A Liberal Who Gets It

Great piece entitled Head In The Sand Liberals. He writes of liberals' fantasy that Jihadists are driven by the same sorts of inputs liberals imagine they, like all other "repressed" peoples, should be driven by -- the desire for more economic hand-outs from the West, increased opportunities for education, etc. -- rather than the single input the actually are driven by -- a xenophobic interpretation of Islam that would make the KKK itself blush:

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

...

I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world’s Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.

There's a great amount of odious liberal condescension at work here. No matter how many times Jihadists say "We are killing you because Allah commands it," liberals keep saying back, "Oh, pish-posh. We know what's really driving you -- a need for more day-care and infrastructure development."

Don't liberals believe in actually listening to the diverse narratives of oppressed peoples? Or is that just a cover for making up their own one-size-fits-all narrative and hegemonically imposing it on the world's repressed?

Related: Top Ten Reasons The West Will Lose The War On Terror. Sad but possibly true.

This links back to Ponuru's and Goldberg's premature statements about how the Republicans deserve to lose the November elections. When something seems inevitable, it's comforting to begin telling oneself that one deserved it, rather than fighting to make sure it doesn't happen.

Of course, Ponuru and Goldberg are talking about the much-smaller-states midterm elections.

But many liberals are convinced we cannot win this war. Or, more accurately: They are convinced we cannot win this war in a way they find morally acceptable. And for many, fighting a war is itself morally unacceptable.

Ergo, the steady drumbeat from the left that we deserved it, we actually blew up the WTC ourselves, etc. They have decided the only liberally-correct response to the War on Terror is to lose it, and they're comforting themselves, as Ponuru and Goldberg do, by telling themselves, basically, "We didn't want to win it anyhow."

You can't win a war unless you fight it. And the left simply doesn't believe that Western civlilization is worth defending -- despite the ironic fact that Western civilization is the most "progressive" civilization ever to grace the earth.

But not quite progressive enough. Ergo, it must not be defended, and we must all learn to accept becoming, essentially, slaves to hegemonic, violent, vicious bin Ladinism.

Wow: A scorching video for today's Vent.

I would say that this latest episode is pretty much the breaking point for most.

posted by Ace at 05:45 PM

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