Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs

7 thoughts on “Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs”

1. Two things on this.

   First, it’s time to let the Germans off the hook for WWII. Enough of the whole collective guilt trip. My Polish wife has had 20-something Germans apologize for WWII. Sorry, this is past its sell-by-date. If modern Germans are unreasonably anti-American, part of the major reason for it is that having collective guilt pounded into them for 50 years has made them completely open to leftist thought.

   After all, suppose a conservative, pro-German politicians suddenly made his appearance. Say that he used rhetoric similar to the rhetorical flourishes our own politicians are prone to use. Suppose he made speeches like, “Germany and the German people have a great and glorious history of which we should all be proud. I believe Germany today is one of the greatest nations on Earth, and that we should hold onto and in fact celebrate our history, our language, and our traditions!”

   Republicans and Democrats alike would be trampling over each other to get to the microphone to call him a NAZI. Any expression of German patriotism is treated with disdain and dismissed as a neo-NAZI revival.

   So the Germans have embraced a neutered sort of globalist, ‘we are the world’ style of socialism. In this view, homeschooling is dangerous as is anything that might herald the revival of German individualism or independence from the group think foisted on the Germans post-WWII.

   Of course this only gets rebuke from American conservatives.

   And while we are on the subject of the Mullahs, a lot of flack has been aimed at the Germans and Europeans lately. I wonder if Dinesh D’Souza’s latest column will be reprinted here on Orthodoxy Today, in which he states (on Townhall.com):

   Islam’s origins do not justify the conclusion that it is a religion that makes no provision for tolerance or pluralism. Islam has, from the beginning, made a distinction between conquering land and bringing it under the rule of Islamic law—this is allowed—and forcibly converting people to Islam—this is not allowed. The Koran itself insists that “there is no compulsion in religion.” I realize that many people bandy about quotations from the Koran about “slaying the infidels” and so on, but these quotations generally apply only to pagans, not to Jews and Christians. As monotheists, Jews and Christians were allowed to practice their religion in every Islamic empire, from the Abbasid dynasty to the Mongol empire to the Ottomans.

   When the Muslims ruled northern India for centuries, they could easily have forced all the Hindus to convert on pain of death, but they didn’t. India remains overwhelmingly Hindu, a tribute to Islamic and later British tolerance. In the medieval period, Islamic tolerance contrasts favorably with Christian intolerance. In the fifteenth century, Jews were attending synagogues in Muslim regimes while Christian rulers in Spain gave them three choices: leave the country, convert to Christianity, or be killed! Many Jews fled to Muslim countries where they could continue to practice Judaism. The Pope made no mention of these facts in his Regensburg speech.

   Let us remember that Islam has been around since the eighth century, while Islamic terrorism is a phenomenon of the past 25 years. Consequently it is wrong to blame Muhammad, the Koran, or the Muslim religion for something that is clearly a recent phenomenon. The real question to ask is, what is it about Islam today that makes it an incubator of fanaticism and terrorism? Why is it that now, as never before, so many people are willing to kill and be killed in the name of Allah? These are questions I address in my recent book The Enemy At Home.

   We expect clarity out of the Germans, when our own conservative commentators produce such drivel.

   This Holy Week, let’s pull the beam out of own eye.

2. Glen, you have a flair for overstatement. If collective guilt is the cause of German leftism, why are France, England, Holland, et.al. suffering from the same leftist illusions?

   The Dinesh D’Souza debates in the conservative press have been very interesting. Several of his essays have been reprinted here, btw.

   Pornography — The Real Perversion

   Rethinking Abu Ghraib

   as well as some critical of his views:

   Dinesh the Dhimmi

3. I don’t have a beef with Dinesh over everything he writes. Some of his stuff is quite good. His perspective on Islam seems a bit off, especially when he says that even if critiques of Islam are true, we should not talk about them.

   Leftism has in deed run amok across the continent of Europe, but does it stand to reason that the cause of leftism and political correctness are necessarily the same for each nation? Leftism has also made massive in-roads in the United States, but have the same forces driven the process here as in Europe or in Venezuala?

   I have read extensively about the plight of German homeschoolers, and they all have similar things to say. After WWII, the defeated German nation and its Western handlers valued control above all else. They left in place many centralized features of the German state as built by Hitler, and focused on controlling all outbursts of German nationalism that might prove threatening. The goal was a deracinated German nation.

   Here is an interesting quote from a homeschooling magazine:

   Why is it legal to homeschool in the other European countries and not in Germany?

   The more I think about it the more I realize that it is all about culture. When you look at the history of Germany you can understand this. Today, if I was to hang out a German flag on my house, people would say I am a Nazi. You can’t do this. Our anthem has three verses. You cannot sing two of them because they are too patriotic. “Germany over everything.” [Deutchland Uber Alles] You can’t sing this. Our back was broken too many times. After the second world war, America established in West Germany many institutions that would keep a strong government that would control the mass of people to not let them go bad again. This mindset is still there, it is still working. We are still in this strong institutional mindset that controls the thinking of the people and people are not getting out of it. And the government is not going to give up power.

   Rest of article here: http://www.triviumpursuit.com/blog/2006/12/27/the-homeschool-movement-in-germany/

   The collective guilt and the retained socialist institutions following WWII with an emphasis on control have to both be dismantled if Germany is to rise again as a free nation. This means that we have to stop beating up Germans for what happened 50 years ago, and we have to accept authentic expressions of German nationalism. Pride in one’s country is not a negative thing, but in Germans it seems to give the rest of the world a collective fit.

   You can disagree or agree, but don’t you think it is high time that Germans quit reminding themselves about their horrible past, and embraced their own culture before the Muslims take it from them?

4. Well, I think it should be remembered, just like all of history, but not so obsessed about that the nation will have no pride. If we remember, Germany was very destitute after World War I, and had very low morale, before Hitler came to power.

5. Dear All:
   Why did one choose this article, there are others; “Bush: A Spectator at His Own Decline”. This was a commentary on a Sabine Christiansen interview with President Bush. She is a well known TV presenter in Germany. The interview was given when he visited Angela Merkel.
   One view of the Germans, of the ages polled, is that they are anti war-any war. And Bush’s unilateral-pre-emptive war was looked upon as an anathema, i.e. and the American people backed it. Of course now the majority of Americans do not back it and now see it as self-destructive to their state and the economy. Don’t forget that Hitler was also a unitary executive like Bush has tried to be one. The war-Bush talking to God about going to war- tinges of blasphemy, the prisons, the polemic, the renditions, the torture and the massive destruction of a country and its population and its civilization has been very destructive to trans-Atlantic relations The war has unleashed the whirlwind of civil war and brought turmoil to the whole region.
   One of the main ideas of having a European Union was to do away with continental wars. There have been many more wars across the continent than across North America. Most of these wars were fought in the areas of German speaking Europe.
   The people of the various countries in Europe do have a mind of their own; why should they think as Americans think and do as they do. Their total experience is different than that of the people of USA. Of course the Europeans look down on the Americans as the Americans criticise and look down on the Chocolate Republics and other inane references.
   Mr. Claus Christian Malzahn writes and talks a lot; he is the right of centre internet forecaster for the left leaning Der Spiegel. He is very prolific and likes the US for its freedom of thought and innovations in business and its ability to change when necessary. Left and right is not the same for each European country as it is thought of in the US.
   Remember, in the heart of every German is a policeman. If something isn’t kosher it should be corrected; they will say what they think not what one would want to hear. Don’t think on this to much.
   Sincerely,
   J R Dittbrenner

6. Don’t forget that Hitler was also a unitary executive like Bush has tried to be one.

   BAH!! Thanks for the laugh…;)

7. Francis Fukayama, author of The End of History and the Last Man argues for the European approach towards development of a market economy and democracy and against the Bush appoach.

   The history at the end of history

   Moreover, the desire to live in a modern liberal democracy does not translate necessarily into an ability to actually do so. The Bush administration seems to have assumed in its approach to post-Saddam Iraq that both democracy and a market economy were default conditions to which societies would revert once oppressive tyranny was removed, rather than a series of complex, interdependent institutions that had to be painstakingly built over time.

   Long before you have a liberal democracy, you have to have a functioning state (something that never disappeared in Germany or Japan after they were defeated in the second world war). This is something that cannot be taken for granted in countries like Iraq.

   The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organisation. Following Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a “post-historical” world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.

   Finally, I never linked the global emergence of democracy to American agency, and particularly not to the exercise of American military power. Democratic transitions need to be driven by societies that want democracy, and since the latter requires institutions, it is usually a fairly long and drawn out process.

   Outside powers like the US can often help in this process by the example they set as politically and economically successful societies. They can also provide funding, advice, technical assistance, and yes, occasionally military force to help the process along. But coercive regime change was never the key to democratic transition.

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