Probably some prestigious American university admitted him, preferring foreigners, as always, over Americans - and knowing that it is very likely that he will never go home. HRS

If you show something like this to a liberal, and ask for a reaction, the liberal will reply, “He’s got a right to his say.”

The moral relativist (who is actually a nihilist) says: “I personally believe in right and wrong. But I don’t believe in imposing my judgments on others.”

The cultural relativist (who is actually a traitor) says: “I personally believe in defending our country from its mortal enemies. But I don’t think we should criticize people who feel differently.”

“Freedom of speech” has been elevated to a universal human right, one aspect of the elevation to divinity of the abstract human person whose self-expression is so cherished in the liberal worldview (i.e., on the liberationist side of the leftist ledger). The conservative view of freedom of speech, by contrast, is that it is valuable for our spiritual and political health to be able to speak without fear on controversial topics, but the purpose of permitting people to do so is to improve our self-government, to make policy in conformance with reality, not to facilitate the erosion of internal and external disciplines or to protect our enemies. The conservative approach to speech is to weigh the benefits of liberty against its costs, with the Good (translated into moral order) as the standard against which the cost benefit ration is measured. The benefit of letting an enemy loose to speak freely is generally minimal compared to the danger he poses.

The mainstream view is now that the fundamental right of expression trumps the traditional balancing of costs and benefits to societal order. It results from putting man in the center of reality—his every word is now sacred—instead of God. The same perversion of freedom of speech is evident of course in the field of pornography, where the pure destructiveness of the expression is viewed as negligible beside the freedom of the human person to express himself by his choice of lusts. The intellectual mediocrity of the courts is not a sufficient explanation for this horrible state of affairs. The intelligent conservatives have been ineffective, while the intelligent liberals have been driven by gnostic fervor to realize the supremacy of man.

I should have read the Baroud article before going off on a tangent. What tripe. The leftists may lap it up, but the Pan-Arabists in their Ba’athist guise are (were) the most advanced totalitarians this planet has produced. People who have not read The Republic of Fear or similar analyses of Saddam’s regime (if there are any) have no idea of the depth of evil he represents. Anyone who could view Saddam as a symbol of hope or unity or anything good must be treated as a danger to self and others.

Mr. Auster’s forthright statement of 02:21 PM harkens back to Col. Mason’s Fairfax County Resolves, (which were the basis for the Virginia and then Continental Congress Resolves.)

Paragraph 20: “… And that the respective Committees of the Countys, in each Colony so soon as the Covenant and Association becomes general, publish by Advertisements in their several Counties {and Gazettes of their Colonies}, a List of the Names of those (if any such there be) who will not accede thereto; that such Traitors to their Country may be publickly known and detested.”

http://www.constitution.org/bcp/fairfax_res.htm

A truly excellent statement from Bill. This is a perfect explication and concrete example of the idea that liberalism can only be non-destructive if it operates within a social order which is not itself liberal. Thus, understood correctly, freedom of expression is not an end in itself, and not an absolute right; it is something that operates within and serves a moral and cultural order. This doesn’t mean that all expression must pass some test of social utility or morality, which would turn society into a totalitarianism of some kind. A sane social order understands that there are areas of life that are naturally private and free. But our expression in those areas is not based on a positive right to say and do what we will, but rather on the negative right to be left alone in certain areas.

Liberalism, which reduces society to a one-dimensional vision of absolute individual rights, is incapable of making these kinds of rational distinctions.

My attempt to restate Bill’s idea was really inadequate. I just should have said, hear, hear.

Completely missing from Baroud’s comments is any recognition that the problems of the Arab world have anything to do with the Arabs or Arab culture. Rather Arabs are seen as passive victims of the machinations of others. He speaks of hopes of an imaginary Arab army to set things right, or of an illusory pan-Arab unity that would somehow solve all problems. The comments reveal a deep sense of helplessness and inferiority, that brought an otherwise presumably intelligent man to place his hopes in the likes of a Saddam Hussein who represented the dream of deadly attacks on those seen as persecutors, even if he was well known to murder fellow Arabs by the thousands. This deep sense of inadequacy among Arabs leads to paranoid projections of imagined Israeli and United States’ triumphalism. This obsession serves as a consolatory fantasy that substitutes for any self-examination, and strips those who indulge in it of any moral sense that would otherwise connect them to humanity. All the pathology of the Arab world, and indeed of much of the Muslim world, are summed up in Baroud’s brief remarks.

Thucydides writes:

“All the pathology of the Arab world, and indeed of much of the Muslim world, are summed up in Baroud’s brief remarks.”

Absolutely true. This person sees America and the West as the source of all the troubles of the Arab world, so he identifies emotionally with a cruel dictator because he is the enemy of the West. Of course, a lot of Western leftists have sided with Hussein and other third-world dictators for similar reasons. Like Oliver Stone identifying with Castro.

And to think that this lifelong America-hater was allowed to immigrate into America, where he could carry on his hate campaign against us from within, is almost too much to bear. And that the Seattle Times published this anti-American tripe! Would the Seattle Times ever publish … well, you know what I was about to say.

Mr. Auster should submit a reply to this tripe to the Seattle Times just to see how quickly they will refuse to publish it - and what the spin will be from the editorial staff. The fraudulence of those holding themselves up as “objective journalists” will be once again exposed. Their slavish servitude to the leftist Anti-American agenda should be exposed over and over again until it finally sinks into the public mind what frauds they really are.

Better yet, list the reply here first so that Bill, Thucydides, and others can go over it and add or emphasize points before submitting it to the Seattle Times.

As always, a very intelligent discussion.

I’m reminded of the French proverb: “When I was the weaker I asked for my freedom, because that is your principle. When I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.”

Freedom is an instrumental good and also a good in itself—but as a good in itself, it is hardly the most absolute good.

Try out the shoes. No matter how reprehensible Clinton may have been, would’t you feel a little disheartened to see him in shackles? This is just an acedemic question. So much for “feelings.” I don’t think there is any difference. There is no relativism here.

Just like that woozy feeling when you see your own cat impaled on the end of a pointed stick.
Even if you didn’t like your cat very much at all. Because it scratched you so bad once you still have the scars.
Still kind of gets you, huh?

Just for clarification, I didn’t say that Baroud is a relativist. I said that Americans who decline to criticize people like Baroud are relativists, in the sense that they believe that each person has a right to his own set of national loyalties and therefore we shouldn’t condemn an American who doesn’t believe in defending America from its enemies. While such a position is formally relativistic, in actuality, as I pointed out, it is treasonous. Only a person who doesn’t himself believe in the United States and is indifferent to attacks on it would be non-judgemental toward a Baroud.

However, having said that, I would add that Baroud himself is a relativist, though in a different sense. That is, he doesn’t judge men and acts by their intrinsic merits, but by whether they stick it to the imperialist West and strengthen Arab nationalism. So, if a particular leader happens to be a tyrant, a mass murderer, and a torturer, but is also a symbol of Arab nationalism, Baroud supports him or at least identifies with him.

But again, while such a view is commonly described as “relativistic,” the concept of relativism does not encompass its full meaning. What this view is really saying is that in the pursuit of goals in which I believe, _anything_ is permitted. But the belief that _anything_ is permitted is NIHILISM, as the ultimate authority on the subject, Nietzsche, pointed out.

The question arises whether there is finally such a thing as a relativism that is distinct from nihilism. Perhaps relativism should be seen as one sub-category of nihilism, along with Fr. Seraphim Rose’s other sub-categories of nihilism: Liberalism, Realism, Vitalism, and the Nihilism of Destruction.