This year I taught WWII. A girl in my class, very bright, said: “I don’t think you should be teaching this. It’s making me hate Germans.”

I told her that it was okay to hate Nazis–that it was actually the only sane response. She was way too polite to argue, but she looked very skeptical.

Our next generation.

Count me among the pessimists. A religion that does not recognize my rights will get no respect from me. Until the “moderate” Muslims repudiate the radicals, they’re all the same to me. I’m not paying jizya, I will have no dealings with those who believe it is OK to lie to me, and I will support anything our government decides to do to the illegal combatants housed at Gitmo, including a summary tribunal and execution by firing squad. Which is exactly what they are entitled to under the Geneva Convention.

This is going to end, and end badly. Our misplaced sense of decency is going to cost us thousands more dead. Our enemies, quite correctly at this point, doubt our resolve. The escalating violence means the next attack in the US will leave tens of thousands dead and will trigger a massive retaliation. Iran has been at war with us, via proxies, since the embassy was siezed. Payback is overdue.

Watch the lineup; one kiss ass portrait of an entertainment person ["Ooooo, Aaaaah"], a mock up piece on an issue of the day and then a health issue.

the other aspect of the 60 Minutes model
is the “trial by media” game that gets played.

in order to build their rep/street cred as defenders
of the public, they bully and harass their victims on camera,but,of course,only allow a modicum
of conflicting evidence to be presented…
…just enough to allow their coup-de-grace
to seem hard-won and righteous.

jedrury -

the Blogosphere and the internet
expose (“Obsolesce”, as McLuhan would say)
the poseurs of Mike Wallace and Co.
(as well as their other pals in *one-way-media*).

who edits 60 Minutes?
why,the producers of 60 minutes,of course.

would these producers *ever* show their white knights careening down a false alley, to a bumbled conclusion?

doubtful.

would they *ever* follow up on a
story the white knights got 180 degrees wrong??

not on your life.

once one realizes this,
it’s insulting to watch
the “drama” of their heroic expo-sayz “unfold”.

I don’t think that change is impossible for anybody or any group. But change in the radical muslim world will not happen by ignoring their current fascist worldview or trying to understand them. And certainly not by abandoning our own values out of fear or lack of spine. I am not hoping for a bloody war. But backing down to a bully does not stop them. It only encourages them to continue their actions. If we start self censoring our cartoonists they will go after the writers next. the mistake they made with Rushdie was they went after him instead of using the tactics they used with the cartoonists. I wasn’t fond of the cartoons. But the insane actions of the Islamo fascists makes me want to buy a t-shirt with one of the ‘toons and buy a Danish beer. If we don’t repect our values they will feel free to continue their jackboot tactics.

Reformation was a much a result of exhaustion as anything else. After centuries of bloody strife and persecution, growing numbers of Christians finally concluded that only by depriving the churches of access to the coercive and repressive powers of the state AND by depriving the state of the power to intervene in the affairs of the church could they achieve any tolerable coexistence between people of differing faiths and creeds. The bloody religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries almost compelled Christians to secularize their states and societies in order to escape the vicious cycles ofpersecution and conflict. … The Muslims encountered no such problem and so needed no such solution (See Bernard Lewis’ “What Went Wrong?”).

The idea that ANY group of persons, ANY kind of activities, ANY PART of human life is, IN ANY SENSE outside the scope of religious law and jurisdiction is alien to Muslim thought. This is the foundation why Muslims only have a single law, the sharia, accepted by Muslims as of divine origin and regulating ALL aspects of human life; civil, commercial, family, criminal, constitutional as well as matters religious in the more limited (not secular) Christian sense of the word.

So, where does that leave us? We are at a particular intersection of WMD technology availability and Islamic Fascism bent on world domination (nothing less) or martyrdom. Islamic Fascism is a ruthless enemy with no moral compunction about killing innocent civilians (even including children!!?!?). We can ignore the problem, hopeing for the best or we can try appeasement since it worked out so well for Neville Chamberlain, OR we can engage the enemy NOW and perhaps avoid a nuclear exchange.

The current experiences with Moslem populations mixing with “infidels” is not good. India had to be partitioned, we are into 60 years of Palestinian terror, and even Europe with the revenge “ethnic cleansing” of Moslems has a history filled with Islamic conflict.

I am going to take a leap and say doing nothing and hoping for the best is NOT a good option.
As noted in Rogers post, Bawer points out that in Denmark, Muslims make up only 5% of the population but receive 40% of welfare outlays. But in addition, Bawer, notes that many of these immigrants are told by their leaders that Muslim law (sharia) gives them the right to “cheat and lie in the countries that harbor them.” They are told to view the benefits they receive as jizya–the tributes that “the infidel natives of Muslim-occupied countries are obliged to pay to Muslims in order to preserve their lives.” And the welfare offices in Denmark can be the setting for violence–termed “culture clashes” by Danish journalists. “Some clients lay waste to social security offices and hit social workers–not out of frustration but because they’ve learned that bullying gets them what they want.

The absence of a native secularism in Islam and so no attendant free market capitalism, free press, rule of (secular) law, and independent judiciary means the only rational option is to engage and defeat the enemy NOW as hard and as fast as we can (before it gets nuclear). We must act now. There is not enough time for the Islamic society or the Fascists to evolve on their own. The decadent and demographically declining (non Muslim) European societies will either not be much help or very late to the game.

The moral imperative of millions of (Moslem and non-Moslem) deaths DEMANDS we must settle this conflict a fast a possible!

Otherwise count me a pessimist.

Last night on “60 Minutes,” Bob Simon did a show on the cartoon publication in Denmark. He interviewed the editor of the paper [and conveniently trashed him by getting other opinions from competitors about the stupidity of the publication], and, then he interviewed the Imam, who lives in Denmark, who gathered up all the cartoons, packaged them [they had not been published apparently on the same day, some were not even published in that paper], carried them en masse to the Mideast where he disseminated to the Moslem press to get a reaction.

Simon asked him if, in light of all the deaths, he regretted his action. The Imam answered in effect in a snarky way; collateral damage, consequences are consequences.

Simon, having got his answer, moved quickly through the piece to reinforce his criticism of the brave editor who published these cartoons, never challenging this Iman whose quote about collateral damage should send any normal reporter into the stratosphere.

But then I realized that the American mainstream media is not going to dump on these extreme imams because they are afraid of them. Secondly, it is clear that 60 Minutes is “hell on wheels” when it catches some $ 200 a week used car salesman ripping off an unsuspecting buyer, “you just watch old Mike rip Jasper a new one.” But let fearless Bob Simon come face to face with a real live Imam and he turns in jello.