Joseph Butson

In a thought provoking essay, Baron Bodissey argues that the end of the cold war failed to lay to rest Marxism. Perhaps the military debacles of the Marxists and the disaster that was its economic model were so complete that the west sportingly left alone marxist dogma. It may have been a grave error as the Left dominate western universities, main stream media, basically the “educated” elite.

In compelling style, Baron synthesizes the experience of the Muslim riots in France last summer, the anti-globalist, the anti-capitalist, the socilaist and the battle by islamofacist to restore the caliphate into a “really scary story.” Perhaps as scary as the conspiracy theorists at the Daily KOS.

The “oh so earnest” crowd at the Daily Kos are exposed by the NYT’s Richard Brooks this weekend.

Well, I have to hand to them, they sure do know how to marshall the mob those neat KOS guys, control the Dems and so on. Popularity has its price but, jeez, could they, like, at least try to be sneaky about it!

Nevermind that their dogs won’t hunt, the Republican controlled senate is as useless as the “do nothing” Congress that Harry Truman exposed in 1948 on his way to the biggest comeback in Presidential election history. The WSJ just excoriates the House in a weekend editorial. It seems doing nothing about immigration is doing something about being re-elected. I look for the president to pull them back to work, just like Harry did, to demonstrate that he won’t let them betray the cause of meaningful reform and be pushed around by a nobody like Congressman Tancredo.
The Sunday NYT then “outs” the Congress again with a prime example of “earmark excrement that sticks to the Speaker in a way that Illinois voters are bound to notice.

I followed a series of posts on a thread at Small Dead Animals that impressed me.

Interspersed as they were amongst blog “trolls”, they highlighted the value of blogging. Many thanks to Kate who runs Small Dead Animals and who deserves credit for hosting and spurring debate that focuses on the essential.

This quote also appeared:

As Thomas Paine once remarked:

“He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Beautiful! The posts by ET discussing remarks by others and her own views about the nature of Tribalism in the Middle East [ME] were brilliant opinions. I have copied them and they follow herein.

One last remark, in yesterday’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd’s column focused on the Liberal Blogger’s meeting in Las Vegas this weekend and how the Daily KOS is the most popular blog. Its not, by far. But we I don’t need to disabuse Maureen of this notion as much as remind anyone who might actually read this post that what appears in the NYT is neither honest or interesting.

So here it is:

The problem that we in the west are refusing to acknowledge is that Islam is less a religion than a sociopolitical system. We, and they, hide its problems by defining it as a religion and we in the west, with our multiculturalism and political correctness, reject debate about religion.

Islam is, in particular, a tribal rather than civic sociopolitical system. This means that its membership is closed, based around kinship ties and obligations, hostile to other tribes who are defined as infidels, hostile to individualism, focused on group solidarity. It adamantly rejects change, it is focused on its mythic origins which are defined as ‘pure’ and change is understood to befoul this original purity.

As a tribal system, its axioms are faith-based, and geared to promote stability. This rigid behaviour, it is assumed, will maintain purity and ward off danger.

A civic society rejects original purity; its members are citizens not by virtue of kinship in a genetic tribe but by agreeing to a ‘constitutional contract’ of social behaviour. This constitution is not mythic in origin, is not pure but is amendable.

Tribalism is disastrous for an industrial world, because it rejects change, innovation, questions, debate, dissent, exploration. Islam hasn’t had a scientific thought since its origin and operates by ‘piggybacking’ on western innovation.

The problem that the West and Muslims have to deal with, is that Islam is refusing to modernize and reform its axioms. It is trying to maintain a belief and behaviour that is dysfunctional in our modern world. It is trying to ’save itself’ by destroying anything that questions its, that hints that it has problems and so on.

Muslims have to realize that their religion must be reformed. By them. They have to speak out; they have to object to this extremism and its ‘original purity’ ideals.

And the West has to realize that it cannot sit back and say and do nothing during this ‘phase of violent rejection’, for this Islamic phase is seeking to maintain its old axioms by destroying the West.

It isn’t about religion. It’s about a sociopolitical mode of life that is, like fascism and communism, destructive.

Actually, steve d, you are right.

Economics does trump everything. That’s because, without an economy that feeds, houses, secures its population, a society goes - whoosh - into chaotic oblivion. You can’t ignore the millions of people in your nation; you have to provide for them. And if you ignore the economy?

You can see examples in Haiti, in Africa, which have all ignored the economic infrastructure and focused on ideology. Ideology without that economic base, is not merely empty; it’s disastrous. And so, we have massive famines in Africa, murderous gangs, tribes killing other tribes, no ability to feed themselves, no ability to stop the slaughter.

That means that without a strong economic infrastructure, there’s no such thing as safety. I’m sure you’ve seen what has happened in the states in C. America, in Africa and elsewhere that have lost an economic infrastructure. What rapidly emerges is ‘thug-economics’ where people rob, murder, loot, set up criminal turfs, kidnap for money, steal ..on and on and on.

So, in order to defeat fascism - in this case Islamofascism - you can’t destroy your own national economy. That would throw you right into the hands of the fascists!!! I’m sure you realize that, don’t you?

kmm - the economic reliance on oil is NOT breeding terrorists. Weaning the entire world from oil will NOT reduce terrorism. Oil plays a role in terrorism only in enabling the ME to remain tribal by virtue of funding its military dictatorships.

The cause of terrorism is the dysfunctional sociopolitical infrastructures of the Middle East - namely, tribalism.

Yes, Salim Mansur is excellent. Tarek Fatah also wrote an excellent column in the Toronto Star the other day, on the same issue. Muslims have to speak up and ‘take back’ their religion from the extremists.

‘zero’ was, to my understanding, developed by the Hindus. The algebraic numbering system was also developed by the Hindus. But, middling points aside, - very nice post, Hans. The Islamic focus on ‘original purity’ is dysfunctional. Just as the communist focus on ‘future purity’ and the fascist focus on ‘essentialist original purity’. But the Muslims have to make these changes themselves; they have to move themselves out of fascism.

steve d. You are just repeating leftist platitudes. What is ‘corporate policy’? What is American foreign policy? Do you know the difference between a democratic society and a dictatorship? Do you know the difference between a tribal sociopolitical and a civic sociopolitical system?

The US foreign policy is to spread democracy. I think that’s a correct policy. Tribalism is disastrous in our modern industrial world. The ME has been entrenched in tribalism until now, and is at a ‘cusp’ where it is fighting to retain tribalism, yet torn apart by the dysfunctionality of tribalism - and, this stress is both imploding internally, even if constrained by military dictatorships, and exploding into the Western world.

The only sociopolitical mode possible for populations in the multimillions, is democracy. With that size population, you require a dynamic rather than stable economy, one with the capacity for anticipation of changing future events, the capacity to adapt to these changes with minimal stress.

You require a civic rather than tribal population, one that is focused around an agreed-upon constitution - a constitution that is based in current realities and thus, is open to amendment. Tribalism, based around ‘pure original Truths’ won’t work.

You require a population that is intellectually flexible, whose knowledge base is open to questions, debate and change. None of this is possible in a tribal knowledge base.

So, Bush’s foreign policy is exactly right. Spread democracy by taking out dictatorships, allowing the people the freedom to set up their own democracies, and..enabling democracy to spread. There is no other choice.

The key problem in the ME is tribalism. Islam is a sociopolitical system that promotes tribalism. They have to question it, debate it, and change it - as people like Salim Mansur and Tarek Fatah and Irshad Manji and others are saying.

And by the way, for all the ’steve d’ types who assert that ‘it’s all about oil’ - while ignoring the sociopolitical mode of tribalism, I’d like to point out that oil use is global. I know steve d and others of the left have in mind that only the Evil USA uses oil, but, our industrial technological infrastructure is global. And, that infrastructure runs, heavily, on oil. All over the world. That includes all the computers and homes and cars and etc used by the left. Oil is a significant contributor to the industrial economy.

At one time, it was coal. Now, it’s oil. We’ll probably be moving to helium and hydrogen at some time, but for the moment, the whole world, not just the Evil USA, runs on oil. I wish the left would remember that.

But, as to who is supporting the dictators of the ME - I think you’d better look outside the US. Try France, Germany, Russia and China. It’s an error to focus everything on one country.

The reality is, however, that at the moment, the industrial global economy runs on oil. However, that doesn’t mean that a global economy based around oil REQUIRES that the ME, as the major source of oil, has to be run tribally! That is ITS error. It is the ME tribal dictatorships that are keeping their own people repressed. To blame this repression on the global use of oil, and the west’s use of oil, misses the point. The ME governments are, themselves, running as dictatorships. They could empower their own people; they choose not to do so. They aren’t puppets of the West; they could move out of tribalism.

Since, on their own, they won’t - and since this is harming the West - the West has had to move in, and take out the peripheral dictatorships and enable democracy. Since it was obvious that the ME would not, on its own - as it should have - moved itself into democracy. The West, by the way, did move into democracy on its own.

In an editorial this year, Mark Steyn wrote:

“Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It’s not. It gets burned because it’s strong. I’m a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don’t ask me why – we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo’s boys. I’ve never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling “Death to the Little Satan!”, but you can’t have everything.”

For this opinion piece,  he received the Eric Briendel Award and he is the first non-American to receive it. He is a favorite of mine and I recommend his lucid, witty and prolific writing to all. Apparently, he is drawing a crowd!