is to say, “only an idiot wouldn’t realize two plus two equals four.” Second, spend some time listening to them. Try to understand what they’re saying. It doesn’t cause cancer. Maybe there’s a fact in there that one or the other of you has wrong. Maybe there’s a misunderstanding that you can clear up. Maybe you have a misunderstanding that they can clear up. And maybe the metaphorical temples that both of us listen to for our daily wisdom are both in the habit of ignoring inconvenient facts, and the real truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Once upon a time not too long ago we could disagree without automatically hating each other’s guts. Back in the 1950s it was a national joke about the wife’s vote cancelling out the husband’s (or vice versa). If two people who agree about nothing political can nonetheless be and stay happily married for life then, why can’t we be civil to those who disagree with us in public discourse today?

This really ticks me off. It happens that I agree with them that space is the better long term investment. I think a permanent presence in orbit and in the Asteroid Belt is likely to be one of the best things we can do for ourselves technologically and industrially (Kuiper Belt/Oort Cloud can come later). Colonies on other planets in this solar system is a cute idea, but until Mars and Venus are terraformed, we’re already sitting on the one worthwhile chunk of real estate in the solar system.

This has nothing to do with Iraq. Nor is Iraq the only thing our government is doing that we could cut in a trade to find the money for space exploration. Just cutting the number of Robert C. Byrd Projects in half would fund space exploration for the next century.

This is a false choice. The two items have nothing to do with each other except as they are competing (with many thousands of other projects!) for the same resources. It would be equally valid to run an editorial “Welfare or Space? Which is the smartest investment?”. Then we could compare “Welfare or Iraq, which is the smartest investment?” (the latter, in case you are wondering).

Just because one investment is smarter than another doesn’t mean the other one doesn’t deserve – or require – funding.

Done With Mirrors had a post that gave me the idea for this, and alerted me to an excellent article illuminating the subject at Donklephant

I want to compare and contrast the history of Islam with that of Christianity.

Christianity was founded in a time of a strong civilization and empire. At the time of Christianity’s birth, Rome was not merely the strongest polity in sight – her might was unchallengeable. By the time of the actual Roman conquest in 63BC, Rome had already been the power broker for the whole eastern Mediterreanean for a century. After Actium and the Egyptian conquest, there was no power capable of challenging Rome anywhere around. Military conquest wasn’t just out of the question; it was so far fetched as to be ridiculous. If it was a dream (and it was, a fact of which the Romans were well aware, which made the area completely unremarkable as far as the Romans were concerned), it was a dream clearly beyond reach for now.

It was into this situation that Christianity came into being. Certainly, given a chance, worldly power has always been one of the aims of any priesthood. However, military solutions were out of the question, and so the holy writings of Christianity, while certainly conducive to forceful conquest, emphasized individual faith, individual missionary work, and the powers of persuasion rather than of forcible conversion. In its early years, Christianity’s story was a story of persecution, of hiding in the shadows, at first from the entrenched Jews, later and more importantly from the Romans. Now, the degree to which they were persecuted by the Romans is frequently exaggerated by the Christians. But if they didn’t have to worship quite in secrecy, they were unable to worship publicly, much less forcibly convert others.

When Christianity became the official religion of the empire in Constantine’s reign (the preceding persecution by Diocletian being one reason the meme is so entrenched in the religion), it certainly had no problem with conversions by means other than persuasion (followers requiring conversion for advancement, among other motivations). But the roman empire was soon on the wane. First invasion ended the western empire, then Christianity found itself under attack from the north (Viking raiders), east (the Byzantines were in a war of survival from the eighth century onwards), and west (the Iberian peninsula was conquered), as well as riven by internal conflicts between church and state (beyond the scope of this essay, but consider the conflicts between the Fredericks of the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy.) These conflicts became the hothouse that bred the Renaissance and technological advances, and as soon as the Europeans figured out that there was a whole world out there a lot easier to conquer than their fellow Europeans were, they took advantage of it. Nonetheless, by this time the groundwork had been laid for some tolerance of religious differences, and by the time of the Peace of Westphalia this had been solidly grounded, at least in regards to religion not being used as a justification to invade other states.

So by the time of the colonial period, the rights of the various Christian sects to coexist had been basically accepted. If some were not encouraged or accepted so much as others by a given state, at least there was a level of tolerance between sects won on the battlefields of Europe. Later, even non-Christian religions became more accepted in Europe, and even the predominantly European colonies such as the United States and Canada. There are limits, strong limits with strong historical precedent, to the imposition of Christian faiths. Conquering the heathens and bringing the faith to them were regarded as two separate items upon the agenda, and if they were often prosecuted at the same time and one often used as an excuse for the other, the part about bringing the word of god was regarded as an opportunity for the natives, not as a mandatory “convert or suffer the consequences” sort of thing.

Islam was born in a region and era when the city state dominated. There was no overarching, overwhelming worldly power that could not be challenged. As a result, Mohammed was able to build in a large component of “spread the word upon the point of a sword.” Mohammed drew a much starker line between believer and non-believer than the early Christians would have been able to consider. Whereas in the Christian worldview, there are those that believe and those who have a chance to convert and be saved. God and the church are not one in the christian worldview. There is very little of this distinction in Islamic thinking.

The very name Islam translates as submission – submission to the will of god as dictated by his priests. Islamic priests. The concept of the person completely outside the faith does not enter into their thinking, as it does with Christianity as evidenced in Dante’s Inferno, among other classical references to “virtuous pagans,” who may have been good men and so are not punished, but are not admitted into what Christians see as god’s grace in the afterlife. The Islamic worldview divides starkly into those who have submitted to the will of god, and those who have not. Those who follow the word of god through his priests must follow the teachings or be damned unto the realm of Iblis. Islamic rulers are in many ways puppets of the priesthood. If the priesthood says that a certain act is against the teachings of Islam, then it will not be allowed.

The concept of the missionary – a preacher who converts the unbelievers by persuasion, rather than at the point of a sword, was present in Mohammed himself, but at no subsequent time in Islam until the modern era. Whether westward from the Arabic peninsula into the (then Christian) north coast of Africa and thence into the Iberian peninsula, north into what was Christian territory in modern day Turkey and thence into central Asia, India, and into present day Indonesia, Islam was brought and enforced at the point of a sword. Existing religions in conquered areas that qualified as “peoples of the book” (Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians) were not quite forcibly converted, and dealt with fairly up to a point, but were still (and are still) subjected to extra taxations as well as limitations upon their right to practice their religion, ability to advance outside their narrow community (The famous Alfred Dreyfuss would never have been permitted to serve an Islamic power, nor Benjamin Disraeli to hold his office. Israel, hated and vilified as the enemy of all Islam that in their media, has Islamic parties in the Knesset and Muslims throughout the government, including upon their Supreme Court), and flatly prohibited from making converts (As witness the Saudi treatment of Christians). It is to be noted that unlike Christianity, Islam has nothing analogous to excommunication or walking away from the faith. It is simple to become a Muslim – their simple profession takes less than ten seconds, and can be stated anywhere, anytime. But at least within the eyes of Islam, it is impossible to sever yourself from it. Once you take the pledge, you are bound forever in their eyes. Christianity, at least in theory, has always had the ability to leave the faith. In Islam, it is not even a theory. Once you make the profession of faith, you are Islamic forever, and the priests will always have dominion over you. You may be a heretic or apostate, but you are never beyond the reach of the priests, who understandably consider the cessation of practice as a matter to be urgently addressed. As an outgrowth of this, once an area is Islamic, it must forever more be considered Islamic in their eyes.

Islam, in short, does not have the historical limitations of proselytization placed upon it that Christianity does. Whereas Christian doctrine requires a good Christian to treat with all persons in good faith so long as they act in good faith, Islam does not. It has only the concept of a grudging truce between believers and non-believers, and this must only be done when there is something to be gained thereby (for instance, the Israelis do not conquer Damascus, Cairo or Baghdad within the next few weeks). In such instances, Islam permits its practitioners to make truce, and even to pretend it is permanent, but not for it actually to be permanent. As spoken by Islamic leaders from the very beginning to the religion and continuing today with every notable modern leader, the only permanent “peace” countenanced by Islam is when all the non-believers have been converted. Check out the translations provided by MEMRI for all of the evidence as to this which you should need. But the truce is exactly that – a breathing space meant to allow the Islamic soldiers time to force a more favorable situation, which they will then use to resolve the conflict in their favor. They are not giving up. Their religion does not permit them to give up. It’s only one more way to continue with the conquest of the dar-al-Harb.

Indeed, this situation is written into the Koran itself in ways which put the Old Testament to shame. Whereas the Israelites conquered themselves a homeland and proceeded to defend it, the Koran writes conquest and conversion into the very fabric of the religion, as from Mohammed’s days forward they were a religion of conquest. It is not clear to me that there is an available mechanism to change this. Unlike Christianity, it is the explicit injunction of the Koran that Islam value the pronouncements of living priests over that of dead ones, but this does not extend to the pronouncements of Mohammed, whence all of the Koran flows. Since it is with the pronouncements of Mohammed that we, the civilized west, have issue, we must accept that there may not be a way short of the extermination of Islam to permanently resolve the issue.

There are, to be certain, what we would call moderate Islamics. There is even, in modern Turkey, a secular state dominated by Islam. However, the continued existence of Turkey as a secular nation has been anything except easy since it’s creation after World War I. It has several times required the Turkish army to support governmental change or even to take over and run the country itself. I do not know how the meme that “Turkey is a secular nation” became engrained in their army and officer corps to the extent it has, but would be fascinated to learn it, if someone can point me at a good source or six. The process whereby it occurred could bear serious examination with an eye to adapting it elsewhere.

But despite the singular example of Turkey, the rest of the Islamic world remains locked in a jihad mindset, which if somewhat analogous to the Christian crusades on medieval times, both predates it and is much stronger in both religious and cultural senses of the term (Christians have always believed that a crusader who is evil will be banished to realms of punishment in the afterlife. Muslims do not and never have; the act of jihad is, in itself, a redemption). If individuals do not wish to join the jihad themselves, they are nonetheless required to admire and support those who do. Jihadists are to be allowed to preach, to convert, and to recruit. To do otherwise is contrary to the teachings of Mohammed, and woe betide the secular leader who wishes to hinder it, as the Saudis are discovering right now.

For us to win the war on terror without necessarily exterminating all Muslims, this has to change. And this reform can only come from within Islam. I have seen a few encouraging signs, but not nearly enough.

For those of Islam reading this, I do not wish a war of extermination between us. Despite all of the problems I see with Islam, it has aspects of tolerance and moral teaching lacking in many other faiths, including Christianity. I would like to see a broader understanding of your faith worldwide. But it must be done by the peaceable exchange of ideas, and those of other mind must have equal opportunity to convert you to their point of view. Your co-religionists cannot be permitted to continue jihad, and if you conspire with and support them, I must consider you their ally. It is not enough that you remain silent. You must remove the doubt that silence allows, and stand with the forces of civilization and tolerance for all, or with the forces that wish to bring the world back under the dominion of a priesthood that still has not left the dark ages behind. If you stand on one side, you will be among our most valued citizens. If you stand on the other, giving us a choice between submission and a life lived according to precepts that hardened in the eighth century, or death, then you must be stopped. All we ask is that you forswear the idea of conquest in the name of your religion. This is something that every other major religion has managed. It is now your turn.