I’m offended. Those people, by their actions, have demonstrated the essentially corrupt nature of their society and culture. Their behaviour, which all right-minded people should be offended by, should be universally condemned. If anything shows that we are right and they are wrong, this is it. And I call upon all of those who agree with me to take action, while there is still time. To those who say that our side has also erred, I agree: there have been errors of judgement. But if anything our mistake has been to do too little and too late. We now need to wake up and respond to the danger that confronts us. In any case, to suggest that what we have done bears comparison with what they have done is itself deeply offensive and such sentiments betray the inner corruption of those who utter them. Some principles are absolute and this is one of them. Some have suggested that it is hypocritical of me to take offence at what those people have done whilst ignoring or excusing what some other people have done. Such critics thereby reveal their own inability to distinguish between those people and the other people (who have surely suffered enough and deserve a break). Others have intimated that I spend my time trawling the internet looking for obscure TV clips and articles in foreign languages to be offended by. Frankly, I find such comment offensive: the price of what we hold sacred is eternal vigilance and someone has to take on the responsibility of telling our people about the grave danger they face from those people.
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So what does Chris think, you ask?
Damn straight dude!
It takes courage and strength but I can stand with my head high! I believe and uphold all that is right and proper and condemn, utterly, all that is wrong and hurtful.
And you can quote me!
A brilliant blow in the war on moderation and tolerance!
Beautiful!
…to take offence at what those people have done…
[fixed. Thanks CB]
Being in the ‘World Politics’ section and including a reference to foreign languages, I presume Chris is talking about the burning this weekend of foreign embassies in Syria and Lebanon. However, it could be a text referred to practically any issue involving civil liberties consolidated in Western democracies which are actively violated in other countries. In its essence, I would agree 100% with the argument. However (and I’m not justifying here any human rights violations, quite the contrary), convincing the power elites (the only ones who could make a real difference) in such other contries that they should adapt to the West’s views in these issues is very difficult if we go around invading countries, savagely exploiting they natural and human resources, etc. A dangerous world, indeed.
This is brilliant. Right-wing bloggers can use it as the equivalent of clip art: just cut and paste it as necessary to liven up even the dreariest argument.
I, too, am outraged by this outrageous outrage!
Bingo!
Oh for heaven’s sake. It’s really a lot of fuss about nothing. I can’t understand why everyone is getting so worked up about this rather trivial issue, when there are so many far more important things to think about. I almost suspect that there is some alternative agenda behind these oh-so-carefully-orchestrated displays of outrage.
I can’t remember who to hat-tip for most of this:
1. Free speech is good
2. Bigotry is bad
3. Rioting is bad
4. Free speech does not justify bigotry
5. Bigotry does not justify rioting
6. Rioting does not justify bigotry
I gather you agree with point 5.
Clever, I do believe Stalin used this same tactic to expose everyones views … then, you know the rest of the story.
BB
Who said rioting is bad? Rioting can be good.
They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things.
Think what’s happened in our cities when we’ve had riots and problems and looting. Stuff happens!
…
I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny –- ‘The sky is falling.’ I’ve never seen anything like it!
The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times and you think, ‘My goodness, were there that many vases?’
Big deal. Of course I agree with you in principle but it’s crazy to get so worked up about it. Your lot have done exactly the same things to our lot and were you offended then? I don’t think so. All the time that’s going on, don’t expect any sympathy from me. And is it really wrong anyway? Something will be done about it, of course, because it is, of course, wrong, as I have always aknowledged, but I just don’t see the point in talking or thinking about it.
Finally, something both the left and right can agree on! :-)
Hey. I thought this was written by an offended Muslim and now I read the comments and find out that the opposite is the case? I am offended. I am outraged. My assumptions pale in the face of your assumptions. For shame for shame.
Clever, I do believe Stalin used this same tactic to expose everyones views
Good reminder from Bartleby—the main post could use a dash of the old “Stalin / Hitler / Mao / [insert dictator here]” treatment, along the lines of “those who don’t think I should be outraged are the moral equivalent of those who thought nothing should be done about Hitler until it was too late.”
I am offended too.
I am offended that you seem to consider an all-out war on free speech to be something worth joking over.
Buildings are being torched. People have been murdered. And here, you’re making light of it all.
Look: All right-minded people should be offended when random Danes are being threatened abroad for the cartoons drawn by someone else with the same ethnicity. That really is wrong.
But please, spare me this stuff about those awful Other People and how “their nature” being essentially corrupt. That’s a fanaticism, too, and I am sure that you know better. It is the idea, not the person, that we must struggle against.
It’s also not a question of distinguishing between “those people and the other people.” An Islam—for example—that respects the freedom of speech could exist, and therefore the quarrel, if any, is not between Us and the Muslims. It’s between us and certain fanatical ideas.
How do I know? Well, Christianity didn’t used to be too tolerant of blasphemy, either, and it managed to change its ways, too. You probably know the story of the Chevalier de la Barre just as well as I do, but the rest would be well advised to Google it.
Rioting is patriotic. The Boston Tea Party was a riot. Rioters stormed the Bastille. Rioters threw out Milosevic. There are countless examples. Just one caveat. For rioting to be patriotic you have to win.
It’s between us and certain fanatical ideas.
This needs to be added to the post.
I’m outraged, you hear me, outraged.
Not just outraged in fact, I’m also disgusted. Deeply disgusted.
At?
Well, at the lack of a sense of irony in certain of the comments here.
I don’t want any part of any society in which no one is permitted to make violent attacks on vague targets.
In my opinion, I think the embassies of commenters number 5 and number 7 should be burnt to the ground.
Tit for tat. They have no sense of irony, we torch them.
19: the quarrel, if any, is not between Us and the Muslims.
The quarrel “if any”? Why these weasel words after taking Chris to task for joking about an “all-out war”? Could it be you’re insufficiently dedicated to the quarrel, the struggle, the all-out war between “us” and “certain fanatical ideas”?
See, I think more people should be joking about it, quite frankly. Too much that’s laughable on all sides to do otherwise, and it’s not as though the mount-the-barricades rhetoric does much to pull things back into perspective.
People have been murdered.
Who’s been murdered? I’ve been following the reports and I’ve seen no mention of that.
But surely the $64 question is whether you are sufficiently outraged to propose a “cut [of] billions from the Medicare health program” in consequence?
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N05163915.htm
Look: All right-minded people should be offended when random Danes are being threatened abroad for the cartoons drawn by someone else with the same ethnicity. That really is wrong.
But shouldn’t all the right-minded people also be offended when random Muslims are being threatened at home for terrorist acts committed by someone else with the same religion?
It seems to me that the recent tragic events prove that my policies should immediately be adopted.
Jason Kuznicki has rendered further humor superfluous.
Yeah, I thought the Seahawks got robbed, too.
Excellent job, Chris. Perhaps you could do up a piece, next, on the odd dichotomy that Arab newspapers run anti-Semitic cartoons because they are bigots, but European newspapers run anti-Muslim cartoons because they love freedom.
Hmm. I’ve tried googling various bit of this post and not found any evidence that it’s an extract from Hitler, Stalin, Khomeini, Churchill, Ghandi, MLK, or any other text ever written in English. So I guess that means CB isn’t trying to pull a fast one by posting an excerpt from a famous or infamous speech and waiting to see how many of us presume that it’s his own view. But that doesn’t mean I’m convinced it is his view.
aside from a satirical view, that is…
Chris,
This is beautifully done, but I don’t think it’s half as clever as you want it to be. Sometimes there really isn’t an equivalence between both sides, and this is most definitely one of these cases. You should have used the same piece of prose for some US culture war topic and I would have laughed a lot harder.
Isn’t the endgame of the irony that might makes right?
Actually I think there’s a very real equivalence between “warblogging” loons who seek to stir up fear and hatred in the West against everyone in the Islamic world, and loony imams who stir up hatred of Westerners over a bunch of stupid cartoons. The real difference between these two bunches of losers is that the warbloggers, via their influence on the policy of the most powerful nation on earth, have far more potential for doing harm than the imams.
Seahawks? I’m offended. This is clearly about those cheating divers at Chelsea.
As Patrick has pointed out, this post stands in a fine tradition.
(HTH.)
Actually this ironic stance of Chris’s is not clever/funny. Interesting yes but not for the reason most of the people here think. It is interesting only because it shows that Chris has nothing to say on the matter ; moral quietism ?
‘People have been murdered’
At the risk of asking a stupid question, who, precisely, has been murdered?
Are you by any chance referring to this incident here?
‘Muslim demonstrators clashed with security forces who fired live rounds and tear gas to break up violent protests in several Asian countries on Monday against the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Two demonstrators were shot to death.’ (italics added).
i.e. a situation where our own wonderful Western backed democracy shot and killed two demonstrators (as opposed to a situation where a demonstrator killed someone else, which would seem to be what you are implying)?
Or is it the death of the Roman Catholic priest in Turkey which, (to the best of my knowledge) had nothing to do with the ‘cartoon controversy’?
Or is it the death in the Lebanon in which ‘One protester died after jumping from the third floor of the blazing consulate building.’ (italics added)?
This really is perfect. It’s like a Rorschach test – people just read into it whatever commentary they expect to see.
The one improvement you could make would be to break it into numbered sections, which we could then refer to in future comment threads.
E.g. comment 32 above would be replied to with the code for “In any case, to suggest that what we have done bears comparison with what they have done is itself deeply offensive and such sentiments betray the inner corruption of those who utter them.”
Zdenek: You say it’s not funny, and yet I laughed. Your stance against humor shows that the terrorists have already won.
Personally, I feel like the doctor in the final scene in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and just want to holler “madness, madness, madness”. I suppose that Chris’ approach is a bit more ironic.
So what they say about the Left becomming morally degenerate is true , interesting. For two days complete silence ( sullen , resentful silence ) and now this pathetic juvenile , sophomoric reaction ( that is Chris ) and from the comment gallery ? same degenerate moral relativism and resentment. The right has been characterising the left in this way for some time see for instance Scruton in ‘West and the rest’ but some writers on the left have been making similar criticism : Martha Nussbaum’s take on Judith Butler.
What is interesting is that now we see this hollowness / decadence that these philosophers are drawing attention to in action. The problem clearly are not the islamonazis but rather ourselves , just listen to yourselves guys for a moment if you can.
Wow, zdenek has to be a plant. Too perfect.
“But shouldn’t all the right-minded people also be offended when random Muslims are being threatened at home for terrorist acts committed by someone else with the same religion?”
Indeed they should.
“People have been murdered.”
I wasn’t exaggerating. Consider Theo van Gogh, who most certainly was murdered for offending Muslims. Or consider that several people involved in the translation and publication of The Satanic Verses met the same fate.
Please, let’s not put our heads in the sands about these matters.
“The quarrel “if any”? Why these weasel words after taking Chris to task for joking about an “all-out war”?”
I spoke this way because it did not appear that Chris was at all interested in conceding that there was a war, a quarrel, or anything of the sort. I happen to think that there is, and I wanted to show him why. I trust it’s not forbidden (in the name of patriotism, or irony, or what have you) to indulge in a few concessions for the sake of argument.
Incidentally, I subscribe entirely to comment #37 above.
I love the smell of a clash of civilizations in the morning. Smells like… bullshit.
Walt: that wasn’t laughter you were experiencing, it was…
moral degeneracy.
(Tastes just as great, but only half as filling.)
What is interesting is that now we see this hollowness / decadence that these philosophers are drawing attention to in action.
I like ‘decadence’, sounds like fun.
Since I believe only in what is right, anyone who disagrees with me is by definition wrong. And all right-thinking people agree with me!
It appears that some people have mistaken this as a post about world politics instead of a post about language. It’s quite interesting to see who assumes that Chris is agreeing with them and who assumes he’s disagreeing with them.
I took it to be about the nexus of politics and language, neil- and not only on one “side”. Orwell would have understood.
Chris:
That was a BRILLIANT piece of satire.
It allows anyone to read anything they want into it.
Well of course THEY are wrong. After all, they are not US are they?
But, based on some of the posts above, more than a few of your readers seem to be somewhat “humour challenged”.
Reuben: Huh?
The idea that there are two equally morally offensive outlooks viz. the western defence of freedom of speech and on the other hand hostility to this idea among the muslims and that the virtuous/clever stance is some meta attitude of indeference /irony that we see here ( and on the Left ) is dumb.
The core claim of moral equivalence that this view hinges on is untenable because it involves the incoherent idea that all views are equally justified.
Secondly what is wrong with taking sides ? The left has traditionally done this e.g. the struggle against apartheid or struggle against Nazism. So what is so different now ? The difference seems to be that since it is our own side and the side we despise that needs moral/intellectual support we cannot provide it ; our self hatred wont allow us to do that . This is a depressing picture and requires psychyatric categories to shed light on.
On the model of truthiness, we need a word for this: offenciness. Two words summing up the politics of the last five years.
Somebody around here attacked the “Western defence of freedom of speech”? Gosh, I must have missed that. But you just can’t slip anything past old eagle-eye Zdenek.
Secondly what is wrong with taking sides ? The left has traditionally done this e.g. the struggle against apartheid or struggle against Nazism.
Some on the left do take sides. They equate the current campaign against Muslims with Nazi campaign against Jews. See this, for example: http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/02/muslims-are-coming-again.html. So, everything is fine now, right? There is no hollowness/decadence?
Steve,
How many self-congratulatory comments with zero content are you going to make on this thread? Zdenek is making interesting points, so either engage him or shut up. You come across like a complete ass.
Gee, itty-bitty commenter, you’ve now made just one self-congratulatory comment with zero content. You’ll have to work overtime to catch up.
steve labonne – the point that was being made has to do with not taking sides :-)
abb1- the idea is not to take sides just for taking sides sake but rather to take sides based on traditional left commitments ( basically enlightnment values )which provide moral content. This is why the perverse inversion that is involved in comparing criticism of izlamofascism with nazi attack on jews is incompatible with the Left outlook . Again it makes sense to you (the inversin of enlightnment values )because like a lunatic you think morality is just a game .
58: How many self-congratulatory comments with zero content are you going to make on this thread?
Yeah, “engage” that guy’s wearily stereotypical blathering about “the left,” Steve. The Power of the Right compels you!
54: it involves the incoherent idea that all views are equally justified.
Yeah, like when leftists try to claim that no scientific theory should be taught in schools as more true than a religious myth, because it’s “unbalanced.” Or when leftists attack the media for reporting uncomfortable facts by accusing it of “bias.” Or when the left tells conservatives that their problem is either that they’re too goody-goody and worried about laws and morals, or that they’re amoral and don’t worry enough about protecting freedom and the rule of law—whichever tack is more convenient in a given moment. God, I hate it when the degenerate Left does those things. Damn degenerate Leftists.
Any reason to riot in the Middle East is a good reason. I’m surprised it’s taken so long to find a pretext.
walt: see zdenek 37 (‘neither clever nor funny’), plus you 41, plus zdenek 43 (‘morally degenerate’). According to him, it ain’t funny, you’re morally degenerate.
Have no fear, though. I would posit that moral degeneracy is at least 40% more pleasurable than laughter, though it does tend to stain the sheets something terrible.
Steve,
The content of my post was that you come across like a complete ass. Thanks for the opportunity to repeat it.
Everyone here seems to agree that Chris wrote a brilliant piece of satire, and I certainly think so. The question some of us are raising is whether satire is the appropriate reaction to the current events which I personally find deeply unsettling.
Commenterlein said it best in the second paragraph of #65… Brilliant, satirical, but not funny.
Teeny-weeny opinionator, I made the content of my views clear in #34. Speaking of not addressing points made in comments, I don’t see you dealing with my point that, like the riots, the predictable right-wing-chorus of “see, we told you THEY were like that” is also deeply unsettling, and in addition fronts for an actual power to do harm which is far in excess of that of the rioters.
doctor slack—basic rule of reading any text is to treat it with minimum of respect so please if you bother to respond to what I have to say at least read what I have to say : I am saying that the moral equivalence view depends on relativism .
Also if you have heard all this stuff before why cant you get the basic elements of my view right ?
Gosh, I wish we could all agree that “being offended” and talking about it is different from “being offended” and torching an embassy. Is that concept too simplistic for advanced thinkers?
There might be a little bit of a difference between being offended by death threats (carried out and not) against those who make artistic depictions of Islam and being offended by (frankly not all that offensive by the standard of rude cartoons about religion) cartoons. There might also be a bit of difference between the legitimate reactions to offense.
Or perhaps, if you are Chris, there might not.
Thousands of people organizing spontaneously for violence to embassies sequestered from reality is a measured reaction compared to a nation of hysterical millions advancing to war over imaginary threats. Who knows, maybe both incidents are connected somehow.
Sebastian, if you had to work, as I do, with right-wing assholes of the “nuke Mecca today!” variety, perhaps you’d see that the offense does not lie only on one “side”. And much of that same outlook went into energizing popular support for the Iraq invasion, which has killed orders of magnitude more innocent people than the rioters have.
Madness is madness. Calling it by its right name, wherever it’s found, is simply morality, not “moral equivalence”.
Hey Zdenek,
abb1- the idea is not to take sides just for taking sides sake but rather to take sides based on traditional left commitments ( basically enlightnment values )which provide moral content. This is why the perverse inversion that is involved in comparing criticism of izlamofascism with nazi attack on jews is incompatible with the Left outlook.
Come again? I’m really trying to understand this, in spite of my being a lunatic; please bear with me here.
So, drawing their Mohamed guy with his head looking like a bomb with a fuse or with horns – this constitutes enlightnment values to you and criticism of some fascists? If so, then who’s to say that the Nazis weren’t criticising some sort of ‘jeudeofascists’ back in the 1930s – only to defend values, of course. They actually insisted that they were defending their traditions and their freedom against ruthless cunning villains.
Why are you so sure your own defense of values ain’t the same sort of things? I see little difference.
On all sides passionate intensity has become a hallmark of the worst. Lacking all conviction, the best retreat to neutral ground – only to find it eroding at their feet, and too crowded anyway.
Ironic detachment will save us.
Or it won’t.
Who cares.
I am not going to press this issue because you guys are not interested ( or not capable of defending your position ; just redicule your critic or use ad hominem does not cut it but it seems that thats all you have ). The main point though that I wanted to make and was hoping to see refuted is that left is disconnected ( mabe too strong ?) from the traditional enlightnment values and your replies to me on the whole confirm this. :-)
Some people here don’t seem to realize that after 9/11 everything’s changed.
ABB1,
Freedom of expression and the right to criticize religions are indeed enlightenment values. And if the Nazis had just done that I don’t think anyone would have had a problem with it. You may remember though that the Nazis went a wee but beyond that and actually killed the Jews – not an enlightenment value. But thanks for asking.
74: just redicule your critic or use ad hominem does not cut it but it seems that thats all you have
So, you have nothing to say in response to either 71 or 72, say? Too bad. Guess your talk about what “does not cut it” is going to seem pretty hollow…
ABB1,
I just re-read your comment – are you really saying that you see little difference between a defense of the Mohammed carricatures and what the Nazis did to Jews? That would be one sick opinion.
I’m offended.
Duly noted. ;) A masterful example of hyperbole of emotionally laden phrases. A rant waiting to be aimed at something; a rant-in-a-can. :)
Yarha, Rent-a-Rant
So, Commenterlein, do you think your islamonazi villains are the real ones – endangering your traditions, values and your life perhaps?
So, what are you gonna do about it? How’re you gonna defend yourself, Commenterlein, buddy, against ‘em hooknosed crafty bastards? Gotta do somethin’ till it’s too late.
ABB1,
That is your reply? Pretty sad.
What he’s really saying is there’s nothing to distinguish Nazi caricatures of Jews and liberalofascist propaganda of Islam. It’s true we haven’t killed 6 000 000 islamonazis yet, but we’re working on it and Freedom of Speech is another weapon aimed in that direction. It’s not like the Germans defeated Zionobolshevism with ovens alone, you know.
Commenterlein – yeah, that’s my reply. What’s your reply?
This reminds me of a Bloom County cartoon from the early 80’s, about people being offended. After watching the people flee upon realizing everything is offensive, Opus cited their condition: Offensitivity.
honor-based society vs morality-based society
The issue.
“Madness is madness. Calling it by its right name, wherever it’s found, is simply morality, not “moral equivalence”.”
Yes, but suggesting that publishing caricturatures is the same kind or intensity of madness as burning down multiple embassies and subjecting random Danish people in the Middle East to death threats isn’t morality, it is moral equivalence game playing. Being offended by killing artists and threatening their lives or burning embassies just isn’t the same as being offended by a cartoon. Suggesting otherwise (and Chris’ cutsie post does) is just silly.
Would Chris be writing a similar post if a Christian group threatened to kill people over an offense taken on the Creation Science issue? I think he might find a few words against that kind of religious craziness that wouldn’t amount to “Oh lots of people take offense at lots of things. How naughty of them.”
“Yes, but suggesting that publishing caricturatures is the same kind or intensity of madness as burning down multiple embassies and subjecting random Danish people in the Middle East to death threats isn’t morality, it is moral equivalence game playing.”
That is certianly some intense strawman-building…
What I find amusing is that the “it’s not funny” side is accusing the “it’s funny” side of moral relativism, when, in fact, its only funny if you are not a thoroughgoing relativist.
A true relativist would find it too obvious to be funny. A true relativist understands intuitively that there is no reason that We are right and They are wrong, that’s just the way it is.
A true relativist has a hard time understanding why anyone would bother having reasons to fight.
Isn’t it obvious that people fight because they are human?
Indeed, everything changed after 9/11. Except the stuff that didn’t.
But what no one ever discusses is that everything changed after 9/12, too. And after 11/3. And 2/5. And I changed the part in my hair, and no one said anything about that, either.
This willful silence is a shame for all of humanity.
abb1—thanks for your comment . The content of the cartoons of course does not represent enlightnment values but only specific view of islam ( and that view may be right or wrong . I am thinking of the link that some people think exists between islam and violence ). What you are being asked to show solidarity with is the right of the cartoonists to draw and publish those cartoons.
It is this specific right that I call enlightnment value just to highlight its ancestry ( Kant ). So the argument then is between supporters of enlightnment value in this case freedom of expression on one hand and on the other side are people who want to say that religious doctrine must have upper hand.
The point I want to make is that it is silly if you are on the left to not take sides here because by our own principles we should oppose any move to impose the religious doctrine on public domain. And so its totally off the wall to campare thse efforts with Nazis’ s criticism of jews ( the slur also implies that there is similar hegemonic agenda which is crazy ).
Who was it that said, “With freedom comes responsibility.” I’ll defend anyone’s free speech. I can also say that was a really stupid thing to print.
But rioting, violence, all of that is an extreme overreaction. I suspect a lot of it was fed by a few extremist leaders who saw this as a prime opportunity to turn on their own manipulation machinery and set it loose on a mob.
Sebastian, speaking of game playing, making the next move in the game that lies behind your comment is like shooting fish in a barrel. “Yes, but suggesting that illegally a invading a country and causing the needless deaths of thousands of civilians is the same kind or intensity of madness as burning down multiple embassies and subjecting random Danish people in the Middle East to death threats isn’t morality, it is moral equivalence game playing.” And once again, the “warblogger” mentality was a very large part of energizing public support for that einvasion, so there is real guilt on “our side”.
We could go back and forth like that for quite a while, I expect. I say: Screw the “my grievance is bigger than your grievance” crap, that’s EXACTLY the kind of insanity that fuels the rioters. Opposing bad things when and as they occur, regardless of whether they’re on “our side” or “their side”, is where sanity lies. By the way, addressing not so much you as some of the other commenters, where did I say one word to suggest that the cartoons should not have been published or that the cartoonists, newspapers, or publishers should be forced to apologize? I happen to have a pretty absolutist conception of freedom of speech. I don’t favor suppressing the Mark Steyns of the world either- I favor ridiculing them.
My righteous anger is so much deeper and greater than yours that even contemplating that difference fills me with even more pity, revulsion, and bitter indignation at your incapacity to see the world the way I do.
88: The point I want to make is that it is silly if you are on the left to not take sides here
Oh, but plenty of us on “the left” do take sides—we just don’t draw the sides up along the “clash of civilizations” lines you’d apparently like to see, which is apparently what galls you. Many of us don’t, for example, believe that many of the people who are so worked up about the Islamofascist Threat to Freedom actually give a shit about “enlightenment values.” As Steve quite perspicaciously pointed out earlier.
The point of analogies is that by demonstrating the parallels between different cases, one makes an effective argument for treating them the same way. The closer, more numerous and more detailed the parallels, the more powerful the argument for similar treatment. Conversely, the fewer, weaker and less detailed the comparisons, the weaker the argument.
Chris’ parallels between the Muslim world’s violent responses to the Danish cartoons, on the one hand, and Western outrage at that violent response, on the other, are so ridiculously vague, general and content-free that they actually undermine his case for parallelism. They address neither the reasons for the reactions, nor their moral bases, nor their respective scales, nor their substance, nor even their form (except in the vaguest terms).
If all he can muster by way of linkage is the limp observation that both sides are expressing indignant outrage, then one might reasonably infer that the cases are probably quite radically different after all. And indeed they are, in so many flagrantly obvious and critically important ways that one can only maintain the pretense of their similarity by ignoring their every relevant detail.
Guys, you’re all taking yourselves far too seriously. Part of the point of this comment was to take a look at both yourselves and “the other side”, see how hollow much of the rhetoric we all spew out is, and laugh at ourselves.
We wouldn’t have half as much of the trouble we have in this world if we’d do that occasionally.
RE: “90. Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
How dare you imply that moderation is anything but a cowardly surrender to the dangers that confront us.
Over two thousand years ago the Hebrew Bible settled the ‘problems’ of subjective notions of honor and face with objective rights and wrongs that trump family/tribe insults.
Beavis and Butthead were there first, xopher:
CY: Butt-Head, I have a question for you. I noticed that you often say, “I like stuff that’s cool.” But isn’t that circular logic? I mean, what is the definition of “cool,” other than an adjective denoting something the speaker likes?
BH: Huh-huh. Uh, did you, like, go to college?
CY: You don’t have to go to college to know the definition of “redundant.” What I’m saying is that essentially what you’re saying is “I like stuff that I like.”
B : Yeah. Huh-huh. Me, too.
BH: Also, I don’t like stuff that sucks, either.
CY: But nobody likes stuff that sucks!
BH: Then why does so much stuff suck?
Regarding how do we know that our so called enlightnment values are not same as nazi values :
for this we must go to Kant/Rawls . basically we need to show that our values would be chosen by process that provides foundation/justification wheras their values do not have such foundation and hence lack the appropriate moral objectivity. How do you do this ? You ask yourself what set of values would people who were placed behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ choose ( the veil screens bias )and then see whether they would chhoose Enlightnment values or Nazi values . And there is no doubt that one of the values that would be agreed upon by these volks would be freedom of expresion. In any case this is well known and understood and refutes any idea that there is some sort of moral equivalance ( see Rawls ‘theory of Justice 1972 ).
Thinking about Chris, Mad Professor-like, looking at the thread : “It’s alive! Aliiiiiiiiiive!!”
The louder right-wing trolls talk about “Enlightenment values”, the faster I count tmy spoons.
Was this written by an American outraged at the reaction to the Muslim world? Or was it written by a Muslim outraged by the insensitive treatment of their sacred symbols? No, wait, it was written by a True Patriot who can’t believe liberals would object to warrantless spying. Then again, it could be an objection to those who would compare the beheading of hostages to the Abu Graib situation.
Ultimately, the great thing about the post at the top of this page is that it works for almost any subject and any viewpoint. To summarize it: The actions of my side may not be perfect but I am on the right-and-moral side.
Steve LaBonne,
“I happen to have a pretty absolutist conception of freedom of speech. I don’t favor suppressing the Mark Steyns of the world either- I favor ridiculing them.”
But ridiculing extremist Muslims is a problem because…?
And if you say that ridiculing extremist Muslims is allowed (though perhaps unwise) you don’t really get very far from my position.
Scott Lemieux, I think you either don’t understand the term strawman or you don’t understand the rhetorical device Chris uses in drawing parallelisms. The purpose of using parallelism in analogy is to offer indirect argument that similar things should be dealt with similarly. Since the two thing alluded to are the publishing of cartoons and the Muslim reaction to the cartoons (which includes death threats, kidnapping threats, and actual arson), my explicit drawing of them is not a strawman argument. It is engaging Chris’ argument. Of course Chris can’t be explicit in his argument because outright saying that burning down embassies is similar to publishing cartoons would expose the brilliance of the argument.
I have no problem at all ridiculing even non-extremist Muslims, let alone the dangerous loons who are inciting the riots and their cretinous dupes. I find all religions ridiculous, and ones that pretend to a monopoly on truth- and have a long history of using violence to enforce it- utterly noxious. Islam, of course, is not unique in that regard.
Zdenek,
What you are being asked to show solidarity with is the right of the cartoonists to draw and publish those cartoons.
Sorry, but your point is trivial and meaningless; no one here is disputing the right of the cartoonists to draw anything they want.
See, it just seems too easy and convenient for you to show solidarity in this particular case – demonizing the official enemy; why don’t you pick something a bit more challenging: some holocaust denialist or some anti-semitic cartoon or article – and express your solidarity there? That would make more sense.
Take this David Irving guy, for example – he is actually in jail, incarcerated in a Western country, and for actual speech. Why don’t you show solidarity, organize protest or something? Let me know, I may just join you or send you few bucks.
Thanks.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=17&art_id=11464&sid=6553023&con_type=1
‘Two of the demonstrators were killed and five wounded, while eight police were also hurt.’
‘Two protesters were killed, and three other people wounded – two of them police, one of whom was stabbed by a thrown knife’
‘At least one person died, 30 were injured – half of them security officials – and about 200 people were detained.’
soru
“Sorry, but your point is trivial and meaningless; no one here is disputing the right of the cartoonists to draw anything they want.”
The problem is that everyone is making comments of the form, “Yes yes, freedom of speech, but…” and then go on to lambaste the cartoon publishers. When freedom of speech recieves such a cursory mention, especially in comparision to “yes, but” part of the comment, it raises serious questions about just how serious the authors actual commitment to freedom of speech is. Liberalism has to be more than just a perfunctory acknowledgement.
Okay, the Philadelphia Inquirer published the cartoons Saturday. Did any of the other papers have the guts to publish them? Or is Philly trying to tell the nation something, something they learned over 200 years ago. Do you think Ben Franklin would have printed them?
#74: “…the left is disconnected…from traditional enlight(e)nment values…”
Umm…but don’t “traditional” Enlightenment “values” involve an abstraction from or rejection of all claims to tradition, as transgressing the bounds of a supposedly “autonomous” and self-grounding reason, while relying on a presumed culture-independent knowledge of nature, conceived in curiously harmonistic terms as a singular unity, inconsistently as the normative ground of social criticism and historical progress? Further, aren’t Enlightenment “values” founded on a “clear” distinction and separation of facts from “values”, such that such “values” are left curiously suspended in mid-air, removed from the conditions, implications and consequences of any actual instantiation? (You might want to consult Hegel on that one, as at once the most trenchant early critic and worst offender.) And, on the contrary, haven’t leftist thinkings and positions/perspectives always been based on the insuperability of worldly existence, such that all perspectives are embedded in real and socially and historically determined or structured conditions, such that any claim to any “absolute” perspective, whether Platonically or transcendentally conceived, which would spare one the taint of pernicious “relativism” and allow one to “neutrally” decide upon values and validities, is tautologically self-confirming, uninformative and ultimately specious or delusive? The upshot of that, then, would be that there are real relativities or differences in perspectives, which cannot be merely dismissed as pernicious “relativism” from some self-enclosed standpoint above the fray, but which generate real or potential conflicts and oppositions, beyond any possibility of “neutral” theoretical arbitration, (including self-enclosed, self-confirming claims to possession of “universal” morality). The further consequence is that any mediation or resolution of conflicts between perspectives can only take place on the basis of actual practical reason, in terms of appeals and projects that generate actually informative interpretations and analyses that aim at the practical tranformation of the conditions and organizations that have brought about irreconcilable conflicts in the first place. In sum, the “left” has always been a bit askew with respect to “traditional Enlightenment values”, and, if the “left” does not blindly affirm their loyalty to them, it is because, disappointments with historical “progress” aside, they can not be attained through a fundamentalistic restoration. So rather than self-righteously affirming one’s own moral “purity” by casting aspersions on the hypocrisy and decadence of others, perhaps attention to the actual conceptual grammar of differing positions/perspectives might be in order. C.B.’s clever satire was, after all, an effort in that direction.
If this is really just a matter of a semantic quibble, why go for the the empty in-your-face rhetorical bluster, when the actual pragmatic effects can be achieved otherwise?
Sebastian, if you had to work, as I do, with right-wing assholes of the “nuke Mecca today!” variety, perhaps you’d see that the offense does not lie only on one “side”.
Er, European right wing assholes don’t often go round saying “nuke Mecca”. Also because we don’t have the nukes here.
But I reckon you were talking about Americans, right? Ah yes. How much less entertaining would this whole mess be if we didn’t filter it through the internal US political debate, which is about as relevant to this as the internal political debate in China.
So now, US right wingers are the other side of the burning mobs. Cool. So neat that we can reduce everything to a binary equation. Now it’ll all be simpler. We only need to explain to protesters that they burnt the wrong embassies, and had to target the US ones. Wouldn’t that have been a lot more interesting in terms of repercussions.
Glenn, I have to disagree with this: “When freedom of speech recieves such a cursory mention, especially in comparision to “yes, but” part of the comment, it raises serious questions about just how serious the authors actual commitment to freedom of speech is.” I think yes, but is the essence of freedom of speech. Renouncing the authority of the state to censor speech—whether Muhammed cartoons, showing a little tit at a superbowl halftime, or burning the American flag—simply gives one the frame to say, yes, but. Or yes, no. I have no problem saying that a rightwing, anti-immigration government in Denmark does not show that Denmark is a hotbed of political correctness, nor saying that the supposed “fear” found among illustrators of children’s books of portraying Mohammed—which is a pretty rational fear—children’s book illustrators probably fear drawing pictures of daddy having sex with mommy, too, for the good reason that it violates the canons of decorum – making the whole Muhammed cartoon thing stink. Iconoclasm with somebody else’s religion is the easiest of provacateur expressions. Hopefully, the newspaper will hire someone to gather up consecrated wafers from Catholic churches and stick pins through them. It would be hilarious, and I am sure that the ardent right wing free speech people will applaud, heartily.
The problem is that everyone is making comments of the form, “Yes yes, freedom of speech, but…” and then go on to lambaste the cartoon publishers. When freedom of speech recieves such a cursory mention, especially in comparision to “yes, but” part of the comment, it raises serious questions about just how serious the authors actual commitment to freedom of speech is.
No, it doesn’t. In fact this is exactly what ‘freedom of speech’ is all about. It doesn’t entail agreeing with the speaker. “Yes, but” is exactly the correct way to react to stupid racist crap.
Re: #84, I believe the actual word Opus used to describe the phenomenon was “offensensitivity.”
Also, way up at #6, I did realize that the whole point was that this language could be used by anyone to describe anything; I was just taking advantage of the opportunity.
well: “Of course Chris can’t be explicit in his argument because outright saying that burning down embassies is similar to publishing cartoons would expose the brilliance of the argument”
this is cute on many levels, to wit:
1. there isn’t any actual evidence that this post is about cartoons at all.
2. to the extent that we might assume that it is, the words “Others have intimated that I spend my time trawling the internet looking for obscure TV clips and articles in foreign languages to be offended by” would tend to suggest the offended party being satirised is in fact only the embassy burner, and
3. it’s sort of a hilarious reduction to imagine that the only perspectives here are between (a) people who publish cartoons, and (b) people who burn down embassies, when there is just as much evidence to fallaciously reduce the comix conflict to (a) bigots and (b) boycotters of foreign products.
incidentally, sebastian, the reduction in 3 is one of your strawmen.
Inkblot.
If you don’t think this post has anything to do with the cartoon issue, I have nice bridge I can sell you.
and the rest of my comment?
When I see “scare quotes” used 17 times in one post, I do wonder what was behind the selection of those words not marked in that way.
soru
SNUH,
Your point one is duly dispensed with, no?
Point two:
“Others have intimated that I spend my time trawling the internet looking for obscure TV clips and articles in foreign languages to be offended by” would tend to suggest the offended party being satirised is in fact only the embassy burner”
Hardly. See the right-wing quotes from Arab media (usually from MEMRI).
“it’s sort of a hilarious reduction to imagine that the only perspectives here are between (a) people who publish cartoons, and (b) people who burn down embassies, when there is just as much evidence to fallaciously reduce the comix conflict to (a) bigots and (b) boycotters of foreign products.”
Boycotting Danish products when an individual newspaper printed something offensive betrays the same ridiculous type of overreaction but to a slightly lower level of reprehensibleness than the violence. Boycotting a country for its government action is one thing. Boycotting a country for the action of a miniscule company inside it is silly. The second still shows a greater level of silliness than the original cartoons. The moral equivalance parallel remains poor. And the rioters/embassy burners are by no means excluded from Chris’ parallelism—despite how much easier it would make your argument.
Serious or satire?
4. Free speech does not justify bigotry
5. Bigotry does not justify rioting
6. Rioting does not justify bigotry
That circle should be expanded.
6. Rioting does not justify free speech.
Look, we put limits on free speech. We do it. You can argue that it’s wrong, but it happens a whole lot.
If the rioting isn’t what’s getting those cartoons circulated widely, maybe we could circulate various others.
http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/Evans/main.asp
These cartoons raised enough jewish uproar to get the cartoonist fired. He is still doing some cartooning, restricted to local new zealand issues. They haven’t been censored, just the cartoonist wasn’t allowed to do it again.
This was the first one I found from a google search. Maybe we could find some that various others would object to.
so you accept your comic publishers vs embassy burners conflict is a straw man?
It is interesting only because it shows that Chris has nothing to say on the matter ; moral quietism ?
Oh no. Not another “ism”.
Recently, I was amused by this passage by Thomas Cushman in his review (in Democratiya) of the anti-war book Blood in the Sand: Imperial Fantasies, Right Wing Ambitions, and the Erosion of American Democracy by Stephen Eric Bronne.
Writes Cushman:
“There are many books of this type… In their pages, you will find a series of ideological platitudes and canards which constitute an entire mythology of negativity and despair: anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, simplistic anti-militarism, quasi-religious pacifism, vicious ideological attacks on neoconservatism, and a steadfast refusal to acknowledge some simple sociological and historical facts about the war.”
Right then, that covers the bases then: Five “isms” in total, including a whopping four in a row.
That’s some going Mr. Cushman.
And yes, you’ve guessed it, Mr. Cushman is a Professor of Sociology. ;-)
Just because one has reached the end of one’s rope doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to end in a noose…Strangling dissent is worse than assenting to anger…and anger has always been essential to keeping one’s freedom…
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there’s nobody spying on you…
But on the whole I’m suddenly, laughingly AWOL in the war upon moderation and tolerance.
Nice work.
Sebastian, mind Ivins’ First Rule of Holes.
to be clear, my #126 comment hails Chris Bertram’s hilarious generic rant, and nods to Charles Stross’s #3.
“so you accept your comic publishers vs embassy burners conflict is a straw man?”
Do you accept that it is
A) part of the context
B) something a reasonably informed person should know is part of the context and
C) not excluded by Chris’ intentionally ‘generic’ post?
It isn’t a strawman.
Boycotting a country for its government action is one thing. Boycotting a country for the action of a miniscule company inside it is silly.
Sebastian Holsclaw, usually your posts are utterly unworthy of any response but this time you appear to have accidentally stumbled onto something interesting.
McCormack at the US State Department expressed our free-press ideal admirably. And it’s important that it get expressed well because for large parts of the world, that ideal simply does not exist.
In china, when Sun Yat Sen proposed democracy, he specifically thought it should be a 5-fold system of checks and balances—legislative, executive, judicial, examinative, and censorial. He felt that the examination system and the censors would help reduce the abuses of elections.
During the time that europeans started developing our ideal, most of the arab world was run by other people’s empires, which of course had no use for free speech among their subjects. And the muslim ideal like the christian one involved teaching everybody about religion. Before there was much of a press, that was hard. It was so hard just to get one set of ideas across, there weren’t a lot of resources available for spreading competing ideas. And in countries where illiteracy was high a generation ago, there are lots of divisive superstitious ideas. When the saudis say they’re concerned about polytheism arising again they aren’t just blowing smoke. In 1500 it wasn’t too late for wiccans to revive in christian areas. We allow free speech coming from a background where pretty much everybody is a product of mass culture. They don’t have their mass culture developed yet.
In most arab countries, things are published without government approval in at most two circumstances—either they are so innocuous that no approval is needed, or they are so universally believed that the government might as well let them be said, approving or not.
They don’t understand us, right? When antisemitic cartoons are published in their press the government has approved. When anti-muslim cartoons are published in the danish press, would they stop to think that the government hasn’t given its approval? The idea that the government would let the press publish just anything at all—how alien! So holding the government responsible is not unreasonable given their understanding. Boycotting that government’s economy would make sense to them.
I’m not saying they’re right. I’m saying that they’re being reasonable given what they know.
I wonder how we could get across the idea to them that censorship is bad and should not be allowed. They don’t have that idea. Not only can they expect weak governments to censor trying to maintain power—they feel that their government is responsible for public decency, and must censor things like pornography and blasphemy. There’s the problem for them that a weak government that censors political ideas will remain weak—political opposition gets driven underground where it can’t easily get co-opted into the government. They can’t get a consensus when people have to be silent and lie. The very methods they use to keep their weak government in power prevents them from getting a strong government that might help them cooperate better.
Is there any way they can get there from here?
#129: It isn’t a strawman.”
Yes, it is. There’s a difference between genesis and structure, between occasion and reference. Bertram’s post might have been occasioned by a specific controversy making the rounds of the internet, but its actual structure and topic was the rhetorical/conceptual grammar common to blogospheric internet arguments which self-righteously and self-referentially confirm their own standpoint, through various denegations and castings of aspersions, without paying any attention to actual contexts and layerings of the realities at issue, let alone offering any interpretation and analysis that might advance an understanding of what is specifically at issue. But various center-right commenters proceeded to interpret the post as referring to the specific controversy at hand and as taking a specific position on it, in the absence of any textual evidence for that, claiming that it was thereby evidence of the fivolity, pernicious relativism, moral degeneracy of “the left”, casting aspersions that only cast themselves as being willing dupes of the point being made.
As for the alleged boycot of Danish goods, “ARABS BOYCOT STINKY CHEESE!” Ow! I’m feeling it now.
If you would like to argue that this post ‘occasioned by a specific controversy’ nevertheless makes no comment on that specific controversy, feel free. You are wrong, but whatever.
If on the occasion of a race riot someone were to make a facially neutral comment like “Certain people, lacking some of the higher intellectual capabilites of others are less able to control their animal instincts and cannot be expected to do other than what their base impulses tell them to do when they feel agitated or threatened, even if their feelings of agitation or perception of threat would be unreasonable if analyzed by a neutral observer.” it would and should be interpreted as a deeply racist remark.
Try this one, ‘occasioned’ by maybe your response or maybe not, who knows?
Faux intellectuals often say things which sound deep, but on further inspection merely run from the topic being discussed by throwing up rhetorical smoke to obscure their inability to say anything analytically useful. They are especially likely to hide behind the use of metaphors and when pinned down like to pretend that their metaphors don’t mean anything like what any normal reader would interpret them as meaning. This tends to suggest either that they have no great facility for the real-life use of language, or that they intentionally use their facility for language to obscure rather than reveal.
I presume you will read it as you have read Chris’ post. Other readers might not agree.
Given what we know about Chris’s past opinions, the timing of the article, and the mockery of right wing blogger rhetoric the article contained, Sebastian’s argument was clearly not of the strawman variety.
That is of course someone can show that Chris’s most obvious intent was something other than what Sebastian stated. But I find it hard to believe that Chris’s post was something other than a satirical piece mocking the right wing blogger response to the recent cartoon(ish) riots.
Well (as Reagan used to say)—Well, jet, I tend to agree with you that it’s an excellent a right-wing-o-matic. But it also works as a rioter rationialization; the rioters, after all, are fighting for the fine conservative principle of That Old-Time Religion (“some principles are absolute”). Also, “[our] people have suffered enough and deserve a break” works on the rioter side.
The thing that I find hilarious is our blogger’s ego—look how it begins! And the blogger “calls upon” people, as though assuming the mighty power of a Streisand. It is to laugh.
132#: Rather than huffily pursuing your invective, you might want to look at Juan Cole’s comment on this controversy from 2/05/06. It provides some real cross-cultural and political context for what’s happenned, which is to say, he’s doing his professional job. But as for the broader context and issues involved in this particular controversy, the real situation is far to FUBAR to be settled in blogtopia.
133#: Bertram’s post was perfectly reversible. One can’t actually read “intentions”. One can only read what’s there.
Sebastian, your liberals-are-evil pathology is reaching new heights. Be honest: you could give a shit about the Danes, or the torched embassies, or the boycotts. What really gets you interested is the chance to stick it to the liberals one more time.
I happen to think that the behavior in the Arab world over these cartoons is both deplorable and nutty, and makes me doubt that anything positive is in their long-term future. The cartoons were intended to trigger a particular reaction to make a particular point, and voila, they triggered that very reaction. Similarly, I suspect Chris wrote his post in order to trigger a particular reaction, and he did.
sebastian holsclaw wrote:
“Yes, but suggesting that publishing caricturatures is the same kind or intensity of madness as burning down multiple embassies and subjecting random Danish people in the Middle East to death threats isn’t morality”
This equation rests on a false assumption: that the comics actually caused the violence.
Equating the “evilness” of drawing untalented caricatures of Mohammed with the “evilness” of the rioting is both stupid and empty since the two things are not balancing each other. It would make as much (more?) sense to equate the rioting with the US occupation of Iraq.
Jet, how can you say this?
As an unapologetic leftist, let alone a liberal, I feel myself stung to the core, grabbed by my own uninterruptable lapels, throttled by my dispassionate memes…How can you see this as a political challenge to the right, when it’s a poignant rant about our human condition? It’s hilarious, and it’s about both of us. Laugh!
Deeper it was that awakened a compassion in me for ‘those in the wrong,’ that I’d thought I’d lost along with my church. Clearly, sadly it did not awaken any such uninterruptable feeling in you, except what appears as the very righteous anger Chris so deftly satirizes. But he satirizes the Fustian Cubist as musch as he does the Fustian Jet . Perhaps this is because for us perceiving through a glass, darkly—clearly is impossible for such of us as is human timber.
Re #136, Walt, I am a left-liberal who abhors the Powerline approach, but I’m sorry to say that I agree with Sebastian’s criticism. Chris’ post is clever, but as I half-jokingly suggested at the very start of this thread (in #1), the satire here—to borrow Sebastian’s words—obscures (an) inability to say anything analytically useful. Or, to repeat what Commenterlein says in #65 – The question some of us are raising is whether satire is the appropriate reaction to the current events which I personally find deeply unsettling. This is a serious issue and Chris’ “cute” treatment of it is grossly insufficient.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/07/international/middleeast/07cartoon.htm
If you don’t think this post has anything to do with the cartoon issue, I have nice bridge I can sell you
If you think you’ve understood exactly the point Chris is trying to make, how about a nice game of backgammon, table stakes?
“If you think you’ve understood exactly the point Chris is trying to make, how about a nice game of backgammon, table stakes?”
I’m sure I didn’t understand EXACTLY the point Chris is trying to make. He isn’t famously clear when he is trying to funny in an obscure way. But just because I can’t give you the exact decimal notation of pi doesn’t mean that I can’t give you a darn good and very useful approximation in 3.14159265358979323846. And considering his last post on the subject here it doesn’t take a PhD to figure out the gist.
I happen to think that the behavior in the Arab world over these cartoons is both deplorable and nutty, and makes me doubt that anything positive is in their long-term future.
Hmm, the opposite here – I thought the behavior was exemplary and it made me optimistic, but the excuse for this behavior provided by the Europeans sucked and makes me doubt etc.
Btw, I think the way it went might have something to do with the way various embassies are guarded. If you’ve ever seen an American or British embassy, you know that there’s no chance to even get close – barbed wire, cement barriers, etc. Danish embassies (I guess) were wide open, easy to attack.
“Danish embassies (I guess) were wide open, easy to attack.”
And so course they had to attack them?
Why not, Sebastian? Had a bunch of German embassies been burned by rioters around 1934-35 in response to racist crap that was published there – things might’ve changed.
So in your opinion the attacks on embassies might well be a positive good?
Might be, why not? Or it may lead to futher escalation. Who knows.
“I’m not saying they’re right. I’m saying that they’re being reasonable given what they know.”
That’s not a little condescending? we all know it’s the radicals and extremists who’ve taken things to such extremes, indeed, and yet, you’re saying it’s because Muslims or Arabs in general have no concept of independence of the press?
I bet those two Jordanian editors who got sacked and arrested knew exactly what that concept means.
I’m seeing a problem in many comments on this issue especially from the US: people are reacting to the US right-wingers appropriation of this issue, to the Michelle Malkins and LGF’s and such, instead of actually considering the issue itself and its context: Europe and the Middle East.
The old US parochialism at its worst. The US right wingers think it’s THEIR business and are drooling at the mouth over the chance to exploit this situation, and the rest think the whole point here is to… object to the US right wingers. Well congratulations, you missed about, um, 100% of the debate. It’s not about the US. The US government is kindly invited to shut up about this, they’ve done enough damage already. US citizens are kindly invited to consider the issue on its own terms, which is most definitely not US politics. Many thanks in advance to anyone who makes that massive effort of looking beyond your backgarden.