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George Rebane
This drivel, dear reader, cannot be made up. You have to read and fully savor ‘Separating Church and Hate: Irrationality and Anti-Muslim Stereotyping’ so you can fully comprehend the distance that separates us. Least of all, do not discount it, for it informs and confirms the beliefs of at least a third of us in America.
Okay, George, I’ll bite. What’s the solution to this great divide of religions? Is it as Ann Coulter opined after 9/11…”Kill them all and convert their children”…or is there some way to bridge the gap?
You and I have had this conversation before and you know I am not sympathetic to a culture that murders cartoonists, among others. It’s easy to sit around and demagogue the “Ragheads” as you so often describe them. Will it be a war of extermination, so vast in scope that it would make Hitler and Stalin blush?
I anxiously await your wisdom in this matter…
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Don’t know about the “wisdom” bit Bob, but here are some thoughts.
First, I have made my point on the ‘raghead’ label, who they are, and why we should defend against them with passion. The alternative would be executing the holocausts of Mao, Stalin, and Hitler. More here ‘Of Ragheads and Racism’ http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2010/02/of-ragheads-and-racism.html?cid=6a00e54f86f2ad8833012877b791a4970c
I’m leery of any religion that seeks conversion of infidels by force and is motivated by its god to thus cover the earth with believers. Historically, the Christians picked up this modus operandi from the Muslims as Islam started spreading by the sword in the 7th century – ‘Accept Allah or Die!’ At the time Christians in Europe were still fighting to keep their religion alive as the Visigoths were finishing with the Roman Empire. But soon Christians became equally rapacious in spreading their faith across Europe (my ancestors were converted in the 12th century), and then across the seas.
Islam spread west and south in Africa, and eastward over Persia and India. When Islam reached north to Europe after the fall of Constantinople, it collided with Christianity on the Balkan and Iberian peninsulas. The Spanish princes pushed Islam back to Africa, but the Ottoman Turks kept the Islamic pressure upwards towards the heart of Europe until they were finally defeated at the Battle of Vienna in1683, and then pushed back to the Balkans where they remain to this day. Throughout their writings and generations of teaching their young, Muslims look at Europe as their first piece of unfinished business.
In the meanwhile, Christianity had its post-Renaissance centuries and spread its faith by the sword to mainly the New World where it found missionary work easy going with the more primitive indigenous peoples. Christians became premier worldwide traders in goods and ideas, and one could argue that their zeal migrated from Christ to commerce, with the transition being complete by the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The spread of wealth down the social ladders of Christian countries gave rise to what today is called classical liberalism.
During the same centuries Islam lay fallow in its intellectual and commercial development. It spent its resources in defending and maintaining its original belief tenets and fought inter-Nicene wars. The 20th century found Islam finally waking from its centuries long slumber. As Rip Van Winkle, they re-entered a dramatically changed world with a woefully dated belief system that still longs for the worldwide Caliphate and sees it as their reason for being.
Today they teach their young that Islam will soon be dominant, and with Allah’s blessing they will conquer all, especially the heathen West that has demonstrably forsaken everything godly. They claim no credible negotiating position, no rapprochement with the West. They approach us as we did the Sioux on the Great Plains a century and a half ago. Peace is an ad hoc tool, practiced here, retracted there, all to keep the settlements advancing into our lands. Assimilation is a façade.
Some of us believe that we could still beat them through the materialistic subversion we have used on other cultures during most of the 20th century. But then we were not ashamed to push our culture as being ‘better’ than the target cultures we assaulted. We don’t do that anymore, perhaps because we have given up on an American culture (a strong and exceptional culture that so many of us mid-century immigrants sensed and wanted to emulate as quickly as possible).
The real battle is not being fought in the mid-East, it is fought and being lost in our neighborhoods, right here in the heartland, with the erection of every suburban mosque and Islamic center. And Islam knows that this is what is happening in Europe and America. Iraq and Afghanistan, and even Iran are successful diversions. The prize they seek is under our very feet, and the neutral stance of the ‘Islamic street’ says that the Muslim settlers are winning.
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Great history lesson, George, but it still doesn’t tell me what lengths you think we should go to to eliminate the menace. From your postings and those in other blogs, no one seems willing to offer a solution.
We can stop talking to them, try to isolate them, but threats don’t seem to have much effect. We (and Israel) keep dangling the possibility of military strikes on Iran, but no one believes that will end their quest for nukes. Invasion and occupation isn’t even on the table.
So the only other option appears to be letting the problem grow until we are physically threatened, and then unleashing our thermonuclear arsenal on the populations of one-third of the planet.
The one hope I see is the increasing spread of information technology. Even in totalitarian regimes it’s getting harder and harder to keep the influence of our culture out of the hands of regular people. In that sense, engagement seems better than the alternative. There will always be fanatics, but I think most people, even muslims, are more concerned with raising their standard of living than conquering the world.
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Bob, in my clumsy way I tried to conclude with the ‘school solution’ that America has successfully used in the past – we overwhelm them with our materialistic culture and subvert their youth away from their traditions and into blue jeans, iPods, and fast cars. But this is a different world where we have been taught that America is not exceptional and our ways have no more value than theirs.
Additionally, we have for the first time run into a civilization that has a focused and strong belief system, and is willing to concurrently use terror and settlers to attack us. Terror to destabilize our systems and beliefs, and settlers to move in while we are trying to reconfigure our society. It is a ‘combined arms’ attack as we called it in my Army days, or in Ernie Ford’s words, ‘If the right one don’t a get ya, then the left one will.’
We have never fought an end-timer civilization that seeks its reward in the hereafter. A system that joyfully commits mass murder with suicide bombers, and uses negotiations for gaining time to consolidate and prepare for the next thrust. Look at post-9/11 America, it is clear they have already won that phase of the war.
We can only counter them now by adopting police methods that are totally inimical to our way of life, methods that we once used and have now denounced to three generations of Americans. I don’t know how reverting to those methods is possible, except if, say, the nations of the Arab League would overtly attack us. Then we react with force, and very likely go back to the methods we used to ‘solve’ the domestic Japanese problem. But Islam is not that foolish.
Right now the cancer of Islam is doing what cancer does best – metastasis, with little flare ups here and there to defocus our attention, and get us to issue another round of ‘let’s not revert to Islam bashing, they’re not all like that’. Against this our twelve carrier task groups are useless.
Bottom line, it’s either blue jeans, iPods, and fast cars, or reverting to a police state with focused xenophobia, or get ready for the Caliphate.
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I guess I didn’t see your “cultural revolution” as a solution because you seem so half-hearted about it yourself. I still see it as possible, if for no other reason than it’s so much easier to access with all these electronic gizmos. I could have wrecked my life at a much earlier age if I had those devil’s tools. As it was, I was stuck up here in the mountains and my exposure to the counter culture was limited to trying to pick up Wolfman Jack on the LA stations in the middle of the night and waiting for the next shipment of comic books to William’s Stationary.
I suppose it’s hard to advocate the coming of Doomsday, especially if you’re on the right. The mere suggestion of nuclear war with Islam would be picked up by the leftie blogs in nanoseconds, and you would be reviled as the second coming of Attila the Hun. In the good old days, when we were a rich country, we could have buried the Middle East under ten feet of bacon and avoided the fallout. Now we are ruled by vegetarians and animal rights fanatics and such a simple and elegant solution is no longer possible.
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And, just out of curiosity, what arcane religion were your ancestors converted from? Were they Muslim? And why did it take until the 12th century do it? I suspect you could be a mole!
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If you promise to keep it under your hat Bob, I’ll tell you. Estonians are Finno-Ugrics, originally from Mongolia, just like the Finns; we are the stealth Scandinavians and built our own viking boats to go on rape, pillage, and burn expeditions. Sometimes we didn’t get the order right, and returned empty-handed – the rule to remember was ‘pillage then burn’. We worshipped the usual nordic gods and added the mighty oak tree in there for good measure.
In the 12th century the Teutonic knights from Germany came up there for their own RPB exercises, played the Estonian tribes off against each other, and took over. We gave them our land, liberty, and ladies, they gave us Christianity – such a deal.
Both mom and dad were born on a farm, so I’m one generation removed from solid Estonian peasant stock. We Estonians were going to take over the world until someone pointed out that there were just a million of us living on a patch of land half the size of Indiana.
So here I am in the good ol’ US of A quietly working on Plan B. But don’t tell anyone.
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Aha! So you aren’t the second coming of Attila the Hun. You are the second coming of Ghenghis Khan. It all makes sense now…
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George posts “We have never fought an end-timer civilization that seeks its reward in the hereafter”.
What about Christianity? It’s an end-timer religion too.
George also posts he is “leery of any religion that seeks conversion of infidels by force and is motivated by its god to thus cover the earth with believers”. Well George you better be leery of Christianity. Just ask the folks that lived in the USA before the white man showed up and worked so hard to kill off their native religions, language and culture and worked to “convert” them by force… as just one example.
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Steve, I believe I covered your points thoroughly. Your comment, perhaps, illustrates why it is so hard for us to connect.
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Christianity is an end-timer religion… just saying.
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There is no “wisdom” on this matter, only tolerance for folks to believe as they wish.
It appears George, who seems to champion himself as a historian, conveniently leaves out the true history of Christianity, the Crusades, the Inquisistion, the brutality in the name of “Jesus,” et al.
To each their own, I say, but George’s ilk would not concur. Instead, it’s “to each MY own.
It’s all arrogance. Our founders gave us the right to believe as we wish. But George believes we should only believe as he wishes. Thank god the next generation will — and frankly, firmly is — leaving such a xenophobic mentality to be read in the pages of a world history book.
The world is getting smaller and the people who embrace that will change the world, not fear it.
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Hey George, you think they’re interested in “blue jeans and fast cars”? Then, you are an absolute moron when it comes to Islam. They could give a rat’s ass about our “materialstic” world. In case you haven’t noticed. These folks are so committed to their cause, they’re willing to blow themselves apart in a billion pieces to see “their” justice. I’m not on their side, but rather than believing we should give ’em all a pair of Levis in hopes they want to be like us, perhaps we would be better off to ACTUALLY listen to what their complaints are. And BUILD, not BURN, from there. Nevermind. I really don’t know why I’m beating my head against the wall with you — other than the fact that I belive you have shown the ability, aside from the rest of Nevada County’s blogging egos, to be a thoughtful writer.
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SteveE – Agreed that Christianity is an end-timer religion, but it is no longer practiced by the zealots who formerly spread it by the sword. Today we have found other reasons to kill and conquer, e.g. to assure our and our allies’ energy supplies.
Mr Nuff, I don’t think my writing is up to your reading skills, and I empathize with your frustration in coming to RR. Since you are not able to civilly discuss the subject matter of the posts, I think that we will make the above your last ad hominem contribution to these pages.
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The excesses of Christianity are well documented, but George is right in saying that it has evolved. We still have more than our share of Bible-thumping preachers who love to quote the Book of Revelations, but no modern day Christian has ever called for the head of a cartoonist for daring to portray the messiah. Homosexuals and women are not stoned in the village square.
Don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of criticism for some Christians and I consider myself an agnostic, but I support the right of Christians to worship as they please, as long as they don’t try to foist their beliefs on me. Bringing up past offenses of the church is a weak argument in the context of today’s religious devisions. If we had been settlers during the Westward expansion, I doubt that many would have objected to the removal of the “Indian threat”. They were different times.
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George, what are your thoughts on atheism as “religion of no religion”, as some like to call it? From what I see in young generation, no one is seriously into Christianity. Should we establish churches of atheism, to counter and resist the spread of mosques?
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Great question Al. Yes, atheists hold fast to the tenet that humans (and all sentients and sapients?) are not transcendent to a creator intelligence. They firmly believe in a science that sees ‘turtles all the way down’, and agree with Marx that religion is the opiate of the masses. Not so the agnostics, who believe either that Man’s transcendence is unknowable by Man – an anthropomorphic take on Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem – or that they personally don’t know how to resolve the transcendence/oblivion question.
As to the building of ‘agnostic churches’, we have already successfully embarked on that project. Government has now become the supreme decider and provider, and its temples are increasing across the land. It trucks no competition, and with force of arms is busy expunging all visible vestiges of transcendent gods from the land.
However, such agnostic churches have always had a problem in recruiting self-sacrificing soldiers, let alone zealots, to charge the ramparts or carry its message. That is not hard to see since such governments promise nothing but oblivion in return, and often provide a taste of that oblivion to its acolytes even before their lives extinguish.
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As a lifelong Aggie, I don’t hold that Big Brother is my church of choice. I don’t know if the Big Guy exists or not. Some just accept it as a matter of faith, but I’m always the eternal skeptic. He has never knocked on my door, although his salesmen show up here from time to time.
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Bob, have you ever given an anonymous gift and see it make a difference?
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What could possibly drive an ‘agnostic’ to die on the battlefield against the ‘altruistic’ who believe in a heavenly afterlife? I think Rebane hit the nail on the head: “However, such agnostic churches have always had a problem in recruiting self-sacrificing soldiers, let alone zealots, to charge the ramparts or carry its message.”
The bedtime stories I tell my girls at night include villains…government, muslims, looters/moochers/progressives/socialists…
Of all the villains I am stymied by the muslim conundrum the most. As yet, my personal liberties have not been phased enough for me to take up arms against the aforementioned villains. Their tactic appears to be an incremental attack of our liberties… can you say death by a thousand cuts?
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I would counter that an agnostic would be motivated to defend his or her family, property and country for the same reasons as a religious person…self survival. The battlefields of history are littered with the faithless as well as the faithful. If there is a difference, it could be that the skeptic is less likely to start a war based on religious beliefs.
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Bob Crab… “Christian has ever called for the head of a cartoonist for daring to portray the messiah. Homosexuals and women are not stoned in the village square”. No Bob they are shot in churches or face being put in jail or put to death for being gay.
Bob, do you know what the good Christians are doing in Africa? Seems they want to pass laws to kill homosexuals.
What about the good Christians that kill abortion providers? What about the good Christian that went into a church and shot and killed an abortion provider Dr.?
Sorry Bob, but a number of them “evolved” Christians are killing folks now because they have other views or are gay.
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No doubt the battlefields you describe Bob are so littered. The only difference is that the believer matches the motivation of the agnostic/atheist to fight for “family, property and country” and then goes on to, perhaps, fight for a religious principle for which survival may or not be a motivation.
SteveE, you are right. We Christians are nowhere near perfect, and commit more than what we like to see as our share of bad things in this world. But I believe the stats on where mercy lies favor the Christians against, say, Muslims and Hindus. No doubt we have a long way to go, and on that journey your observations are most helpful.
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My understanding is that the muslim Koran calls Muslims to kill infidels while the Christian bible calls Christians to hate the sin, love the sinner. I will concede that each (Christian or Muslim) are sinners and often misguided by their zeal. However, one is acting with the orders which they believed are ordered by their god and the other is acting on the sin in their hearts.
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What percentage of Christians are responsible for these atrocities? One or two?…Say even five? Does that compare to the countries that practice Sharia law, which are spread from Africa to Indonesia? Tell it to that Van Gogh fella who made a film criticizing Islam…Too late…He’s dead.
I’m not going to defend every Christian belief, but I will defend their right to believe them. I’ll vote against a fundamentalist whacko with the same hand that votes against a secular whacko.
And yes, George, I do try to perform random acts of kindness and have seen them make a difference.
Whew! Mom was right…Never get into an argument about religion!
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For so many reasons and some examples above I am an agnostic.
I also believe as Bob Crabb posted that an “agnostic would be motivated to defend his or her family, property and country for the same reasons as a religious person”. They have and they do.
I’m betting that there are a number of agnostics that have served in the armed forces and have died for their country and there fellow service members and have done so without a belief “in a heavenly afterlife” as their motivation.
Also seems to be an unlimited supply of good Christians that are haters of those with differing views. I also think the Catholic church needs to do some more “evolving” and needs to take responsibilty and action for what they have done to children under their care and the ongoing coverups they continue to undertake.
Yep, Christian’s are very evolved…
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And then we have the group of God-fearing Christians that show up and protest at the funerals of those in the military that gave their lives to protect and serve our Country. Those Christians holding the Bible and those wonderful signs saying it’s God that is killing these soldiers as his revenge on us for allowing gays in the USA.
Yep, Christina have really evolved… it’s called prosecution, the very reasons folks left Europe and came to the New World long ago. To escape prosecution over religious beliefs and lifestyles.
There are many, many more recent examples of how Christians have “evolved”.
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I will only touch on the Steve issue but the last christiam holy war was like 900yrs ago and the people mentioned number maybe 100, including the funeral nutcases and the killers. WE have had more people in danger from Muslim attacks in the last 2 yrs than that total – its a priority issue.
The problem we have is we have let the camel stick his nose under the tent – and to control them we must submit to control too – not good. Kinda why granny from Indiana has to take her shoes off at the airport, next year somebody will have to check her underwear – eeeegads
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Just remember Barry Sorento died
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