They’re behind you!

Did I just see someone compare American religious conseratives to fucking Al Qaida? What the hell is the matter with you? Shame.

Oh yeah, Bush is really defending us against clerical barbarism by pulling troops out of Saudi Arabia and starting a worldwide religious conflict between the West and the Muslim world, thus fulfilling two out of three of Al Queda’s major goals. As we complete the task of replacing a non-clerical Arab dictatorship with an Islamic Republic in Iraq, Hitchens will still be in there squeaking his approval of Bush. What a despicable moron.

Bush is [..] starting a worldwide religious conflict between the West and the Muslim world

This is a complete misreading of the situation, Al Qaeda declared war against the US on the 23rd of February 1998 under Clinton. The 911 attacks were probably already at a planning stage when that declaration was made.

Bush is responding to a war visited upon the West. This is not a War on Terror prosecuted by the West, it is a War of Terror fought against the West. Western Liberal democracies have every right to defend themselves, pre-emptively if absolutely necessary, given the high stakes involved when one sees the burgeoning risk of WMD. Whether Western Liberal democracies have the political will to defend themselves is another matter, but I suspect this will strengthen as the stakes on the table become more obvious.

anthony, Al Queda can not declare war against the U.S. It is not a state, merely a terrorist group. You must be one of their boosters — I can’t think that an Al Queda operative would puff up the group’s importance any more than you do.

Bush turned this from a terrorist attack into a war between states when he attacked Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. The rest of Bush’s policies are putting us well on our way from a war between states to the “clash of civilizations” that Al Queda wants, which will lead to increased clerical barbarism of the kind that Hitchens supposedly doesn’t like. Al Queda had no power whatsoever to accomplish this, only Bush did.

It’s worth pointing out that although Christian fundamentalists are antimodernists, they are far less antimodernist than Islamic fundamentalists.

Plans tend to, um shall we say, “not work” when they are implemented by irrational people who operate on false premises and prefer protecting sacred cows to the listening to the still soft voice of reason. Fortunately, history has shown that when their plans fail, such people are prone to reflect on failures, realize their mistakes and let reason guide their actions from there on out. This is especially true when these people believe “God is on their side.” Nothing to worry about.

“I think Islamic fundamentalists represent the greater threat in absolute terms, contextually I more fear Christian fundamentalists since they have a much greater impact on my life and the lives of the people I most care about.”

There is bound to be trouble whenever religions start exerting theocratic ambitions. Christ was quite explicit: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”

darin,

I’m looking pretty hard but I’m not sure I can spot an argument there at all.

In my view christian fundamentalists are not as dangerous as islamic fundamentalists. However, it’s a bit like saying the siberian tiger is not as dangerous as a tyrannasauras rex – that is, not much consolation.

On Al Quaeda, I quite liked the piece in the Spectator that dsquared quoted a few weeks’ back,

“In fact, it is the other way round. British and American foreign policy is itself based on a series of highly improbable conspiracy theories, the biggest of which is that an evil Saudi millionaire genius in a cave in the Hindu Kush controls a secret worldwide network of ‘tens of thousands of terrorists’ ‘in more than 60 countries’ (George Bush). News reports frequently tell us that terrorist organisations, such as those which have attacked Bali or Istanbul, have ‘links’ to al-Qa’eda, but we never learn quite what those ‘links’ are. According to two terrorism experts in California, Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud, this is because they do not exist. ‘In the quest to define the enemy, the US and its allies have helped to blow al-Qa’eda out of proportion,’ they write. They argue that the name ‘al-Qa’eda’ was invented in the West to designate what is, in reality, a highly disparate collection of otherwise independent groups with no central command structure and not even a logo. They claim that some terrorist organisations say they are affiliated to bin Laden simply to gain kudos and name-recognition for their entirely local grievances”

Christian terrorism is a threat on US soil. It has already clamed lives. I wish someone had mentioned that. I would add that Islamic reformers, as modernizers who take seriously the rigors of doctrine are far more interesting intellectually than anyone involved in religious debate going on in the west. Mainstream religion is therapy at this point.
I am not arguing for faith -I have none, thank god. But formal rigor is a prerequisite for any serious creative effort. That’s why I’m curious to see if Mel Gibson’s reactionary christianity gives us a good reactionary movie.

Well, as I have mentioned before, my sister is an evangelical Christian minister/missionary. A lot of her belief system is antimodernist. I hear a lot of laments about the “modern world” from her.

But I can state with certainty that she’s not the ogre that I typically think Pat Robertson is. An example I’ve mentioned before is that she’s constructing something like an evangelical Christian feminist theology. I said something to her over Christmas about there not being any female Apostles and she responded, “Who says there were no female Apostles?” Keep in mind that she’s not an evangelical of the radical leftist variety (though I surely wish she were). Her roots and associations are in Christian conservativism; and, in fact, she has social ties with the President and the First Lady.

The fact of the matter is that if her fellow Christian conservatives were to be successful at establishing a conservative Christian Theocracy, she’d quickly become a “leftist” Christian revolutionary. She is not, at heart, antimodernist. She is unsettled by what she perceives—along with a majority of other people (rightly or wrongly)—some excesses of modernity. I think were her history different, she’d likely be a radical leftist Christian. But for a complex set of reasons, she’s in the conservative camp.

My point is that just as is the case with Islamic fundamentalism, it’s a mistake to imagine that every fundamentalist is as deeply ideologically antimodernist as you might otherwise think. This may be part of their identity, and they may have made common cause with these people, for more complex reasons.

Oops. Sorry for the double post.

“I would add that Islamic reformers, as modernizers who take seriously the rigors of doctrine are far more interesting intellectually than anyone involved in religious debate going on in the west.“—Seth

Come now…do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Any expertise at all in contemporary Western religious discourse? Because you’re wrong. Plain wrong.

Well, not if you’re merely reporting your own subjective experience of what you find “interesting”. You’re surely right if that’s your point. But you seem to be making an objective evaluation that is, I think, at the very least vastly overstated and at worst, fatuous.

Note that I’m not contesting that Islamic reformers are “interesting”. They are.

Terrorism is a poor man’s weapon. Many of our own barbarous clerics no longer need terrorism, since they have the president.

Oklahoma City and the recent arrests in Dallas, not to mention dozens of individual assassinations and a certain Chritian-identity death squad known as the KKK, are testiment to various American, Christian groups’ sense that only violence will suffice. They can derive some solace, I guess, from the fact that their crimes are likely always to pale in comparison to Osama’s, but that does not mean, as many are braying (for lack of argument) on this thread, that such a comparison is beyond the pale.

As for this “debate” on who’s more antimodernerer, Christians harken back to a far more recent (and urban) theocracy than Muslims, so a merely quantitative comparison, if possible, is beside the point. However, among the War Cult, understanding the enemy (and ourselves) is the first step on the road to treason…

I find it interesting that people who normally advocate state control, supervision, and/or distribution of wealth and property will fight tooth and nail for individual choice and rights when the person in control of the state becomes in any way theocratic. The fundamental problem with the power of the state is that it is indeed so powerful. If the perfect person is in office, then maybe its fine, but no one is perfect, and no one stays in office forever. And who is it that determines the morality of the state in a democracy? The majority. So what if the majority of the US voted for a theocratic fundamentalist, would that justify the loss of freedom purveyed on the minority? I think not. Freedom my friends is the key, its the only philosophy that blocks the theocracy, the dictator, the state run everything, and returns the power, not to the society, but to the individual.

I find it interesting that people who normally advocate state control, supervision, and/or distribution of wealth and property will fight tooth and nail for individual choice and rights when the person in control of the state becomes in any way theocratic.
Because one is based on rational processes, the other is not and proud of it.

And how is state control NOT increasing under the present regime? We already have “state control, supervision, and/or distribution of wealth and property.”

And who is it that determines the morality of the state in a democracy? The majority. So what if the majority of the US voted for a theocratic fundamentalist, would that justify the loss of freedom purveyed on the minority? I think not.
And you would be right: that would be ochlocracy, not democracy, as I tried to explain to a Nigerian sharia-advocate, in vain.

This is a little loose with the meaning of “morality.” I think you mean “ethics,” or “ethical standards.” This is not a criticism; the word morality, in American political discourse, means in actual use “I don’t have to make rational arguments anymore and can scream bloody murder about black breasts.”

Is it ok to support Gnostic fundamentalism? The problem you philosopher-types have with fundamentalism derives from your own fundamentalist hewing to the law of non-contradiction.

Limberwulf, you are, deliberately I suspect, confusing “regulation” with “control”, and beyond that “control” with “authoritarianism”.

Question: name any complex, living system that is does functions in an open loop fashion. (Hint: you won’t be able to.)

I suspect that like many conservative libertarians, you are not at all worried about corporate power, only state power. But the state is an abstraction. Remove what we now call the “state” and some other hierarchy, corporate, ecclesiastical, what-have-you, will take it’s place. If you really do value freedom, then you will understand this.

For the record, I’m a left-libertarian: control is needed, but it should be as distributed as possible, and the hierarchy should be as flat as possible, for all power structures, not just the “state”.

jdsm, could you be more specific about what I would find if I moved to Sweden?

Isn’t something missing in this thread? That is, the dangers posed by Christian-oriented control of the largest military power on earth? and, you know, how its rapacious and murderous excesses in the name and protection of elitist interests (not “American” ones) inspire the men of abused states and peoples to join the ranks of “shadowy terrorist networks” in a fight against those interests?

Barry:
you forgot
3. Remove the most powerful secularist challenge to Wahhabism in the region, while simultaneously stoking it by
4. visiting the equivalent of more than three 9/11’s on Muslim non-combatants.

That does have profound implications, but the destruction of the very concept of deductive reasoning is not one of them.

No offense taken, Keith. What you say is without question true, but I certainly didn’t say that. I understand, though. In a comment thread, we all have to attempt to get a Gestalt from inadequate information. I was attempting to do the same with the post to which I was responding. It’s open to interpretation, and takes some dialogue to sort out…

I was referring to the philosophical implications of a theorem that states that either of these two options must hold: either the formal system has internal contradictions (one can “prove” a falsehood); or the formal system will be unable to prove many true things. (Paraphrasing, of course.)

Now, can we apply this directly to this thread’s discussion? Not directly, that’s for sure. But my point to the previous poster was that, if one thinks of human believe systems as sort of like formal systems (very much open to argument, I would admit), the search for perfect internal consistency is problematic at best, and in my opinion wrong-headed. Fundamentalists are precisely people who do not grasp the limits of their own internalized “formal systems”.

FYI, I am actually a mathematical scientist, FWIW. I spend a lot of time trying to model the logical structure of nature. That doesn’t mean I can’t be full of shit–but it should indicate that I’m not an “irrationalist”. But I understand the unavoidable centrality of the irrational in all human activities. Even science! (Hell, maybe especially science.)

Keith is basically right about Godel’s Theorem, but it does have one consequence that might explain what Mondo was getting at. One of the statements that is true but we can’t prove is “Arithmetic is consistent.” (On a particular but reasonably natural interpretation of ‘arithmetic’.)

Well, I’m cheating a bit here because we can’t prove that’s true, as noted. This doesn’t undermine the law of non-contradiction, since we can still say that if arithmetic is consistent it is false. But it does mean that if you are committed to the truth of arithmetic then you can’t prove that your beliefs are free of contradiction.

“open loop”

mondo, I always like your writing, but that criticism of conservative libertarianism is about as powerful and apt as can be imagined.

On reading my post I want to make this sentence clearer: “This wasn’t directed at me, but this happened with your allusive anti-Semetism posts as well.”

I speak of your post on the topic of anti-Semetism. I am not at all suggesting that it was an anti-Semetic post. I bring it up only because that post was apparently misinterpreted by huge numbers of people, including such non-right readers as Matthew Yglesias and Stintson. I think it was misinterpreted because of framing issues much like I discuss above.

Point of order: I noticed quite a long while ago that Matthew Yglesias almost never comments or replies in his own comments threads. I find this a bit annoying at times, myself, but also entirely understandable, given the large number of comments he often draws, the large number of other calls upon his writing time (from which he earns his living), as well as the implicit impression he has given that he may be a slow reader (he has frequently commented upon how extremely “long” articles are that are over 500 words).

It’s easy for me to understand, given those conditions, drawing a line against commenting/replying at all, given the easiness of being drawn into a fatal time-suck if one doesn’t have a strict policy.

Also, Chris, you might consider that when “large numbers” of people “misread” you, that possibly the fault is not entirely all theirs. I very much do not wish to give you further offense, but I thought Sebastian’s comment here was rather spot-on.

One problem in specific with “having a bit of fun at Hitchens’ expense” is that it assumes the necessary pre-condition that all right-minded people, of course, already believe that he is being perfectly absurd and has no valid point; it is possible that this is a questionable assumption.

My own reaction is that while the premise of questioning defending or supporting Bush is perfectly valid, comparing creationist-fundamentalist Christians to the Taliban is inapt, disproportional, and suggestive of a severe lack of perspective. As they say on Usenet, your mileage may vary.

Hitchens is, as am I and as he says George Bush is, for the “tenacious and unapologetic defense of civilized societies against the intensifying menace of clerical barbarism.” The problem is that whatever degree of barbarism one might attribute to Saddam Hussein, it is certainly not “clerical barbarism.” Baathist barbarism, secularist barbarism, etc., etc., but not clerical barbarism. In fact, many of us object to Bush’s adventure in Iraq precisely on these grounds: it is a distraction from the defense against the menace of clerical barbarism. It is disingenuous of Hitchens, the big supporter of Bush’s Iraq war, to imply that those who oppose the Iraq adventure have, unlike Bush, fallen prey to “doubt on the point” of this defense.