Evan Coyne Maloney, Brain-terminal
[This is a great essay.]
For the last five years, it seems that every American use of force has resulted in hand-wringing and hypercriticism from the media and the president’s political opponents. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the wiretapping of phones used to call terror suspects abroad…the end result of the obsessive and overblown coverage of all this is to weaken the political structure that’s attempting to fight a war for the survival of Western civilization. Fortunately for the people we’re fighting, no abuse of human rights seems grave enough merit a many-months-long series of front page headlines and navel-gazing editorials. No, that’s a standard to which only the United States is held.
Don’t get me wrong: it is legitimate to question our conduct of the war, it is healthy to ponder the morality of our actions, but these days, that seems to be the only role played by the opposition and their allies in the media. And that has an effect on our ability to win wars.
There’s something about our psyche which seems to make self-criticism the new national pastime. Naturally, our political leaders know this. They know that when hundreds of newspapers and television stations align in a daily tearing-down of the war effort, the American people will eventually lose their nerve and want to give up. Others know this, too, which is why al Qaeda distributed copies of Black Hawk Down as a means to understand how the media can be used to amplify a relatively minor military failure and drive the United States from the field of battle. [..]
If terrorists provide enough negative footage to our media, they know we’ll turn and run. But if we fight too vigorously, that will be held up by our own media as evidence of our inherent evilness.[..]
Therein lies the root of the problem. Western society “was” based, far more than on anything else, on teachings which originated in Israel, and this is a fact.
Now let us consider something – When was Western culture based on Judeo-Christian beliefs? It really has not been that long.
For centuries Western civilization was under the fist of Rome which from the beginning was the antithesis of Jerusalem. The Romans themselves were the antithesis of the Jewish people. There has been much discussion here of late about collectivism and fascism; Rome was an author of both. On the other hand, the Jewish nation is the author of individual rights, liberty, and freedom. This puts the two foundations of belief in direct opposition.
The word fascism is based on the fasces (a symbol of many rods bound by cords to an axe) The bonds made them one but the axe was the superior and could chop the rods to pieces.) This symbolized a collective civilization and its many people bound to the authority of Rome as one. Mussolini built his fascism on the concept and even revived the fasces for the symbol of his party.
Ancient Rome is the icon of collective power and Jerusalem is the icon of freedom and liberty. That was the conflict then between the Jews and the Romans was then and that is the conflict in the world today. The whole world is presently in turmoil in the continuing ideological struggle between the Jewish model and the Roman model of thought.
Having been dispersed abroad for the last 2000 years, many Jewish people, some who actually embrace being Jewish cleave to the Roman model of thought.
When Christianity spread though Europe it was based on Roman philosophies after having been adopted by the Roman Emperor who made it the official religion of Rome and used it as a political power. Rome was still Rome and still ruling an oppressive collectivist civilization but now with dimensions of both political and religious power .
When scripture started leaking out to the common people (many were executed for this) the reformation began to break the bonds of the Roman model and many Europeans slowly began to come to embrace the foundations laid by the Jewish writers. The collective was broken and the individual began to gain freedom and power. Since that time there has been a schism in Christianity and as you see today, the liberal churches (based on the Roman model) as they did then, diametrically oppose the pro-Israel Evangelical Christians who are drawn to the Jewish people.
However, Western civilization has always held to parts of Roman ideology and has never come to fully understand or fully embrace the Jewish model completely – but to the extent that it has and to the extent some Christians have, they have profited and prospered because of it. Nonetheless, what we see now as Europeans go secular they go down and become more anti-Semitic, however it would not matter if Europeans embraced Christianity if they embraced it based on the Roman ideology. If that happened they would be no more friendly than the Grand Inquisitors.
Islam ties into this also since Roman paganism had roots in Babylonian paganism – and though many people are not aware of it, Mohammad was raised for a time by a Catholic nun during in his formative years and was taught Catholicism and developed Islam in part on it. – but this is already getting way too long to get into it all.
I have to tell you something yoram: don’t form general judgements such as that Western civilization is “decadent”. Western civilization is based on Judaism as well as Greek (and some others that more knowledgeable people than myself can explain to you), and if it’s not “totally” civilized in your eyes – not like we Jews, again in your eyes – it’s because SOME members of Western civilization have reverted to their natural paganism. Some call it secularism: worship of a material god; just another belief system.
But getting back to the article, the utter hypocrisy of the politically correct media and its avid followers (aka the herd) is reflected in the fact – and it is without doubt a fact – that when the knife of the enemy is approaching their throats, not a single politically correct thought will emanate from their minds.
Your right ! But the question is : is the Western civilisation worth being saved ? I think what happens to the West is what happend to all its predecessors, it is the immanent end of a decadency.
The only civilisation that will survive is the Jewish, since it is the only good one.
Yoram from the Holy City of David the King
It is not about political correctness, diversity or multiculturalism. It’s about a war declared by an enemy with no nation-state, who extols an ideology of religio-racist supremacism, uses war as worship of it’s deity and desires the insineration of the rest of the Jews that got away the last time. Quit looking in the mirror and look out the window.
Shelley, we meet again.
Political correctness forbids Westerners from saying our culture is better than Islamic culture, in spite of all the indicia by Western standards that says our Western culture is superior. As much as Westerners try to believe in that equality, they do sense their own superiority.
This conflict sets up a cognitive dissonance that stresses the West, clouds and confuses its judgment, and breeds an irrational fear that if we stoop to the level of our enemies on the battlefield that we will become no better than and just like our enemies.
Your point that Western politicians’ quest for power undermines the strength of Western nations they seek to lead has some validity, but that is so primarily because Western societies have adopted politically correct constaints on the exercise of good judgment, be it exercised domestically, on the world stage or on the battlefield.
This is exactly the way it is but it is too simple to blame the media. The oppositon in democratic countries will go to any, any lengths to gain power, even if it means undermining their own country. It’s all about power now. One wishes for a principled party, principled leader, and to hell with politics.