Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Remember Monty Python’s cannibalism-in-the-lifeboat sketch? It ended with a viewer letter saying:
“As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we have the problem relatively under control, and that it is the R.A.F. who now suffer the largest casualties in this area.”
It was tasteless but funny because, of course, having a problem like cannibalism “relatively” under control isn’t remotely good enough. We expect there to be no cannibalism at all in the Royal Navy.
After the Texas shooting, I wonder if Monty Python is the Obama Administration’s best-case – Islamic terrorism in America is “relatively” under control? Not Many terrorist attacks. Only a Few Americans slaughtered. A Small invasion. Just a Handful of bombings. Pretty Good national security.
If so, this can’t be good news: ISIS claims to have 71 warriors already in-country and five targets pre-selected. Have we, as a nation, had our expectations so far lowered that we shrug and say: “It’s only 71 and they’re not in my back yard; Islamic terrorism in America is relatively under control”?
Joe Doakes
Was I the only one who looked at this claim and said “only 71?”
Yup. My frustration goes back to the Bush administration’s (a) knowledge of about 100,000 illegal immigrants from Islamic nations and (b) refusal to try and deport them. I wonder how much the number has grown with Obama’s illegal million work permits.
Was I the only one who looked at this claim and said “only 71?”
It seems that ISIS hasn’t been able to recruit as many virgins in the afterlife these days, so they’ve had to cut staff. D*mn the Obama economy!
Read it and weep:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/islamism-and-the-left
This is the state of intellectualism on the Left today. The phrase “utterly clueless” comes to mind. There is almost nothing in the article that describes historical Islam or contemporary Islam accurately.
The author of the article, Michael Waltzer, is described by wikipedia as
Michael Walzer (/ˈwɔːlzər/;[1] March 3, 1935) is a prominent American political philosopher and public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, he is co-editor of Dissent, an intellectual magazine that he has been affiliated with since his years as an undergraduate at Brandeis University. He has written books and essays on a wide range of topics—many in political ethics—including just and unjust wars, nationalism, ethnicity, Zionism, economic justice, social criticism, radicalism, tolerance, and political obligation. He is also a contributing editor to The New Republic. To date, he has written 27 books and published over 300 articles, essays, and book reviews in Dissent, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harpers, and many philosophical and political science journals.
“ISIS claims they have 71 warriors in the country..” Not to worry- the important thing to focus on is that evil lady and her cartoon fest….said every liberal I know.
Jim Hoft, isn’t he one of the bloggers who claimed Sharia Law was about to override the American legal system?
Jim Hoft is the Ollie Willis of the Right.
In this case he is referencing, indirectly, this anonymous post from a fellow claiming to be Abu Ibrahim Al Ameriki: http://justpaste.it/Anonymous90
Who is Abu Al Ameriki? ABC News says:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/american-turncoat-us-kill-list/story?id=22508967&page=2
When the professional educators at Plymouth Jr. High School gave me aptitude tests in the 1970s, they said the results showed that I was best suited to be either a librarian or a lawyer.
I was hoping for astronaut.
A few bits from the nearly incoherent Walzer piece:
If Walzer lives with a generalized fear of religious militancy, he is a fruit cake. The ability to differentiate between hazards in an essential part of being a human being and an active citizen in a Republic. This is like having a generalized fear of both gang-banging drug dealers and psychopathic cannibals with an IQ of 150.
If this was the eleventh century, yes. You can see that Walzer is having problems with usage. He’s trying for past subjunctive, I think, but misses the mark. You can see how silly the sentence if you change the subject:
“If I say that Rome in the second Century was expansive and dangerous to the German tribes, would that make me anti-Roman?” Walzer is desperately trying to create some equivalence between eleventh century Christian crusaders and modern Islamic terrorists without making modern Islam look bad in comparison to modern Christians.
Walzer is a reasonably well-educated person. He must know that what “tamed” Christianity wasn’t the Reformation, but the development of the nation-state, and that the only time Islam has been non-aggressive towards its neighbor coincides with the period when it was dominated by the Turkish Empire, and that the Turkish Empire during that time was quite weak compared to the Christian West. Walzer must also know that the crusades do not characterize Christianity. They spanned a period of just two centuries. They ended seven hundred years ago.
I think your interpretation is very perceptive.
Fundamentalist Islam is in many ways like fundamentalist Christianity. Christian fundamentalists are generally very happy to be apolitical as long as they are left alone in a stable society where they can worship and proselytize. I suspect Muslim fundamentalists would do the same. The Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia have not tried to seize secular power per se, limiting their sphere of influence to religion, education, and the status of women. It is the lack of strong states that lead to warfare in the name of fundamentalist Islam; in the absence of a state, the church is the next most cohesive institution to rally around. Without ISIS, those Sunni groups in Iraq and Syria would have only tribalism, leaving them even weaker and fragmented. But strong, competent governments in Baghdad and Damascus would never have created the vacuum that led to ISIS, and could defeat it now.
Emery, let’s test your hypothesis with a simple question. Where did Charles Martel defeat the Islamic hordes back in 720 AD? Had the “Islamic fundamentalists” been content to worship and proselytize, or were they in Tours, France, invading?
Honestly…..you’re trying to associate Al Qaida with the Amish and BJU, and it’s just not working.
Walzer demonstrates the failure of the progressive world view to account for reality. He finds himself literally unable to make sense of the world.
For many reasons it is unwise to compare Islam with any form of Christianity. The New Testament was written by human beings, the Quran is the word of God delivered to mankind by the angel Gabriel. Muhammad merely transcribed God’s words.
Each of the Abrahamic religions relates Man to God. For both Judaism and Islam this relation is defined by a set of rules. In Christianity the relation is defined by an action, the redeeming death and resurrection of Christ. Christian fundamentalists can never be as dependent on Holy Writ as Jews or Muslims. If they were, they would cease to be Christians.
Check and mate.
To quote Taggart: “…you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.”