It's pretty amazing to read and watch the reports and comments about America that come from outside America.
One thing that is heard is how Christian fundamentalists hold disproportionate power in America, and blah blah blah....
Changing the channel or clicking to a different website, there is a report about all the depravity -- pornography, rap music that degrades women, blah blah blah....
Those Christian fundamentalists are pretty liberal-minded to permit all the depravity!
The dynamic of a free country....
Americans generally seem to understand how such contradictory things can exist side-by-side in a free country, but foreigners (who may never even have been to America) so often completely fail to comprehend this; those foreigners who see the contradictions sometimes concoct these elaborate pontifications to explain it all.
Being an American and following what is said about America, it makes me sympathize with and try to understand Muslims.
There are these rabid nutters who lead protests with signs saying "Behead those who insult Islam" and terrorists who blow themselves up, along with busloads of innocent people, including infants... these nutters and terrorists are not exactly the most shining examples of humanity that the Islamic world has to offer.
Then there are the infidels saying "Islam is Evil," "Islam is Hell," blah blah blah.... (And for those of you who haven't read enough of this blog, I am poking fun at myself here!)
As a matter of principle, I am tired of Islam being defined, on the one hand, by terrorists who want to behead people and blow them up, and, on the other hand, by infidels who, reacting to the terrorists, see Islam in its worst possible light. Either way, the terrorists are setting the agenda, and I'm tired of it.
If you read the posts under the label "The Other Islam" you may notice that I have been pondering this dilemma for some time now.
Recently I got "interviewed" and my initial reaction to the idea was :|
-- but then, when I saw the questions, it wasn't so bad....
And, I got to thinking....
When America got attacked at Pearl Harbor, Americans didn't stand around at Pearl Harbor waiting for the next attack; we took the fight to places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In less than four years, we brought the Empire of Japan to its knees, and accepted its surrender on board an American battleship in Tokyo Bay.
Yet, ideologically, in the battle against Islamic terrorists, we have been hanging around at Pearl Harbor waiting for the next attack.
I am tired of Islam being defined by terrorists; I am tired of terrorists setting the agenda.
You are going to see this label, "The Other Islam", move in a bold new direction.
We are going on the ideological offensive.
Stop Islamic Conquest is setting a course for Big Terror's Tokyo Bay.
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8 comments:
excellent as always YD..but my litmus test is the moderate musslims attitude toward Israel eh...........
Well, if everything in the good ol' US of A is so hunky dory, maybe you lot over there should do a bit of positive image-building for foreign consumption.
Many of us in Europe see the USA as an alarming case of hubris run amok, and as a potentially more serious threat to world peace and security than Islam, if only because you've got so much more hi-tech hardware.
Well, Anticant, if many in Europe view the US as you say, then that would nicely explain why so much of Europe is falling to the immigration-invasion of pathetic Islamic-flavored ruffians, now wouldn't it?
Has it yet been established when and how the jizya will be collected in those places where America is viewed with such enlightenment? Or, is everyone planning to convert?
;)
Thank you both for your comments, my friends!
No, I don't think it does. A lot of Europeans feel like piggy-in-the-middle between two increasingly dangerous lunatic basket cases. The fact that your basket is preferable to Islam doesn't make you any more acceptable while you persistently fail to remove the beam from your nationalistic eye and go rampaging around the world like a demented rogue elephant. True patriotism isn't a matter of "my country right or wrong". Surely you, YD, don't endorse Bush's "he who is not with us is against us" rubbish?
I'll return to this theme in Anticant's Arena.
The weak fear America, because they know they have no strength in themselves. Think about it this way -- altogether, the EU has about 3/4ths of the economic power of the United States. They haven't bothered to build their armies, build their economies, or even care for the future of their own countries (the population growth rate in Europe is FAR below replacement level). Instead they've been busy giving up their currency, their laws, their weights and measurements, and their very freedom to the European Union. Rather than try to fix their problems, what do they do? Oh yes. Lash out at America, who has taken care of herself.
It's the old fable about the ants and the grasshopper all over again. What we read here is the last whinging before the lights go out in Europe.
I can't say I envy their predicament, but the posting of anticant demonstrates the attitudes that have created it.
Yes, russet shadows, we do fear smug purblind bigots, which is what the PNAC neoCon bunch currently running America are - a far cry from some of your greater mid-20th century statesmen.
Thanks to the Bush crowd's capers, the USA, and therefore the West, is weaker than it was pre-9/11. I take no joy in this.
"A lot of Europeans feel like piggy-in-the-middle between two increasingly dangerous lunatic basket cases."
I guess that's what happens to the hedonistic post-modern crowd that is so enlightened that it defines itself based on where it stands, and not what it stands for.
"The fact that your basket is preferable to Islam doesn't make you any more acceptable..."
A logical contradiction; it should make us a little more acceptable.
"while you persistently fail to remove the beam from your nationalistic eye and go rampaging around the world like a demented rogue elephant."
Very true, and very well put!
"True patriotism isn't a matter of 'my country right or wrong'."
It most emphatically is a matter of loving my country, even when we do what is wrong. A true patriot most especially then loves her or his country and tries to get it back on the right track, rather than abandoning it, lost in the wilderness of folly.
I contrast that to so many Europeans, who no longer consider themselves German, French, or whatever, but who now consider themselves "Europeans" -- the emphasis now is on the whatever part, and the results are plain to see.
"Surely you, YD, don't endorse Bush's "he who is not with us is against us" rubbish?"
I thought you had been reading my blog, and commenting on it. Now I wonder....
Does it look like I endorse those comments?
"a far cry from some of your greater mid-20th century statesmen"
Actually, the mid-20th century statesmen are in some ways closer to what we have had recently than they are to the great statesmen this nation has produced, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and (T.) Roosevelt, to name a few.
Still, though, admittedly it seems like the bottom has fallen out on our standards for over fourteen years now (and for four years in the late seventies and earliest part of the eighties), and so the quality of our "statesmen" plummets to new and surprisingly treasonous depths....
"The weak fear America, because they know they have no strength in themselves."
You just summed up not only the PC crowd, but radical Islamic terrorists as well, Russet. Great comment!
Thanks for the comments, I really enjoy reading them. A special thanks to Anticant for livening up the debate here. It just proves how well I chose when, having been awarded the Thinking Blogger Award, I immediately thought of you, Anticant, as someone who both thinks and makes others think. Congratulations again on a well-deserved award, and excuse me while I pat myself on the back for picking you! LOL
Anticant, I promise to stop in at your blog later on today, and see if I can help stir the pot any. ;)
Thanks for your kind and temperate response, YD. It's VITAL for the future wellbeing of the world that in those parts of it where free debate is still possible, we should all hear, and ponder on, the comments of 'candid friends'.
I've known some lovely Americans during my lifetime, and know what a good-hearted lot most of you are. But power does carry responsibility - not least to know how others perceive you, and not to reject criticism out of hand as 'anti-American'.
As you well know, YD, I am NOT anti-American! I'll try to elaborate my thoughts in my 'Arena' over the next few days, but as you also know I am bedevilled by chronic health problems which make it difficult to do all I want to as quickly as I would like.
And good to meet you, Russet Shadows. You have a very interesting blog there - I'll dip more deeply into it, and maybe leave some comments now and then.
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