One of the benefits of spending much of my time talking to people from around the world is getting an original, fresh perspective on the United States, its policies, politics, and political culture.
Recently, I had a discussion with a brilliant academic who had grown up in a Communist country, has spent a lot of time in the United States, and studies this kind of thing. To explain how the U.S. conception of the world is shaped, he used the phrase “engineering mentality.”
The “engineering mentality” is one of the main factors in America’s brilliant success. I take it to mean that one approaches problems with a can-do (another American phrase) style. One rules out extraneous, distracting cultural and historical factors in order to figure out a practical way to fix things. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! Construct buildings, roads, and bridges; invent new products; revolutionize production methods. Don’t be intimidated by the traditional; don’t be afraid of change; just because it has never been done before doesn’t mean it cannot be done now. Forget about ideology or preconceived notions. Just get the job done as quickly, cheaply, and efficiently as possible.
Such energetic and fearless pragmatism conquered a continent, industrialized an agrarian nation, and won wars. A century ago it allowed America to turn disparate ethnic and religious groups into a single nation. In recent decades, with remarkably little violence or disruption it broke down long-prevalent racial, gender, and other barriers.
In the face of all of these achievements, the currently prevalent view that America has a shameful history and is a failed society is ridiculous, notwithstanding past shortcomings.
But how does this “engineering” approach deal with the outside world? Not so well. By ignoring historical, cultural, ideological, religious, and other factors, one isn’t going to understand other countries. You can try to understand them or get them to change (“just do it!”), but these interpretations don’t work and the efforts to change fail. The idea that American know-how will go into a country like Iraq and Afghanistan and succeed in “nation-building” is, to say the least, greatly exaggerated.
How have American leaders in the past found ways to overcome this “engineering” bias? By acknowledging differences, comprehending that other countries and peoples have their own orientation, worldview, and culture. Far from being something objectionable, the idea of American exceptionalism was a very useful concept; knowing that the United States has been more successful than other countries was an important element in dealing with reality because one then had to ask why America had done so well which also implied why others had not followed this pattern.
For example, the burden of tradition in other societies was too powerful to permit easy change. Class distinctions were more rigid. Ideas and institutions that might have worked in the past were now blocking development. Change had to come from inside. Backwardness was not the result of external oppression but internal stagnation. All of these points are the opposite of the radical ideas currently prevailing in the West.
In contrast, America was a new society, an experiment, a relatively blank canvas on which, for example, the Founders had learned from the failures of democracy elsewhere and created a totally new kind of system.
How, in this context, can we understand the problem of racism? Racism is not thinking you are better than others. It is thinking that you are innately and forever better, that others cannot better themselves for reasons eternally set by biology. Racism is not thinking your society is superior. It is in failing to understand that others can take the elements that have worked for you, adapt them for themselves, and combine them with the best indigenous elements.
Racism is not believing there are differences, it is in failing to understand that up until now, at least, there are valid reasons — rooted in conditions, history, and many other factors — for those differences. Or, to put it graphically, racism was in thinking that Japan or China or others could not become modern, developed, and even democratic countries. But not in understanding that such success required time and change.
Racism would be to believe that Muslims are innately doomed to have unstable, undemocratic societies. But to understand that dramatic change — including in the ways Islam is effectively interpreted — is needed to achieve those goals is in no way racist.
Those who Americans who are anti-American, like Noam Chomsky, think that they ought to be the bosses, and follow the communist line on the U.S. They support dictatorships, especially communist dictatorships. They hate American democracy where people can, and do, disagree with each other and vote in free elections for their political leaders.
I used to be on the left, and I know they were not all admirers of the totalitarian dictatorships, but were facing problems in our fractious society that are real and persistent. It is easy to put down such demagogues as Chomsky, but his base sees real issues that must be addressed and not swept under the rug. That would be delusional. I tried to write my own journey here: http://clarespark.com/2012/01/21/the-persistence-of-white-racism/.
A Liberal is an American with a point of view how we should approach the issues facing America,
A Leftist is an Anti-American with an agenda to which they will subordinate anything and everything.
The problem is that Leftists disguise themselves as Liberals and the Liberals do not recognize the Leftists for who they are.
(badly quoted from David Horowitz)
Keep that in mind when you refer to yourself as having been on the Left Clare.
Quoting Horowitz, and badly at that, is your idea of wisdom or academic acuity? LOOLOLOL…
Horowitz is an unabashedly biased, right-wing Zionist apologist desperate to remove fascism from it’s place alongside his own nationalist beliefs also containing a degree of religious mysticism to validate or encourage fellow believers in his strain Zionism. (they are not all the same). Horowitz is one of the principal purveyors of the notion that because NSDAP (Nazi Party) contains the word “socialist”, then claims Nazis were not left-wingers like other socialists are false.
That of course ignores what Mussolini, whom many clain did the most to develop it into a legitimate response by the Right to the rapid incrase in popularity among Europes working class, most of them only recently liberated from the power of an aristocratic elite finally broken completely by WW1 restructuring. El Duce, when asked to write the entry for a dictionary’s new word and definition for FASCISM, defind it thusly: “Fascism is the complete opposite of socialism”. And considering Mussolini was earlier a true believer in socialism (editing a socialist magazine even), I would think would have more credibility on this one that David Horowitz.
Despite Hitler’s later (once he had seized power and no longer had a need for a name with broad politcalappeal (eg. the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada) his tone turned the rabid denunciations of socialism as an evil on par with Bolshevism, Judaism, liberalism (yes!) that mnost are familar with.
Today NO peer-reviewed scholarly journal printing entries that cover Nazi Germany will you find a description of Nazism as left-wing or socialist. Industrial tycoons did very well under him. no factories were nationalized in typical socialist manner, wealth was never redistributed downward, nothing apart from a few highway expansions under Governmentcontrol even remotely signaled it had leftist leanings.
Horowitz is a propagandist for a cause he believes is under attack and thereby justifies his own use of deceitful mesaages for a cause worthy of any means.
Your blog is interesting, but has a persistent apologetic tone. If we are to get beyond persistent racism, we need to accept American Exceptionalism and “get over it”.
Mark Twain was written at a different time; “nigger Jim” was an endearing figure who, through popular literature, put a human face on the black man. We, as a soveriegn nation, had just survived a civil war. Old attitudes die with generations and their language with them. Racism is only perpetuated by those who would profit from it. The media has cheapened the term “racist” to the point it has no impact whatsoever.
Many risk their lives to come to our “racist” country to escape the bonds of their own ethnic despotism. When they stop coming, then I will worry.
Denying their are still those present in the US who for whatever reason decide to scapegoat someone else for their own failure in business is to ignore simple facts about the nature of men. There will always be those willing to blame groups whose own lack of political power leaves them unable to defend themselves from such attacks.
The will to hold on to a time when a conservative most enjoyed life, means the Souhern conservative power structure of an all-white executive cannot fail to be threatened by a black presidend—and from the North at that! Delegitimizing that power over their own is the root cause of birth-cxertificate demands, claims of being a Muslim, an enemy agent…whatever it takes to keep from having to finally integrate a change that is difficulat for a group that already finds changing views of the world intensely difficult.
In what world was the U.S. ever an “overwhelmingly white supremacist country?” That implies a massively agreed upon, cogent and overarching interest in race among white Americans rather than a disinterested submission to the status quo. In 1912 90% of black folks still lived in the deep south: how does that make a white guy in Oregon or Wyoming or Minnesota a white supremacist, especially those just arrived from Poland or Norway? In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes” was very popular, having just been published. Where is the obsession with both race and this white supremacy that exaggerated the true position of blacks and whites in the world beyond actual reality? Is disdain for primitive cultures by a technological one that actually IS clearly superior by its own standards racial supremacy? The British at that same time clearly felt superior to the French and this is evident in literature from “Jane Eyre” to “A Tale of Two Cities”; is that racism?
Look at American films from 1930-1955, the height of Jim Crow, when it can be assumed whites had a free hand to express themselves as they wished: where is an overarching interest in race compared to black films from the last 20 years? If a culture actually IS superior, and it can be assumed value is in play at all times when making such comparisons, how is weighing values systems racist? Isn’t this conflation?
If British India and America in the 1960s were so truly racist, how were Gandhi and King then able to appeal to institutions made by whites supposedly to benefit only whites when the same events in Nazi Germany or Victorian Austria would’ve caused both men to disappear without a trace?
Everyone knows Jim Crow existed and was very real and so racism was in fact institutionalized. However there is a large difference between institutions and the degree with which a larger populace are either on board with them or activists in some way. Not being used to seeing black folks in authority positions or mingling with whites is not the same as a culture of hate. The KKK were not disinterested onlookers – they were haters. If the rest of America was so sympathetic to the KKK, why did that KKK find so little traction during primetime Jim Crow.
Now it’s 2012, and the increased self-segregation by race and commitment to criminal enterprise among black Americans is only a myth to those who wish to blame the whole ball of wax on continued white racism and generational hangovers of low self-esteem. Where was this low self-esteem when Jews came out of Europe in 1945 and shocked the world in only 3 years.
Now, a half century on from the Civil Rights era, the excuses are getting thinner and thinner as white baseball leagues and Jim Crow recede ever further into a now distant past. The very fact that a culture can be seen to be different automatically puts the relative merits of a respective value system into play and there is nothing inherently racist about it. Not all cultures are equal or the same and that cannot be eternally brushed away and mitigated with charges of racism or a racist past exaggerated to explain a racist future.
I am not saying America was not institutionally racist, but to lay this at the door of just arrived farmers from Poland in Central Minnesota or a Jewish actor in New York in 1912 is folly. They did not agree to any de facto commitment to hate black folks. While those white emigres certainly did benefit from their skin, there was also a disdain for Jews and “Polacks”, how much was in fact to a superior culture that survives to this very day by virtue of work rather than complaining as a core ethic?
The only way your claim can be true would be if the Jews, Ukes and Polacks were still living in as much poverty as wehn they arrived, or blacks earned what they and other whites earn today.
Unless you claim blacks are constitutionally or culturally lazy, a claim their performance in sports and entertainment fields also reveals to be false, then the only reason left possible is a chronic tendency in the business and financial sectors of America that somehow steers blacks and whites in different directions.
You make a very important point. We do have to understand other cultures in order to form policies that allow them to build on their own cultural strengths and change the inhibitory elements. Sometimes, we seem to be expecting other countries to reject all of their culture and become just like us. Other times we excuse their dysfunctionality. In both cases, we provoke resentment that could be avoided. It is scary to think how superficially foreign policy is being treated in this campaign season.
But from what we’ve seen one is not allowed to formulate an understanding of other cultures, especially Islam, by discussing and informing others of its tenets without being bludgeoned by the “Islamaphobia” cudgel.
The PC censor also makes it difficult for the politician to openly debate policy in this regard.
I should have added that current foreign policy is a display of hypocrisy and sheer dishonesty when it refuses to openly reject relationships where the practices of the other culture are plainly objectionable and contrary to one’s own.
In also choosing in this case to differentiate between different cultures for opprobrium for one and acceptance for another it is a display of sheer bigotry.
Quite right Cynic. Political Correctness, Multi Culturalism, ‘Yuman Rights’, Islamophilia and its perennial compatriot Antisemitism, Green Nazism, the homosexual war on Heterosexuality and Christianity and all the other left wing moonbat diseases that infect Western Democracies are slowly but surely killing them.
The simple refusal to acknowledge the fact that Islam is not defined by its most extreme right-wing element, neither is Christianity or Judaism. What is exactly similar in all is the fact that those who declare a hatred of the others are exactly the type the haters among the other two point to as examples of what’s wrong with that religion.
The fact that I consistently see Islamophobes assuming any real or true Muslim must interpret the Quran literally, is a statement more about the fundementalism of the author who also refuse to interpret ancient scripts in ways that adapt to several millenia of new knowledge abuot how the world works as it does.
The fact that Ive read where educated Jews like the one mentioned in the article however, means nationalism can make even those who claim academic objectivity can bend truth for territory gained. Sad.
Studying cultures is a PhD-grade pursuit. Knowing human behavior is simpler.
As with Mr Rubin, my friends who landed here from communist countries had a lot of perspective to offer on this country and the world. The most useful: the difference between the German farmer and the Russian farmer.
The German farmer looks down the road at his rich neighbor, shakes his fist and declares, “You son of a bitch. If I have to work my whole life and my wife too and even if it kills us, one day we will be as well off as you.”
The Russian farmer looks down the road at his rich neighbor, shakes his fist and declares, “You son of a bitch. If I have to work my whole life and my wife too and even if it kills us, one day you will be as poor as us.”
The German outlook sorta coincides with the engineering approach discussed here. And all the negatives people are bringing up about lefties… see if you don’t think they flow naturally out of the Russian mindset. In any case, it never takes long talking with someone before you can decide whether they are German or Russian farmers.
Interesting, given that the engineering world view is predicated on finite analysis of quantifiable empirical processes. In other words, engineers are not professionally preoccupied with doing magic. In principle, the finite engineering problem is solvable, although it may not be economically viable or “rational”. Spending four hundred dollars per gallon of petrol to combat the magical Taliban culture is technologically doable, but it’s probably not the most rational and efficient use of resources for imposing the engineers definition of reality on the Taliban. And if the engineers are not their to impose reality in the first place, what’s the point?
I think your paragraph:
Racism would be to believe that Muslims are innately doomed to have unstable, undemocratic societies. But to understand that dramatic change—including in the ways Islam is effectively interpreted—is needed to achieve those goals is in no way racist.
Is deeply flawed.
For something to be ”innate,” means it is 100% in one’s genes, DNA.
To be ”doomed” is to be 100% in a hopeless state.
BUT Muslim societies are different from Muslims as individuals.
Muslim societies are led by men who use Sharia (adjusting their interpretation as needed) to maintain their power base.
As a result, as threats to their power increase from any side, they can use Sharia more and more oppressively when and where needed.
OTOH, individual Muslims have the freedom to interpret Islam in many ways.
Too often theydo not live in a society where they can openly express their views of Islam.
The young lady [ http://liberatednow.blogspot.com/ who secretly left Islam and blogs about her situation and thoughts introduced me to a new Arabic word: Munafiq.
To quote her:
“According to the Quran and Hadeeth, a Murtad (apostate) is a person who leaves Islam openly, whereas a Munafiq (hypocrite) is someone who pretends to be a Muslim when he is not one anymore. Why would anyone pretend to be a Muslim when is not one anymore? Obviously because he loves life more than death….”
I would wager that there are tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of Muslims in the Munafiq state under various Sharia governments today.
They have interpreted Islam differently from their Sharia State leaders.
If they are found out; they die for ”apostasy.”
How can they overcome their countries’ leaders when, were they to come into power, they would do the exact same thing to all the population that had been done to them?
Indeed, to reduce “Muslims” or “Islam” to a race against which one can be racist is by the very logic of Rubin’s own argument here “racist”. One wonders why even he falls into the PC trap. Obviously, people can be doomed by living in a false ideology – that, again, is the very point of Rubin’s piece.
Personally, while seeing the great problems involved, I am ultimately agnostic over whether is will be possible for people with Islamic identities to develop a form of Islam that is compatible with free markets, science, human rights, modern civil society, etc. There are certainly some few individuals in the West who seem to have achieved this – though they are constantly accused of not being really Islamic – but this is not the same thing as having widely-acknowledged representatives of Islamic culture and society succeeding in this. Anyway, to argue that those who believe it is not possible significantly to “reform” Islam, that Islam is inherent doomed to be at war with Western modernity, cannot come up with serious arguments that require more than the dismissive “racist” is to show disrespect to real thinkers, among which one might even find one or two of Rubin’s PJM colleagues.
truepeers I would be extremely interested to see how you reconcile your belief that Islam can be reformed with the Muslims fervent and theologically supported belief that the Koran is the “Actual and UNALTERABLE’ words of their god.
I don’t have any such “belief”. Like I said, I’m agnostic. I don’t think there is political value in pretending to know what those who want to believe in something seemingly incoherent to long established ways of thinking might do to make it possible. What I think is important is that there be a fierce defense of the line between what is and isn’t acceptable in a free and democratic society, without telling anyone what they believe or have to believe. Make it clear that whatever (and whoever) is antithetical to a free and democratic society will be excluded, howevermuch it is sacred to some. That’s my political position. Intellectually, I do see all kinds of problems in bringing Islam into the modern world. But I’m not a Muslim and it’s not ultimately for me to say what kinds of re-interpretations will be necessary to pursue the desire for “brotherhood” in universal submission to God, in a self-confidently modern world.
The other possibility, of course, is that the forces of Jihad, Sharia, and terrorism will win. But when one considers the death toll that will entail (the global population, including the Muslim population, will have to be radically reduced to conform to the productive limits of Sharia-bound economies) I tend to think even Muslims will eventually come out against it.
Why are you unable to concieve of Muslims who, like Jews and Christians who ignore clerics or text that demand obervance of every word of OT/NT, feel comfortable ignoring passages they know not even the original authors would demand should they know the circumstances their lengthy survival created for some.
Is it because you interpret scripture literally you assume any Muslim able to feel as rightoeus about his faith as you do, must also read what Mohamed said while under circumstances as differnt as the century eacj is in?
Let’s examine a scenario where 10 million Egyptians emigrate to the UK, establish a self-segregated enclave and continue to have the same success relative to the UK as they did in Egypt, even over generations.
Take the East India Company and their success in India, without the blueprints of an outside culture to benefit from and the continued lack of success of Muslims in terms of measuring up to the Western countries they find themselves in, even with a blueprint and the direct influence of the Western culture around them. How have Turks in Germany done in 60 years and N.Africans in France? Is the answer always to be white racism?
How much do you think the Hindus and Mughal respected the British in India other than their technology? And it didn’t even slow the British down. The truth is that you can’t keep a good man down and all this cheap psychology to explain away failure and success as racial attitudes only seems to work in one direction as for some mysterious reason white folks are immune to low self esteem relegating them to shanty towns and overcrowded slums or crime ridden ghettos even in the midst of failed nations while the opposite is not true for non-Westerners even in successful nations. They still seem to stubbornly find ghettos to live in.
You are correct Nan. There may be moderate Muslims, in fact I know many myself, but there is no moderate Islam. This is perfectly encapsulated when you consider the Middle East , where if the Mohammedans gave up their arms there would be peace but if the Jews gave up their arms there would be no more Jews. Islam in a nutshell.
“Muslim societies are led by men who use Sharia (adjusting their interpretation as needed) to maintain their power base.
As a result, as threats to their power increase from any side, they can use Sharia more and more oppressively when and where needed.
OTOH, individual Muslims have the freedom to interpret Islam in many ways.
Too often theydo not live in a society where they can openly express their views of Islam.”
And yet we have several examples now of Muslim countries with the ability to vote in their choice and so far the Islamists, who openly call for Sharia, are voted in by super-majorities. Arab Spring is becoming Islamist Winter!!
A Reuters article included a very telling line:
A Libyan woman at the end of the article said, “We all want Sharia, but not the one they’re talking about.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/us-libya-sharia-rallies-idUSTRE80J23G20120120
Yup.
Over and over again.
In another article women in Egypt made the point that they had no choice but to vote in Islamists.
Why?
Because the MEN they live with or nearby would KNOW how they voted!
Apparently their votes are not as anonymous was ours seem to be.
And also apparently women in Islam live in constant fear of their lives from the very men in their own homes and neighborhoods.
I remember a cool poll in France right after 9-11-01 of Muslim females.
75% opposed wearing any hair cover at all.
BUT more than 1/2 polled wore one out of peer pressure from males in their communities.
My son worked scnoipog ice cream at Brusters at 15 1/2, played baseball and graduated with a 3.5GPA. You can do anything if you put your mind to it.Fast food, some restaurants, vet clinics, Blockbusters, grocery stores, CVS, Walgreens, after school programs at the local ementary school balancing is all about talking to your employer about your schedule, being honest, trustworthy, reliable, dependable,a a self starter. Try it for awhile and if it is not working examine why talk to others who have a job good luck to you!
I think that that there is a more basic philosophical reason than “engineering mentality” that has and is causing the western world to fail so miserably deal the the middle east; and this is that there is no objective truth. From this axiom comes the assumption of equality: that all men are equal, and have similar basic priorities in life.
From this assumption other ideas flow, and because this basic assumption is not correct, then everything based on this assumption is also incorrect. Here is the line of reasoning: if all men are equal, then the natural state should be that all people would think similarly and be granted the same resources. In practice, when people don’t have the same resources (wealth), the reason must be that the group who has more wealth has either unjustly deprived the others of this wealth, or have been fortunate in the original distribution of this wealth. In both cases (many believe) wealth must be transferred from the wealthy to the less well off to redress the imbalance caused by exploitation or luck. Thus if a country is poor and poorly governed, then it must be due to exploitation by another country, and from this we have the guilt of Australia, Canada and the USA towards their native peoples, as well as the guilt of the first world to the third world. As all people are equal, then all cultures must be equal too, and so the failure of the,say, Middle East (ME) productivity must again be due to the western culture somehow having unjustly exploited the ME culture. Again the guilt that many feel prevents any criticism of other cultures in a misguided view that to criticize another culture is to deprecate it, and this cannot be allowed as ‘all cultures are equal, but superficially different’. If all men are the same, then people project on each other their own cultural values. Thus too many do not believe that Hamas is serious about killing all Jews at some point in time, as they firstly can’t believe that someone would want to commit a Genocide, but secondly, they also think that if there is a hatred of the Jews, then the Jews must have done something terrible to Hamas to make them say they want to. In other words, the belief that Hamas is like them and rational means they refuse to believe that Hamas would behave in an irrational manner, but also believe that rationally Hamas must have a legitimate grievance for them to hate the Jews.
If you are from a western culture, you believe in rationality and fairness and can (mistakenly) project this view onto other cultures’ actions and belief. From this rational thought, where people co-operate for the benefit of their culture and society and there is a certain trust in institutions, we can have non-zero-sum transactions. From this basic concept we can now have our “engineering mentality” which inherently incorporates rationality at its core, as well as these non-zero-sum transactions. The rationality allows introspection and self criticism which allows the continual improvement of product and process.
If you live in a culture where there is no rationality or logic, then things happen through prescription, chance, or the whim of a deity. You are required to do (or not do) things because it is prescribed, not because of logic or reasoning. If there is no logic in the natural world, then you can’t predict future events as everything happens at the whim of a deity or deities. Without the rationality and logic, combined with a zero-sum philosophy, progress in productivity and production is severely affected.
With the basic philosophy that ‘all men are equal’, you cannot fail to get into trouble when dealing with people and cultures where this idea is not held, as you begin to project your philosophy on to someone else’s culture and treat it as if it will behave as your culture would. When you insist on projection, despite good evidence that should stop doing this, then you fall from being mistaken to being willfully and criminally ignorant. The problem is that in the post-modern age, the idea that there is no objective truth is taught as a staple. This then devolves into the ‘all men are equal’ since you can’t have one culture/man better than another since all truths must be of equal value if ultimately everyone has their own subjective truths and you can’t tell if one is inherently better or worse than any other.
PS: when I write ‘all men’ I am including all women as well, but have phrased it that was to keep the writing simpler. Possibly done that way to mirror the ‘All men are created equal’ phrase in the US Declaration of Independence, which sets out an initial starting point for philosophy.
You will like this article:
http://american.com/archive/2012/january/the-origins-of-envy
It suggests that the “liberal condition” springs from the emotion of envy and is baked into the DNA. Post modern rationality appears to be a contrivance to assuage the emotions.
Thanks for the reference – very interesting, and I found myself much in agreement with what was written about evolutionary psychology. I myself feel envy, and feel that I am just as susceptible to these feelings that I think we all are. The difference though is being able to use reason and rationality to understand these feelings to construct a society that transcends those limitations of our evolutionary past. Some of what we do is like the proverbial three blind men describing an elephant by touch. None of us are wrong, but maybe we aren’t getting the big picture by ourselves.
If everyone played by the same rules (ethics and philosophy), then maybe Barry Rubin wouldn’t have to be writing this sort of articles. I still think one of the biggest problems is that the ‘western elites’ suffer severely from projection – we certainly know that the Arab culture does so, and both are unable to reason themselves out of this delusion.
One analogy I have heard is that particular cultures or countries are like a bucket of crabs, with individuals being the crabs. Were the crabs able to work together they could all escape. The problem is that every time one crab tries to escape, it is pulled back by the others trying to escape. Maybe that is the beauty of the American culture, in that enough crabs have been able to cooperate enough to escape their bounds and thus have been so successful.
I generally agree with you, but like to further discuss some points.
- We should make a distinction between the phrases “all men are created equal”, “all men are equal” and “all cultures are equal”. What does equality refer to? Biology? Rights and obligations before the law? Equal results? Obviously not all humans are created equal in terms of talent – some individuals are more talented than others. Likewise some individuals had the luck to be born to wealthier families or societies than others. Some individuals will be more successful than others as a result of combinations of two or more of these factors – talent, upbringing, willingness to work hard, luck. The equality the founding fathers of the US, as well as other liberal revolutionaries, were speaking about didn’t refer to biology, talents, luck or results. It referred to the socio-political structure against which the American revolution rebelled – a structure that accorded different people different rights under the law according to a fixed hereditary social status of their families. We’re talking about a society where there were hereditary royalty and aristocracy, where members of royalty and aristocracy were given more rights and a superior status under the law, where if you were born to a family of commoners you were subordinate by law to those born to royalty and aristocracy. Created equal means no one is born to rule or be ruled or born with special privileges – this is not a god-given or a nature-given situation. According to the new, revolutionary, law anyone can be elected president and not just members of the royal family because there is no royalty, everyone are judged by the same law with no special priviliges for special classes, and the word and testimony of an aristocrat don’t bear more weight in court than those of a commoner because there are no aristocrats and commoners – created equal meant the abolishment of royalty and aristocracy. Today we take democracy for granted, so we forget what it was all about.
BTW, people who believe Marx invented socialism don’t realize the early socialists (mostly French) were actually, ironically, inspired by the US – by the lack of aristocracy, the lack of social classes.
The assertion that all cultures are equal seems to be derived from the idea that all men are created equal, but in reality they contradict each other. What should be derived from the idea that all men are created equal is that only a democracy with equal law and equal rights for all citizens is moral, or at least morally better than systems where inequality is enshrined in the law. The idea that all cultures are equal, therefore, contradicts it. It means that monarchies, feudal systems, or sharia-based systems that violate the principle that all men are created equal are equally good as liberal democracies. If so, why choose democracy in the first place? If monarchy is as good as democracy what possible justification could there be for the democractic revolution?
“The problem is that in the post-modern age, the idea that there is no objective truth is taught as a staple.”
That statement is itself false and is taught nowhere that my own experience with academia has taken me. Rather, it appears rather like the notion often heard from defenders of religions over secularism using the claim that if no supreme diety exists capable of stating the absolute differences between sin and saintliness, then man is left to make up what is right wrong based on othing but his own personal desires and dislikes.
That of course is also false because it ignores the fact that all species engaging in a group or cooperative appraoach to survival, behave very differently than those species that remain independent and self-serving. And man, being the one that engages in the most complex social atrrangements than any other by far, also happens to equipped with a built sense of how wrong it is to kill someone whose wife you want to raoe. As a social specires, that behavior will get him killed rather quickly. No religion needed whatsoever.
Remember, tomorrow is a milestone for the U.S. Senate it will be 1000 days since they passed a budget. I know which party is responsible, and I know you do as well.
A very shrewd article; I agree that Third World “underdevelopment” is not the result of a decades long hangover from colonialism but the fault of Third World value systems. I agree that the brightness of American thought lies not in being smarter than anyone but in how we think; we cut to the chase and in some respects our lack of refinement, or should I say over refinement, is a great strength. The problem is, as you say, that this type of confidence is now seen as arrogant or even racist. Eschewing our own view in favor of trying to see the other side in terms of being equal is a mistake; we should stick with our own views which have shook up a world and realize that though it can be a double edge sword, it is still best to dance with the one that brought you.
As regards Islam, the great and simple truth there is that Muslims like being Muslims and they don’t lay awake at night dreaming of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson any more than I do Yassir Arafat or Sayd Qutb. Once Washington understands this and the depraved value system further worsened by a refusal to separate church and state or cultural tools of self-criticism, we will go a lot further in seeing entities like the Muslim Brotherhood for what they are.
I have had similar thoughts. However, I am not confident that most of us agree on what are in our own self-interests, let alone that we grasp what are in the perceived self-interests of other very different cultures. I therefore wonder how we can hope realistically to decide, much less do, what may be in our own self-interests. Until we figure out ours as well as theirs, this seems likely to be a continuing problem.
Like Mozart’s critics who assailed him for too many notes, Rubin has a nice tone, but too many words. All nation are sovereign and entitled to their own engineering. We should respect that – at a minimum. (Palestine is not a sovereign nation). We should not, therefore, impose our own self-professed ingenious engineering, however politically, philosophically or otherwise motivated, upon others. There may be legitimate reasons to do so, but arrogance is the last one to be considered. History and the deepest appreciation of culture are critical to progress. Yet, we are an impatient lot in these United States, and the speed at which we want to see, or to create solutions is not the same speed that might reasonably be expected from the world’s senior cultures – in China, the Middle East, or Africa. Resolutions for the world’s greatest challenges are not to be based on US election cycles.
Right- engineers are not concerned with ethics so much. Yet here we are; this article is. What ought we do about the 3rd world, and how ought we do it? My ethical inclination is to do it peacefully, by philosophy. But others think we ought to be a little more engineery, with their well crafted bombs and such force. Alas, there are the only two ways to get someone to do what you want.
I can sum it up in simple terms. The elites who have this idea the imposition of their agenda rates 1st, last, and above any one and everyone, but of course themselves, originates out of pure bigotry.
Our supposed betters of the self imposed ruling class are the worst kind of racists imaginable.
Not to mention the cultural and class inbred ignorance they posses from having such narrow minded perspective of life as a whole. Born out of inordinate insular wealth and station in life.
Bunch of dumbasses who have meddled and stuck their snotty noses where they do not belong and have absolutely no business dictating from what they consider some high and mighty high horse better than everyone they consider below them.
Kiss my arse.
But how does this “engineering” approach deal with the outside world? Not so well. By ignoring historical, cultural, ideological, religious, and other factors, one isn’t going to understand other countries.
A good engineer takes as many factors into account, especially the “fuzzy” ones like history, culture, and ideology. If you don’t know your customers, or the factors which influence how your design is used, you can’t design a good project. If you’re designing a bridge, you must understand the terrain, the foundations, the thing to be crossed (river, RR tracks, highway) – and the traffic patterns and local traditions. Likewise, if you are dealing with Muslims or Hindus you either learn what they want and require or risk failure.
The problem with our politicians is that they don’t apply a proper systems engineering approach to problems. They assume that any solution that suits their political sensibilities will be equally acceptable to all other parties.
“A good engineer takes as many factors into account, especially the “fuzzy” ones like history, culture, and ideology. If you don’t know your customers, or the factors which influence how your design is used, you can’t design a good project.”
And therein lies the rub. Social psychologists have long known of a greatly increasd tendency among self-described conservatives to exhibit a cognitive trait they call “seizing and freezimg”. That involves what seems to be an inhrent discomfort with uncertainty, ambiguity, or unknowns in general. They fear the possibility of threats they are unable to prepare for. That discomfort is so strong it compels many to arrive at a solution to such uncertainties often before enough has been learned about it to make a rational choice about its identity. Worse even, is that once they’ve “seized” on who the guilty party is (eg), they stubbornly resist(freeze)looking at evidence he amy be wrong.
So you can see the difficulty this presents for a JUSTICE system that hires old “law and order” conservatives who blames non-whites for “everything wrong with America!”. The reason is that strong tendency toward seizing and freezing he likely has.
It is no accident whatsoever that the most DNA exonerations of Death Row inmates comes from states where police forces actively seek out lawmen with that very profile. (the Deep South)
your central point barry gets rather lost because of the complexity of smaller paragraphic points. this is how i see it, getting down to brass tacks:
1. american imperialism, unlike the british model before it, was a stripped down version based completely upon either mercantile or cold-war aims. it was never to create an empire – but quite honestly one wonders if that wouldn’t have been a better way to do it, for the british model of empire left the world with successful democracies through stable parliamentary and constitutional monarchical systems.
2. because america is a republic, it more recently at least has myopically thought that republics were the only option available for some of these countries, wheras if they had offered a monarch, for example in iraq and afghanistan, a better outcome would likely have resulted than merely the clash of competing ethnic factions.
3. part of this problem is quite obviously generational. in the “best” generation, americans found no difficulty using a monarchic model when it made more sense in the locale, such as japan, iran, and in arab countries such as jordan. in the case of germany and japan there was a greater commitment to understand the history of them and there was a far greater transplanting of armed personnel that created stability and so it resembled more the earlier british empire models.
4. the ideological divide of the republican and democrat parties have been problematic to say the least in generating a cohesive foreign policy in these matters. recently, republican policy has seen a greater desire to make long-term commitments – a more imperial approach, wheras the democratic foreign policy has been to offer help through altruistic means and by all means vacate the countries to let them fend for themselves with such a fledging democratic foundation and experience.
5.because of the leftward drift of the post mcgovern democratic party, our foreign policy it quite often at odds with our national interests. ideological approaches are less practical, prone to end in failure and more ill-will of foreign countries than if we had been consistently strong and prepared to follow through on commitments, a certain stability of foreign policy more like the concept of “peace through strength” which is more successful in gaining the allegiance of our friends and deterring the ambitions of our enemies.
I’m so tired of some people calling certain folks “elite” when they are clearly ‘learned idiots’.
Please.
It may have been Angelo Codevilla who first called them “a gentry, not an elite” and “credentialed, not educated”. These are crucial differences.
There is a basic flaw in american conception of the world : The rest of the world may find a material , technical advantage in american creations but the rest of the world also intend to keep their traditions, their religions, their mentality . The muslim pashtun may like the modernization , the sanitization of the Kabul sewers but it stops there; the rest of the USA culture, values, behaviour is not welcome. Once the so-called ” american elites ” accept that fact your foreign policy will turn more efficient , less global and more local. The same is true from my french, cultured, point of view: I welcome the Ipad, the web, some jazz geniuses , some casual dressing, and that’s it ! Do not try to bring your ugly and unhealthy fast food diet, do not try to run into my love of wine and women, do not bring your stupid puritanism, your so-called health mentality: I will champion the goose feeding , the bulls race, the fast driving, the cigar smoker and nevertheless those are important details in time of peace, But when push comes to shove and it’s time to put the fighting gloves I will welcome the marines corps because my freedom of choice will be under threat as it was with the nazis, the communists and now the muslims. We frenchmen do have some memory, and we are quite surprised to see your country being led by a dangerous leftist ( B.Hussein Zob-ama ) who under the cover of ” liberal ” values is going to lead the islamic conquest of Europe. Actually your own country the USA, the leading country of liberty is going backward forging an alliance with the ugliest form of brutal despotism i.e Islam.
Your Lafayette’s relationship with our Geo. Washington wasn’t a question of the General’s foisting his ideas off onto a resistant Lafayette.
Granted, salt- and fat-laden food took on a different taste and appearance in that revolutionary period. People had then to take time to actually cook, and some even had cooks for that job, even here in America.
Mr Rubin’s title, “Why Contemporary Western Elites Don’t Understand the World and Why Their Foreign Policies Fail” should not be taken by anyone in France as an assault on French culture.
Hence, no need for you to put on your Marine uniform and stride forward to protect French superiority.
“Do not try to bring your ugly and unhealthy fast food diet, do not try to run into my love of wine and women, do not bring your stupid puritanism, your so-called health mentality”.
You don’t even attempt to disguise your elitist French arrogance. Phillipe, I don’t care about France or what the French like, do or how they live. As most Americans. And I have no desire to even visit France. What you think we are “bringing” or trying to push on you comes to you via your perception of American movies and the internet. I have absolutely no desire to push the American way of life on anyone, especially the oh-so-cultural Europeans, with their love of “wine and women”. I think I’ll just stick to my beer and sleep on the range tonight, with the cows and my trusty six-shooter.
If the FBI hadn’t turned down hundreds of native Iraqi-Arabic speaking Jews who wanted to help perhaps there would have been a better outcome. Unfortunately, you can’t fix stupid and whom the gods would destroy they first put stupid powder into their drinking water. The USA is ending and that’s all folks.
The core problem is that we are butting into other people’s business, telling them what to do, when we have more than enough problems at home.
We call ourselves the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, yet we have more people in jail, either per capita or total population, than any other country in the world. No one is even close. Supposedly repressive regimes like China and Russia are fairly distant. Our police are probably more militarized that the armed forces of other countries
And part of the reason is we constantly wet our pants over any perceived threat. Oh no, the muslims are gonna get us, let’s sexually assault everyone that wants to fly because they might be hijackers! Who needs dignity? The muslims are gonna get us!
And we whip up a moral panic almost virtually everything – witches, alcohol, drugs, types of music, droopy pants.
It would be almost funny if we didn’t have so many people in jail and dead or drying, their lives ruined.
We’ve given up so many of our rights and freedoms at home, then turn around and preach how others can’t live up to our imagined standards.
I disagree with your premise, in that “if we leave them alone, then they will leave us alone”. Given the morals basis of what other societies would impose upon us, then I would disagree that they should be left alone. If you truly believe that all people have human rights, then you should too.
Sure, the American system has problems, but its ideals are sound and its implementation far better than, say, the communist system whose implementation has never worked in practice.
In a society, there is a battle between freedom and responsibility. In a highly industrialised and complex society, you probably need more rules to ensure the safety of even distant parts of society. In essence, I think I’m a Libertarian, but see the need for limits to behaviors. I would agree that some rules are oppressive and unnecessary, but most of them try to keep our society safe in the absence of internal ethical limitations.
If we look at, say, the prison population: why is it so large? From memory, most are on jail on charges related to illicit drug use or possession. If we suddenly made all drugs legal, then many of those in jail would not be there (at first). The problem is that this would also weaken the trust we have in the rest of society that things will continue to function well. Would you be happy driving on the roads if all drug taking was permitted? Would you trust the judgement of a pilot unrestricted in their choice of narcotic when you fly? What responsibility does society have for picking up the pieces of a failed life or shattered family due to drug addiction be a family member? I’m not saying that the current war on drugs is working well, but what is the alternative practical system? If you think that this should be left up to an individual to decide, then obviously you have never seen a drunk driver, severely impaired in judgement and skill, decide that they are OK to drive.
At least the western world has good ethical standards, even if they are often not adhered to in practice. If you love liberty, then do not other culture members all deserve liberty too? Are not some cultures already at war with ours, even if we are not at war with theirs? Some our problems, “at home”, are caused by people trying to impose their cultural ethics on us, which we should vigorously resist. I agree with you that trying to impose some of our culture on other cultures might be a waste of time and even counterproductive, but that is where we need to be more selective and choose achievable goals, is it ethically right to abandon women or non-Muslims in Middle Eastern cultures to eternal status as second class citizens?
Surely our positive sum culture is better than the zero sum culture found elsewhere around the world?
Does this mean we should start censoring cartoons or forbidding church dances in Greely, Colorado? Certain people are always looking for a scapegoat to explain their own failures. We should not accept this role. Or if we do, we should condition it on their rejection of all of our influences: medical advancements, cell phones, the very airplanes they hijack to murder us.
Mr Rubin,
I’m not easily convinced, and am not able accept that this is solely an American problem; our, as you call it, “engineering” approach to foreign governments’ perceived underdevelopment.
We can use this paste, ” the far bigger problem is the contemporary refusal to discuss what’s wrong with other societies. That also implies understanding what’s right about America and the nature of America’s own problems”…and extend it a bit to ask if this isn’t a two-way, or three-way street requiring some large acceptance of the possibility of the workability of that American “engineering” approach…..by those very resistant Third World Underdeveloped countries.
The Islamist/Muslim outlook, for an in-our-face-example, simply forbids any consideration of any non-Islamic concept. Period.
That’s why we’re spinning our wheels in Central Asia. They’re simply unwilling to accept inwardly that we just might have a good idea in this “democracy” concept. Forget pius public proclamations of democracy is in the works here, but give us more time.” …Maliki and Karzai…that’s empty BS.
Moreover, Islamic areas have had fourteen centuries of observing and summarily rejecting out of hand all other cultures, most lately, America’s Engineering prowess. The Islamic/Muslim imams and mullahs are interested only in subversion and infiltration of all other cultures.
These Islamic enemies of ours this very hour lack totally the pragmatism of the post World War II Japanese and Chinese who eagerly copied our Western products, and via reverse engineering added improving tweaks. Piracy rampant since the late 1940′s.
I witnessed this personally in Japan with the rapidly growing popularity of the Japanese Canon Camera; my first Canon was a down-to-the-screws-copy of the famous German Leica IIIC. Then, they beat us at our own game with autos….better finish, etc.
The ever-pragmatic Chinese are now rabid capitalistic competitors, albeit with a heavy controlling fist hovering just above too much liberalism.
We’ll never see such adaptive pragmatism within that ever-exclusive and excluding Islamic mentality.
Never.
You do know that many of the worlds most awesome engineering marvels exist in Malaysia (Petronas Twins), Dubai, UAE and other such places dont you? No??
Never-mind….
This is Ron Paul’s famous Predictions speech from April 24, 2002. This is the original video compiling recent images and video to give his speech a chilling effect.
“I have no timetable for these predictions, but just in case, keep them around and look at them in 5-10 years. Let’s hope and pray that I’m wrong on all accounts. If so, I will be very pleased. ” Ron Paul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGDisyWkIBM&feature=player_embedded
Our state dept. is full of incompetent leftists and has been for at lest 50 years. There are from time to time able people but they do not stay or are corrupted to keep a high paid soft job. However even when we get a competent secretary of state the so called professionals block any real change. A typical example would be Richard Armitrage who told Bob Novak that Valery Plame worked at the CIA and caused a big investigation but refused to publicly accept responsibility.
It would be interesting to read about MacArthur’s rebuilding of Japan after WWII. It seems that he had a good understanding of, and appreciation for, Japanese culture and therefore was successful in his efforts. Can someone recommend a good resource on the subject.
Unfortunately there is too much of, to quote Tarek Fatah, the racism of lowered expectations. Hence the acceptance of odious practices. Why elae is there not even a whisper of protest from Western feminist when it comes to the maltreatment of women in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Arab world?
Was there even a hint of a whisper when an American brodacaster was sexually assualted and almost killed in Tahrir Square?
Percentage of female genital muilation in Egypt is 91%? The “architect” of the Arab “spring” there is toatlly unaware of this.
For the same reason no conservatives objected to it until someone said it may be good for getting a shot in on Muslim men for sharing the same name of the religion those ones who attacked the WTC said theyt followed too.
IOW put a cork in the phony concern for Muslim women. They never even crossed into your conscious mind until yoi read there might be potential there for causing some Muslim man some misery somewhere.
Odd though that bit about how closely US Creation beliefs match those pushed by Islamic Creation believers. Strange considering how ceratin you are that Islam shares nothing in common with Christianity. Is some sdort of moon-worshippong pedo cult or something I keep hearing. Strange, strange days indeed.
A whisper? From US conservatives there was a roar claiming she deserved it for exposing her presence in a square dominated by known rapists and homo-loving savages like the ones who bombed us on 9/11. And everyone knows reporters are liberals anyhow so she was probably there to help coordinate another attack “cuz everyone knows fascism, liberalism and islam are the same frigging thing!”
I think it important to see charges of racism for what they are. Liberals are none too fond of free speech. Some countries such as Canada and various EU members have hate speech laws; you can go to jail for quoting anti-homosexual passages from the Bible, be denied an entry visa over past statements, and recall the recent trial of Geert Wilders (thankfully, he was acquitted). In the U.S., we have that pesky First Amendment thing, so liberals are left to use peer pressure and shaming for now, at least until they can incrementally move towards hate speech legislation (they’ve already got hate crimes on the books, so it isn’t that big a step). These are the old-fashioned tactics of politically correct speech that are used to control discourse; controlling the terms of the debate goes a long ways towards winning it. I’m not making this up – Hillary Clinton said as much in supporting an anti-Islamophobia initiative by the OIC. Here’s the link:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/12/state-department-meeting-with-oic-to-discuss-free-speech-restrictions.html
Armed with this, I think we can confront politically correct speech more effectively. Accusations of racism, homophobia, or whatever -ism, -phobia, or insensitivity should be met head-on with charges that this isn’t about race, etc., it is about using shame and peer pressure to try to control and win the debate. Don’t accept their authority to dictate the terms, and challenge them to have an honest discussion instead.
IF you have to lie to make your POV seem reasobnable, the rest of us adults learned long ago that the idea must not be worth promoting in the first place and needs to be dropped for where fact are enough.
Canada has had a Conservatuve government in power for many years now. No-one can go to jail for quoting anti-homosexual passages from the Bible. (where is homosexuality mentioned in it anyhow?)
And why would you feel shamed by someone pointing out a bigoted statement if you hadn’t said anything wrong? There’s no shame in being right…. ?
So it appears what you are calling PC speech is in fact speech that corrects you, not some “politician” but guy in puke-stained KKK robes.
Update: Supreme Court limits police use of GPS to track suspects Mon Jan 23, 2012 11:22am EST
http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCATRE80M1E120120123
The only CHANGE that is attainable under Islam is from Jihadi to Compost.
And the sooner the ‘Power’s That Be’ acknowledge that fact the better.
Evolution of USofA and it’s “Elites” in culture of corruption Washington DC.
Phase I
1) Something for something = an honest days work for an honest days pay.
From roughly 1776 to 1894
Phase II
1) Something for Nothing = A days work for alot of pay, benefits and government subsidies, exorbitant pensions and more and more entitlements.
From roughly 1900′s to 1958.
Phase III
1) Nothing for Something = A shortened days work (parttime) for some pay, lots of benefits, plenty of government subsidies, over the top pensions, and entitlements as never seen before in the USofA.
From roughly 1960′s thru to collapse of America’s marxian/leninist economic model.
Simple…America has now firmly entered Phase III. It’ll be a miracle if all this top down, centralised, concentrated in culture of corruption Washington DC socialist/communist economic model can ever return to a Phase I…growth, expanding economic, “free market” type economy.
Worth waiting to see what America’s and American’s course of action will be this 2012 election.God Bless America. Amen.
America succeeded greatly by its original principles, which encouraged natural common sense and following the need to get things done that are the responsibility of the individual. That success brought the US to the point of being the “world leader”, which we have not yet learned to handle. In fact, foreign affairs, for most common sense Americans, is keeping safe and tending to trade, which has little need for great debates in theories of foreign relations. No doubt, that is why practical Americans paid little attention as the elite took on the job of managing our foreign affairs and quickly attached the academic theories that they study and debate. And, no doubt, that is why our foreign policy is riddled with concepts from the Far Left, since they are the academic theorists who hate America.
My foreign policy ideology is simple: tend to US interests, mostly inside the US; if they threaten us, bomb them, no boots on the ground; show third world countries the benefits of Capitalism through domestic success and avoiding war–never attempt to spread Democracy by force or money given; and keep potential enemies out of the US–we have enough who were born here.
No, I am not a Ron Paul supporter.
How can we possibly expect to have a workable foreign policy when we have left it in the hands of the most scattered, shallow, confused elements of our society–politicians, and disciples of the Far Left?
A two word summary: Patrick Buchanan.
“Racism would be to believe that Muslims are innately doomed to have unstable, undemocratic societies.”
Muslim is not a race. Arabs, Pakistanis, Pashtuns and Persians are all Muslims. They all have unstable, undemocratic societies and perhaps they are doomed to do so as long as they are strongly Muslim. Mr. Rubin is correct that contemporary Western elites don’t understand the world and their foreign policies fail, but let’s not not be totally pessimistic. Most of the elites, even the most impervious to learning, now understand that “nation-building” isn’t going to work in the Middle East. Inside the USA, elites of both major parties are now okay with bringing home most of the troops and using Hellfire missiles on al-Qaeda leaders instead. This is progress.
“Racism would be to believe that Muslims are innately doomed to have unstable, undemocratic societies. But to understand that dramatic change — including in the ways Islam is effectively interpreted — is needed to achieve those goals is in no way racist.”
Which race is “Muslim?” Oh, yeah: none. There is no such race. Submission to God is not a race.
It’s typical of hard Leftist sites like PJ to slander their opponents as “racists.” It’s easier than argument with facts and principles.
Muslims, as long they follow the guidelines of God as understood by Muslims now and before, cannot have a stable, democratic society. Unlike the “racists” who believe in the incompatibility of Islam and democracy, Islam teaches that Muslim men are more valuable than Muslim women and both more valuable than the inferiors who have not submitted to God; that the state and religion are one; and that governors rule by (what in the West) is called divine right.
“nation-building” is not futile or impossible it just takes 10 to 50 years. Anywhere the US military has stayed for decades has become a free, democratic and usually wealthy capitalist country. Examples are Japan, South Korea, Western Europe and American South. Corner cases are Philippines where we have helped create a democracy of sorts but where crony capitalism hinders economic growth. Eastern Europe with US troops in Poland looks pretty good. We could nation-build in Iraq or Afghanistan but it will take decades of US troops on the ground.
The PC/Multicultural Left (and its offshoots: liberals, progressives, socialists, greens, etc.) has always had the totally erroneous idea that racism was somehow nonexistent or minimal back in Africa, India and other such impoverished places. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You have not seen racism until you’ve lived in Africa and seen how Africans treat each other. Tribal affiliation, language and, most importantly, skin color–lighter good, darker bad–define ALL interactions among groups. This holds true for a suit-wearing, wealthy Nairobi banker as well as the most primitive tribesman who must hunt his daily food for survival. This racism has been true in Africa since Lucy roamed the savannah. No European colonial power created African racism.
India is much the same. Caste distinctions dictate much of Indian social and economic life, despite the Caste System being officially outlawed in the early 70′s. And make no mistake, caste distinctions are, more often than not, simple racial distinctions (dressed up, of course)–again, light skin good, dark skin bad. Read the Sunday Matrimonial section of an Indian newspaper and you’ll find the word “fair” repeatedly used. “Fair” as in fair skinned.
The West needs to stop apologizing to the Third World for the racism that is so endemic in their societies. Only if we force the Third World to deal with their own racial demons will the lot the average Third Worlder improve.
Who told you liberals believed racism didn’t exist among colored skinned folks? Nobody I know. But I do sense an underlying rationale here your trying to slip in that excuses US racism because it may not be as severe or invented by them alone. Sorry. Not gonna work. Wrong is wrong. Bad behavior is bad behavior, no matter its source or the language it is spoken in.
Nice try tho! Better than many of the lame excuses for why they are justified in feeling as much fear as they do whenever the word “Muslim” is even mentioned.
Mortality salience has long been used by governments of many shapes to obtain what they need from a public reduced to compliance with whatever the people in charge of the army say or so. And continuing to pay military expenditures at a rate that maintains most of them careers that used nuclear tipped ICBMs on nuclear subs maybe five minutes off the coast of Long Island.
Now you pay to maintain that very same military…one created to fight the 2nd most powerful army the world has ever seen, and you do it because of an extremely unlikely series of events conspired to make the attack of a cave-hopping religious kook cause damage that almost LOOKS like it might have come from a serious power. IOW I can excuse how many suffered a hysterical reaction back then, but why are so many buying it still today?
Fear. The very same weapon used by terorist, now used by those who need something from taxpayers they cannot just admit to.
Heres a hint. Look for the 1992 Pentagon document knpown as the Defense Planning Guidence. As soon as the USSR collapsed, the GOP asked Wolfowitz and Libby to come up with a new excuse to demend the public keep paying for their existence. SHelved as “too militant in tone” by an embarrased GOP, Cheney and Powell rewrote it. Clinton in, hawks out.
But that rewrite was made into what is known as the Bush Doctrine. (return to top of page…repeat).
Backward nations will stay backward until such time as they reject both Islam and socialism.
And that’s that.
Ahh! Well trained one here! You do know the next bogeyman they’ve lined up for public compliance purposes is a threat to turn Americans into Hindu “untouchables” they’ll claim after Indian incomnpetance results in a rather public fission-class bomb design to go horribly wrong, right? But dont worry. Only residents of a remote atoll get killed.
Thank you for the post, I found it very thorough. After the next five years, do you see a majority of countries embracing (costly) alternative energy, in spite of the developing economic landscape?
Its like you learn my mind! You seem to know so much about this, like
you wrote the e-book in it or something. I think that you can do with some
percent to pressure the message house a bit, however other than that,
that is magnificent blog. A great read. I will certainly be back.