We have a really big handicap in the battle against Islamic terrorists: the unwillingness of most of the elites to correctly describe the nature and motivations of the enemy. We had a problem in fighting communism with Leftists who embraced many of the aims of the communists. But in the case of Islam it isn’t a desire to see Islam spread that causes so many Western intellectuals and members of the elite to go easy on it. Rather, there is a double standard where secular ideologies are considered fair game for criticism whereas religious ideologies are held to be deserving of immunity from criticism due to the supposedly divine source of inspiration for the beliefs of their adherents.

Osama Bin Laden made it clear that he was going to exact revenge against Australia for the Australian support for the break away of non-Muslim East Timorese from rule by the dominant Muslims of Indonesia. In Bin Laden’s mind (and in the minds of hundreds of millions of other Muslims) the natural God-ordained order of things is for Muslims to rule non-Muslims. Any opposition to that natural order serves as justification in the minds of the Muslim terrorists to do a lot of killing.

Mr. Parker is right, but it seems to me there is far more to this. The idea that Muslim terrorists might really be driven to mass murder by a religious ideology is inconsistent with the most basic convictions of modern western liberals. (I apologize in advance for the long message…)

First, liberals are deeply committed to multiculturalism and ‘tolerance’. In order for those ideals to be even superficially plausible, they must assume that underlying even the deepest cultural differences is some common set of values and aspirations substantial enough to unite seemingly incompatible cultural groups in a single polity. Naturally enough, they picture these as their *own* values and aspirations - equality, secularism, and so on. (For what else could they be?)

But it is hard to believe that people who are willing to commit mass murder for the sake of a messianic ideology share those liberal values and aspirations in any form. Islamic terrorists present liberals with evidence of *real*, deep cultural difference that can’t be resolved by ‘tolerance’. If taken seriously, the terrorists’ own understanding of their culture would require liberals to take sides, for western civilization and against a foreign culture. This is a horrifying prospect to liberals.

Hence the need to pretend that Islamic terrorists are not *really* motivated by their faith, or their alien culture, but instead by secular complaints that liberals can easily understand and appreciate.

Second, and relatedly, liberalism is supposed to transcend culture, religion and other particularities. It is supposed to be a neutral arbiter of such differences. The terrorists knowingly reject and despise liberal principles on religious grounds. If they are not simply confused - if liberalism and Islam really are incompatible - then this can’t be true. Liberalism must be culturally particular. (If political system A is neutral with regard to cultures B, C, and D, it can hardly be *incompatible* with any of them.) This would throw into question the entire liberal project.

Finally, liberals instinctively picture non-western, non-Christian peoples as long suffering victims of western intolerance and exploitation. It is on behalf of these poor people, in large part, that they imagine themselves to be protesting against the west’s culture and history. Part of this attitude leads them to accept or at least take very seriously any accusations made against the west by non-westerners, no matter how outlandish or ignorant (one thinks of the Durban conference, for example).

In this way they prove themselves morally sensitive and enlightened - non-racist, non-ethnocentric, etc. By agreeing with whatever the victims of the west say, and so securing the acceptance and approval of foreigners, liberals hope to extricate themselves from the oppressor class and alleviate their guilt.

It is essential that there be this possibility, the option of redemption. Otherwise, given their view of the world, it would be psychologically impossible for liberals to think about politics and morality at all - no one can bear to believe that they are irredeemably evil.

But the terrorists explicitly say that the liberalism of the west is just as evil as its vestigial Christianity. To take them at their word, therefore, would be for liberals to give up the last chance of redemption: no matter what westerners do or believe, short of conversion to Islam, they are the enemies of Islam and deserve to die.

Thus the terrorists put the liberals in a double bind. Either dismiss out of hand their fanatical ravings about the evil of the west, and succumb to ‘racism’, ‘Islamophobia’, ‘insensitivity’ - or else sympathize with their complaints, and accept that one is irredeemably evil, that the moral approval of the Muslims is forever unattainable.

Hence, again, the need to redefine the terrorists’ beliefs and aims. If what they are really angry about is in fact poverty (or whatever), then it is still possible to listen respectfully to the terrorists and, in time, to secure their approval and acceptance. Liberals can still hope to denounce and despise their own culture while holding out hope that they themselves are pure and good.

A good comment by J. Here’s one way of boiling it down. Liberals believe that all people are equal and the same. Since this belief is, of course, untrue, a total commitment to it forces liberals to treat the worse as better than they are and the better as worse than they are. This is the double standard that conservatives continually complain about, not understanding that the double standard is not a mere failure of liberals to play by the rules, but the very essence of liberalism. To believe that there are differences that really matter makes one a non-liberal, a hater, a racist. Therefore the crimes of our enemies against us cannot be seen as crimes, but as an understandable response to the unnatural inferior status that we have forced on them. The worse our enemies behave, the more their badness must be denied and blamed on us.

There is no escape from this dilemma as long as one remains a liberal. As I’ve been saying since 9/11, we are now in the apocalypse of liberalism. Either liberalism dies, and our civilization lives, or our civilization dies, and liberalism dies with it. Either way, liberalism dies.

With respect to Mr. Parker’s comment, there is one religious ideology that liberalism means to criticize into oblivion, especially in those countries where it is the native religion: Christianity. One could ask the Chief Justice of Alabama about that.

Nevertheless, Mr. Parker’s comment is still true, and that illustrates the liberal hypocrisy J alludes to in his comments: because of liberalism’s cultural prejudices that compel him to prefer anything from a non-Western society, however benighted, to anything from a Western one, however enlightened, the liberal must accept non-Western practices he would consider abhorrent if of Western (especially Christian) origin.

The only exceptions pit a tenet of liberalism against a practice of non-Western traditionalism. When such conflict, the liberal may oppose the non-Western practice, but only with plenty of apologetic self-flagellation and only to the extent that practice conflicts with one of liberalism’s tenets. The obvious examples are conflicts between feminism and Islam.

Liberals generally oppose the culture of the burqa, but they do so only because they consider it oppressive to women. If it were men behind those veils, they would be unconcerned. Occasionally they even end up on the right side of a social question: Liberals oppose the vicious practice of female circumcision, but again for feminist, not religious reasons. Unfortunately, because their opposition to an abhorrent religious practice is entirely secular, liberals are incapable of opposing female circumcision with arguments that might have any effect on Moslems who mutilate girls. HRS

I read the exchange with interest, but I am afraid that the participants are bogged down in hoary misconceptions about “liberalism” (far leftism wearing the mask of liberalism would be a more accurate characterizatiion.) The people they are so rightly attacking do not believe either in equality or that all people basically have the same values. To think this is to confuse present-day “liberals” with their New Deal or 1950s predecessors, but they manifestly are different. (Even New Deal liberals had no trouble, by the way, grasping that Nazis did not share their values, and some could even figure out that that was true of the Reds) Any amount of inequality (eg affirmative action) does not bother them as long as it as the expense of whites; and when they say that they believe in multiculturalism aka diversity that is half-true — they do in fact prize difference as long as it is different from traditional Western values, or what they conceive as such. Sure, they don’t really like Islam.. but they do hate us far more.
I think the participants vastly underestimate the amount of hatred and irrationality we face.
Posted by Alan J. Levine

In reply to Mr. Levine, the question of what are liberalism and leftism—including his idea that today’s liberalism is really leftism in disguise—has been wrestled with a great deal here. My own view is that the primary phenomenon is liberalism, with leftism being a more extreme or consistent form of liberalism, openly hostile to the existing society, while liberalism claims to be loyal to the existing society. Liberalism is the belief in equality, and in ongoing progress toward ever greater equality. As liberalism advances, it dissolves more and more of the social order, i.e., all the values, institutions, and habits that are not liberal, until nothing is left. The older forms of liberalism that Mr. Levine refers to appeared less radical only because so much of the non-liberal aspects of the social order were still intact in past times. For example, liberals once believed in traditional marriage and wouldn’t have dreamed of including homosexual relationships in the institution of marriage. But traditional marriage and morality are not liberal values, they come from non-liberal sources. As liberalism advances, it keeps challenging more and more of these non-liberal values that liberals had vestigially held on to. As soon as it turns its debunking gaze on them, the liberals either abandon them or hold onto them only be making unprincipled exceptions from liberalism. Liberalism, as liberalism, is wholly destructive. That’s why I tend to think that there is not an essential difference between liberalism and leftism. I agree that most “liberals” today are of the leftist variety, but that is because liberalism has by now evolved so far that its fundamental hostility to the social order can no longer be disguised.

Let me make it clear that I am not denying the profound differences between 19th century liberals and 21st century liberals. But we also cannot deny the continuity of development leading from the former to the latter. Why did liberalism, which in its Jeffersonian phase hated the centralized state, turn into a religious devotion to the centralized state? Why did liberalism, which believed in constitutionalism, turn into the rule of judges? It is because anti-statism and the belief in constitutionalism are not the _primary_ liberal impulses. The primary liberal impulse is equality. Liberals opposed the centralized state as long as it was seen as a threat to equality; but when the centralized state began to appear as an agent of equality, it was embraced. Constitutionalism was seen as a protection of equality, but when it began to appear as an obstacle to equality, e.g. in the early Civil Rights movement and Brown v. Board of Education, it was abandoned.

In response to what I’ve said so far, it might be claimed that there was no continuous development from the older to the later liberalism, but rather that leftists came along and hijacked the respectable concept of liberalism. But if that is true, how can we explain the remarkable similarity of attitudes between the older and later liberals? For example, Jefferson and his followers were filled with paranoid hatred of the Federalists, whom they absurdly accused of seeking to impose “monarchy” on America. In the same way, today’s liberals accuse Republicans of being fascists and racists. The paranoia in both cases comes from the overwrought sense that one’s opponents are enemies of equality.

Alan Levine wrote,

” … they do in fact prize difference as long as it is different from traditional Western values, or what they conceive as such. Sure, they don’t really like Islam.. but they do hate us far more. I think the participants [in this thread] vastly underestimate the amount of hatred and irrationality we face.”

Where does all their hatred come from? What’s generating it?

I notice just now that my question to Mr. Levine is actually answered perfectly, at the end of Mr. Auster’s comment, immediately above:

The other side’s hatred “comes from the overwrought sense that [their] opponents are enemies of equality.”

Their opponents, of course, are us — the “conservatives”: they, blind as they are to all natural causes of every kind of inequality imaginable, must see us, the conservatives, as standing in the way of the world’s finally achieving the long-sought-after holy grail, perfect “equality among men.” And for our perceived fault in evilly thwarting the ushering-in of that paradise on earth of total equality, we are hated with an incandescent, white-hot hatred.

The absolute fools! The utter, ignorant, blind fools!

While it is certainly true that many liberals and leftists refuse to take the ideas of Islamists seriously, this blindness exists on the right.
A quick perusal of anti-war.com and a number of paleoconservative and libertarian websites will show a similar desire to ignore the threat among those who should know better.
Some libertarians accept liberal values and refuse to understand that culture matters. Some paleocons understand the full implication of a clash of civilizations and believe that appeasement will work.

Regarding Ron’s comment on the anti-war paleos, I don’t think it’s a matter of their being rationally persuaded that appeasement will work, but rather of their reacting against something that they don’t like. They don’t like American military involvement abroad; they don’t like supporting a policy that neoconservatives support; and of course they don’t like doing anything that may, even collaterally, benefit Israel, and so they react against those things. Their appeal to the efficacy of appeasement is not something they really believe; it is a rationalization to justify their anti-war stand.

ron and lawrence auster both reduce paleoconservative thought to the level of thoughtless reaction and emotional action.

since almost all paleocons are catholic, and their positions are almost without exception catholic, perhaps catholic thought which is never thoughless or emotional is a better place to look.

the follow are typical examples of paleocon thought concerning the recent war:

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/HardRight/HardRight041103.html

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/HardRight/HardRight032503.html

no one understands better than the Catholic Church, and those who follow her, the true threat of islam, but neither will the Faith admit error, or its faitful sell their souls for temporal victory.

My comments were not directed at all of paleoconservative thought, but at typical paleocon attitudes relating to the war on militant Islam.

A sonnet on the Crusades from the great Anglican poet, William Wordsworth:

The turbaned Race are poured in thickening swarms
Along the west; though driven from the Aquitaine,
The Crescent glitters on the towers of Spain;
And soft Italia feels renewed alarms;
The scimitar, that yields not to the charms
Of ease, the narrow Bosphorus will disdain;
Nor long (that crossed) would Grecian hills detain
Their tents, and check the current of their arms.
Then blame not those who, by the mightiest lever
Known to the moral world, Imagination,
Upheave, so seems it, from her natural station
All Christendom:—they sweep along (was never
So huge a host!)—to tear from the Unbeliever
The precious tomb, their haven of salvation.

And of course, in line with Bill, there is the work that that deserves to make G.K. Chesterton live forever:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/lepanto.html

Abby said: “no one understands better than the Catholic Church, and those who follow her, the true threat of islam”

No one understands better? I would be interested to know how the Pope’s visit to the Omayyad Mosque, and the seemingly conciliatory statements that attended it on both sides, reflect this superior understanding.

joel,

you mistake the particular for the universal. it’s the same as if someone attempted to disprove that men by nature have sight, by citing the example of helen keller. keller’s lack of sight is a particular privation of that which is natural to men.

the popes visit was a particular act, which falls under the category of prudential judgement. prudential judgement is not infallible.

the institution of the Church by Christ, when he handed the keys to st. peter, may have been likewise a particular act, but the art is in the artist, and thus God’s act of making the Church the deposit of faith is infallible.

the true threat of islam is spiritual, not temporal, and although just as we are both body and soul, and thus desire the good of both, we desire their good in relation to their perfection. and since the Church is the deposit of faith, and thus knows the spiritual error of islam most perfectly, it knows most perfectly the true threat of islam.

likewise, the culture wars discussed on this site are finally a spiritual warfare. many of the discussions deal with particulars, but at heart of each discussion, if we seek the most basic premises from which each side approaches the issues, we shall find the warfare of the earthy city’s assualt against the city of God.

Abby wrote,

” … and since the Church is the repository of faith, and thus knows the spiritual error of Islam most perfectly, it knows most perfectly the true threat of Islam.”

It does? Then I wish it would start acting like it did, instead of running around in league with the Tranzis. When’s the Vatican going to start taking a more forceful stand against Muslim immigration into Italy? Or how about into the Catholic countries of Western Europe generally (mainly Italy, France and Belgium)? There are lots of kinds of invasions possible in the war against Christianity. The military kind isn’t the only kind.

As a faithful Catholic, and one well aware of the limited extent of infallibility, I can only echo Unadorned’s frustration about some of the prudential judgments now coming from the Vatican. It is not un-Catholic to point out that the Pope and much of our Church’s hierarchy have dangerous and self-destructive blind spots with respect to multiculturalism, migration, ecumenism generally and Islam specifically. It is not disloyal to pray for wiser, more aware, stewards of the Church.

Not all of the Catholic hierarchy are clueless, however. Witness Giacomo Cardinal Biffi’s (the Archbishop of Bologna) comments about the need to restrict non-Christian immigration to Italy to preserve that country’s Christian and, yes, Italian character. Not surprisingly, his sentiments were not endorsed by our Polish pontiff. HRS

i agree with unadorned and howard sutherland that that cetain acts of prudential judgement with “respect to multiculturalism, migration, ecumenism generally and Islam specifically” leave much to be desired, to say the least. we can all cite our horror stories, but as someone once said, if you don’t tell me your horror stories, i won’t tell you mine.

what i originally pointed out on this thread was that most paleocons do not argue from a thoughtless and emotional position, but from a body of knowledge which is at its base infallible and properly ordered to the good.

if we are to understand the paleocon positions, we must first understand the wellspring from which their positions come, and not mistake their positions for what they are not. even st. thomas made errors, but because his final souce of knowledge did not partake of error, he understood acording to his capacity the subject matter he commented on.

lastly, i consider the Church’s enemies to by my own, and since the current war by the u.s. is the seculars against the infidels, i prefer to sit on the sideline and watch them destroy each other. as st. augustine wrote, we hope for the good of the lands we occupy, which forces me to very quietly cheer for the seculars in this particular war, but the enemy at our doorstep is not islam.

“since the current war by the u.s. is the seculars against the infidels, i prefer to sit on the sideline and watch them destroy each other. as st. augustine wrote, we hope for the good of the lands we occupy, which forces me to very quietly cheer for the seculars in this particular war, but the enemy at our doorstep is not islam.”

We may each have our own way of dealing with the dilemma Abby has well described, but the dilemma remains.