Which is always unpleasant, I know.
But I get a kick out of the "conservative" movement's Crusade against the inane concept "Islamo-fascism." I'll tell you why ...
It's always been my contention that the best "conservatives" (that'd be the "red tories" in Canada for instance) are just people frightened of change who need other people to allow things to happen for a few decades, so that they can be certain that the sky won't fall in on them, before they're willing to embrace these changes.
[The worst "conservatives" are just insane asswipes with emotional problems galore. Fuck 'em.]
Case in point is the right-wing's belated turning against anti-Semitism and fascism.
In the past, conservative ruling elites were rank with anti-Semitism. To the extent that peasants and the working classes were anti-semitic there were economic reasons for this, and, furthermore, they weren't exactly being "progressive" when they were being anti-Semites.
T'was the socialist movement where you found the most cosmopolitan attitudes towards the Jews. That's why so many socialist activists and leaders were Jewish.
And fascism, however much intellectual porridge-heads like Jonah Goldberg attempt to link it with liberalism in their deranged scribblings, was very much a "conservative" movement, appealing to victims real and self-perceived of urban-industrial-capitalist society, and brought into power in both Italy and Germany and Spain by threatened conservative elites who thought they could control them.
But decades have gone by, and the evils of Nazism have been ingrained too deeply into the psyche of Western Civilization. And so, many of today's "conservatives" naturally, genuinely feel that fascism was a bad thing. Even when they practice it themselves under the guise of "supporting the troops," and even when their even more loopy "conservative" brethren slap on swastika arm-bands.
And Israel, having shown itself to be a useful tool of US foreign policy, has received tens of billions of dollars in assistance, and is threatened by people that we've all been trained to despise, so Israel, the home of the Jewish people (the victims of fascism) are also to be supported. (Even if a lot of this "support" is based on the notion that Israel must provoke a war with the Arabs, get slaughtered, with the tiny survivors converting to Christianity.)
But here's the kicker: While imagining that they line up against anti-Semitism and fascism, these dim-wits revere the writings of Mark Steyn. Who himself is one the most strident alarmists about the incoherent concept of "Islamo-fascism." And the fact of the matter is, Steyn adheres to the same racist theories that were so much an important part of the Nazi's whole shtick (much more so than Hitler's vegetarianism or environmentalism) this being the racist pseudo-science of eugenics.
In his piece-of-shit book America Alone, Steyn pisses in his pants about the dangers of the high birthrates of Muslims in Europe and the simultaneously low birthrates of traditional white, Christian Europeans. He is mirroring the fascist-era yammering about the propagation of the unfit, and the declining birthrates of the superior classes, and he obviously isn't even aware of the irony of it all.
Mark Steyn is a propagator of racist, eugenic, fascist drivel, yet he's an opponent of a mythical "Islamo-fascism."
This is the intellectual level of the opposition people. Go out and kick their asses. (Don't let reality have all the fun.)
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43 comments:
Well thought out and well expressed, Thwap.
One notable right wing ant-semite was T.S. Eliot (who oddly had an extensive correspondence with "Groucho' Marx). (Go figger)
The best that can be said if his views is that he: "was able to place his anti-Semitism at the service of his art."
Eliot described the angst of the upper middle class, more in admiration than sorrow.
Thanks.
Eliot also gave Andre the Giant a ride to school pretty much every morning when the latter was a lad.
You are, of course, spectacularly ill-informed.
Any decent academic treatement of Fascism and Nazism identify these movements as what they were: attempts to erect a new, transcendant, revolutionary alternative to European liberalism (Adam Smith) or European socialism. These movements enacted socialist-style policies and attempted to enlist the working classes because their architects, all bourgeois intellectuals to a man, were titillated by the virile revolutionism of the lower orders. Contrary to your claim that ultra-right movements in the 1930s were the domain of conservative elites who thought they could control them, the leadership and the rank and file fell into these movements precisely because they saw in them the opportunity to throw out the pre-1914 generation of politicians.
Where you slide into idiocy is in your linking of patriotism, contemporary conservatism, and fascism; these first two are only the last when taken to an excess not seen in Canadian society pretty much ever. When military service becomes compulsary, the economy is reorganized along corporatist principles, and we invade Alaska to live our our nonexistent dreams of empire we might have something to discuss. Until then, your rhetoric will remain the kind of childish attempts at historical parallel that are supposed to be the exclusive domain of impressionable undergraduates.
Steyn's basic thesis has nothing to do with race, given that Islam has no racial component. Instead, what he whinges on about is the combination of flat demographics in the West, the destruction of the intellectual and public-policy basis for true integration of newcomers (multiculturalism looms large in this), and the civilizational decadence that engenders both of the above. Were he a racist, race would feature prominently in his narrative; were he a eugenicist, sterilization would. His struggle is over culture, and the man has said several times that he cares not a whit for the ethnic origin of citizens so long as they adhere to western values. Since this is all very clearly spelled out in the book, I'm forced to conclude you didn't actually read it and are jumping at shadows. If you were going to give it the knocks it deserves, maybe you should have looked at the math (shoddy), the evidence (anecdotal) and the style (journalistic, does not translate well to monograph length).
Instead you trotted out the usual bromides of the Canadian left (racism, Nazism) in an utterly unipolar and predictable way (anyone who disagrees with you is a moron with emotional problems) while managing to incorporate a few key touchstones of your movement's fragmented ideology (Israel). You manage to misunderstand conservatism, which is not frightened of change but instead respects the law of unintended consequences and prefers incremental change (Burke) and you season your rather skeletal narrative with a few dashes of ersatz Marxism (lower classes not responsible for actions, behavior can be explained by economic conditions).
I will admit that you can at least string a sentence together without error, but the history you employ in your argument is bunk, the basic premises of your narrative are false, the conclusion you draw demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the source material, and your bias and lack of even-handedness is so palpable as to invalidate what few points you carry. This may pass for intellectualism in your circle, but anyone with half a brain and a quarter of a proper education sees it as the drivel it is.
Sincerely,
A Conservative
Who Actually Paid Attention in School
and Bothered to Read the Book
ps: comment moderation is for those who cannot handle open debate
"Racist, eugen[ic]ist", eh? Let's put thwap's criticisms to a reality-based test.
Suppose Europe's Middle Eastern immigrants started converting to Christianity - or Buddhism, or even atheism, for that matter. They all decide to abandon any desire to require their whole society to live under Sharia law.
How do you think Steyn and his supporters would take that?
Let's try another thought-experiment, shall we.
Suppose a lot of white-skinned Europeans convert to Islam. Not just the mild Brunei/ Indonesian/ Malaysian version, either, but Saudi-style Wahhabism. And they put it into practice.
Women are banned from driving, indeed from most professions. They are left with no options but to get pregnant and have lots of children. Lots of little pink-cheeked Nordic babies who believe strongly - strongly enough to "kill and die for" their belief - that Sharia Law is the will of God and that everyone in the world must submit to it, willingly or not.
Surely Steyn and the Steynians would cheer that, right? I mean, they're racists, and these are not brown people but light-skinned Europeans?
A few moments' reflection will show that thwap has completely missed the point, and made a fool of himself over the Internet, as a lot of Steyn's critics do.
There are plenty of legitimate grounds to refute Steynians, but pretending that they care two figs about a baby's race or skin colour - as opposed to whether a baby is going to grow up being taught that liberal democracy runs the state, or Sharia Law - is missing the point.
Second-grade-standard analysis like this blog's shows how the Left has grown altogether too lazy intellectually - much easier to throw the "racist" tag at conservatives and libertarians, rather than analysing dissecting what they actually believe. The current Obama/ Clinton implosion shows where this leads to. You don't win supporters by thwacking the crap out of a straw enemy.
Come on, Rod. It's more fun to knock down straw men, label those you disagree with fascists, racists and generally evil people, and then pat yourself on the back for not being one of them.
Ah where to begin?
Thanks for the detailed, thoughtful criticism.
Right off the bat, comment moderation is for me, because I was tired of right-wing idiots responding to my posts with childish one-liner insults. I decided not to give them the satisfaction of even seeing their stupid jibes for an hour.
On to the rest of your comment:
You are, of course, spectacularly, and groundlessly, proud of your ability to read a little history.
The fascists made their appeal, as I said, to the real and self-perceived victims of urban-industrial capitalist society.
Farmers, angry at the decline of rural influence and values, small shop-keepers, angry at department stores and the mass market in general. Professionals and bureaucrats nervous and jealous of corporate elites, unionized workers, and the capitalist economy, ... members of all of these groups turned to fascism and its irrational pseudo-history of national heroism and cultural purity.
Whether they got what they'd hoped for is another matter.
It's also an undisputed fact that both Hitler and Mussolini proved to be able suppressors of autonomous working-class action for capitalist employers.
Finally, Hitler was indeed brought to power by conservative politicians who thought that they could control him.
Contrary to your claim that ultra-right movements in the 1930s were the domain of conservative elites who thought they could control them, the leadership and the rank and file fell into these movements precisely because they saw in them the opportunity to throw out the pre-1914 generation of politicians.
I think that I see the problem here. You have this incredibly limited view of the complexity of history and human society. It's entirely possible for a political movement to espouse tearing-down the elites, while at the same time it serves as a vehicle for perpetuating elite rule.
Observe the rubes in the US Republican Party who pathetically backed Mike Huckabee over their party's elites' preference for Giulani or McCain. They said that they were tired of a party of corporate America that didn't respect them or their values. But they've voted for this party for decades.
You then slide into idiocy by refusing to accept that the crude, mystical symbolism of today's "conservative" movement isn't approaching fascism. The blind devotion to great leaders, the worship of martial values, the denigration of inferior cultures, the fear of immigrants, feminists, homosexuals, socialism, the whole anti-intellectual stew of nonsensical ideas and "traditional" values is very much related to fascism, whether you like it or not.
Umberto Eco's list of the elements of fascism has long been a respectable attempt to describe a universal, timeless code for fascist beliefs aside from the historical Italian and German examples. Much of what he describes are integral parts of the fascist yammerings on sites like smalldeadanimals and other nests of insanity amongst the blogging tories.
I'll quote his conclusion, since you seem to be in desperate need of its wisdom:
"Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple."
You're right. I haven't read Steyn's book. I don't intend to. I've read reviews of it, and it's all of a piece with the essentially racist hatred of Arabs that the right-wing is notorious for. Life is short, and I've no intention of wasting precious minutes of it reading ridiculous pieces of garbage simply so that I can keep up my stream in a pissing contest with someone such as yourself.
Steyn has been so wrong, on so many levels, for so long, that he doesn't merit my sustained attention.
You're free to disagree of course. But I'm free to not care about your opinion.
"Instead you trotted out the usual bromides of the Canadian left (racism, Nazism) in an utterly unipolar and predictable way (anyone who disagrees with you is a moron with emotional problems) while managing to incorporate a few key touchstones of your movement's fragmented ideology (Israel)."
That was such a remarkable spewing of semi-coherent, semi-intelligent nonsense and delusion that I'll try to parse it in detail: We've already dealt with nazism. Next up is your bizarre contention that denigrating an entire people as wedded to a debased religion of death and corruption, as being incapable of rational thought, of being inhumanly cruel and of perversely enjoying martyrdom is somehow not "racist" in whatever simplistic worldview you imagine that you're inhabiting.
Whatever floats your boat pal.
For the record, I don't think that anyone and everyone who disagrees with me is a moron with emotional problems. For instance, you disagree with me, ... actually, considering all the insults you felt free to throw around "slide into idiocy" etc., .. I'll simply say "fuck you, you laughable hypocrite" and leave it at that.
How the fuck is "Israel" a "touchstone of [my] movement's fragmented ideology"? What the hell is that even supposed to mean? I suspect that you simply don't have the moral or intellectual courage to face up to the left's very simple, very clear criticism of Israel.
I'll spell it out for you: Israel is illegally trying to keep the occupied territories, and is subjecting the Palestinians there to an unending process or brutality and humiliation to try to get them to leave.
You no doubt deliberately chose to write so cryptically about the left's criticism of Israel because you really don't have an adequate response to what we're really all about, so, just like the right-wing doofusi I described in my post you're also a johnny-come-lately to anti-semitism (albeit a more sophisticated one) and you've transferred your courageous rejection of mid-20th century anti-Semitism to defending Israel's illegal actions in the occupied territories.
Because when all is said and done, you're an idiot.
"You manage to misunderstand conservatism, which is not frightened of change but instead respects the law of unintended consequences and prefers incremental change (Burke)"
Precisely what I said. Burke was a decent thinker, but there have always been versions of his Reflections on the Revolution in France during times of upheaval. Things spun out of control in the English Civil War as well. But unintended consequences don't invalidate necessary revolutions.
For the best conservatives, it's always "too soon" for women's rights, gay marriages, native self-government, etc.
and you season your rather skeletal narrative with a few dashes of ersatz Marxism (lower classes not responsible for actions, behavior can be explained by economic conditions).
I'll explain that: I figured that my condemnation of elite anti-Semitism would be met with the charge that I was ignoring non-elite bigotry. So I admitted it, but it's a historical fact that throughout Europe, the Jews were alotte the role of money-lenders, which didn't endear them to the desperately poor majority.
nonetheless, twas the elites who cynically allow th masses to give vent to this anger in numerous pogroms.
In short, you have typed a veritable museum of the sloppy thinking, confused grasp of history, that manages to ooze out from behind the pomposity of the more clever denizens of the right-wing.
Rein-in that arrogance young man. It clouds your vision, and distorts your reason.
The National Socialist German Workers Party was exactly what it purported to be, a leftist socialist labour party. Hitler and the top officials of the Party, SS, and SA were all lower class, political agitators. The simple truth is that the Nazi fascists were no different than the Russian fascists, with the small exception of the fact that the Commies created the false impression that their Party was international while the Nazis were strictly a nationalist Party. Before and after the War, the Russians managed to sell the absurd proposition that the Nazis were “right-wingers”. This is totally preposterous; they were simply left-wing scum just like the Commies!
Observe the rubes in the US Republican Party who pathetically backed Mike Huckabee over their party's elites' preference for Giulani or McCain. They said that they were tired of a party of corporate America that didn't respect them or their values. But they've voted for this party for decades.
Uhm, right, I would guess that would explain why Huckabee has a lock on the party nomination. With only the elites supporting him, McCain never had a chance at winning the nomination. I take it you can't be bothered to read newspapers in addition to books as well?
...responding to my posts with childish one-liner insults.
Rein-in that arrogance young man.
Wow. You have no sense of irony.
In your very long aside, you concurred with the basic contention of my reply: you did not bother to read the book. Does this not in fact say it all? Your original post was a criticism of the same, which you judged by its cover, associated with a given ideological formation, and did not bother to examine for reservations or departures from what you assumed was its content. One cannot very well claim to be peddling anything other than the perpetuation of unexamined assumptions and ideological talking-points when one admits to judging a work based on your own prejudice towards it than on what it actually says. Intellectually lazy, as another poster charged? Yes indeed, and by your own admission.
Pats on the back all around, my son, you've successfully outed another "racist" by categorically refusing to determine whether or not he actually is one on the basis of primary document evidence! In case you're having difficulty differentiating between perhipheral and central issues, the historical argument is the pissing contest; your caricature of Steyn is uhm, rather fundamental to your thesis. Without that component of the argument you advance, your categorical assertions about the nature of conservatives and their intellectual capabilities loses its evidentiary basis. But hey, aren't you supposed to be against categorical assertions, superficial assumptions, and intellectual laziness? Are these not the necessary elements of the racism you so despise? And who, pray tell, is the hypocrite -- the man who dissents from your interpretation of history or the man who actually admits to participating in what, in the same breath, he castigates?
Dumbass:
"In your very long aside, you concurred with the basic contention of my reply: you did not bother to read the book. Does this not in fact say it all?"
In your very long-winded reply, you've obviously completely the central truth of my statement on that regard: Steyn is an idiot who is simply not worth my time. His book's thesis is broad enough and bad enough that folks I trust and respect are able to convey it's utter worthlessness in a review.
As I said, life is short. I have no intention of listening to all the speeches of bush II in order to continue to pronounce him a brainless liar, and I have no intention of reading an entire book by Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, or any other such dipshit.
You'd do well to follow my example my friend. Less time reading garbage and more time reading and understanding history would've made you capable of avoiding the many errors that I had to correct on your understanding of fascism.
"...responding to my posts with childish one-liner insults.
Rein-in that arrogance young man.
Wow. You have no sense of irony."
????? I'm given to understand that my lengthy reply to you was a "one-liner"? ?????
Mark,
"Uhm, right, I would guess that would explain why Huckabee has a lock on the party nomination. With only the elites supporting him, McCain never had a chance at winning the nomination. I take it you can't be bothered to read newspapers in addition to books as well?"
You really had me going there for a second.
Huckabee withdrew. That kinda takes the wind out of your whole shtick doesn't it?
If you're going to try to trash a person for being ignorant, it's a good idea to have a clue about what you're talking about. That way, you don't pull massive boners like the one you just did.
Where do you people come from anyway? Did a lot of mothers drop a lot of acid whilst pregnant back in the seventies?
John Adams,
You know what? I'll let "anonymous" reply to that if he/she wants to.
I've read your arid arguments too many times to be bothered typing a reply myself.
I'm ignorant??? He withdrew because he wasn't getting enough votes. That's why you withdraw. The rubes were all voting for McCain.
If you've seen a sudden upswing in reader interest in your blog, thank Mark Steyn.
Oh, I get it. You don't express yourself very well. You were trying to be sarcastic I imagine, but you were a trifle convoluted, and what you wrote said that Huckabee had the nomination locked-up, presumably because his base controls the party.
Some rubes might very well be voting for McCain, but I think that you'll find that much of the party's base (anti-immigrant, anti-NAFTA, Christian fundamentalists, middle-class and lower) are going to be staying home.
None of which changes my central point that a political party can present have a multiple-personality disorder.
Just as the Repugs say they stand up for ordinary Christian Americans, but is dominated by pro-corporate elites, and has manipulated its Christian base for decades, so too, could Hitler's Nazis claim to be rabble-rousers, but in practice they were quite prepared to assist certain segments of Germany's traditional ruling classes.
It's simply not the case that Hitler's selective anti-elite rhetoric proves that his was a genuinely revolutionary party.
This is kinda fun, but I'm loathe to "thank" Mark Steyn for anything. It's not like I need to have these debates or anything.
The other guy is having a discussion with you about Hitler, Mark Steyn, the Republican Party, and whatever the hell your bizzare conspiracy theory is. I'm just making fun of what you said about McCain and Huckabee. Maybe I don't communicate clearly, but like a lot of lefties I've sparred with, you don't really care what the other person says. I suspect my original comments were more cogent than you give them credit for - you just want a straw man you can rail against.
Too funny:
"like a lot of lefties I've sparred with, you don't really care what the other person says"
Yes, yes, of course. Except earlier you wrote:
"whatever the hell your bizzare conspiracy theory is"
You see, mr. self-righteous hypocrite, whatever I've been saying, right, wrong, smart, stupid, it's been in no way, shape, or form, a "conspiracy theory."
Maybe if you, oh, I don't know, cared about what the other person was saying, you'd have found that out.
Like pretty much every rightie I've encountered, you're a bunch of bluster that descends into petulant whining after one or two effective response to your babbling.
Effective responses? I don't think we're posting on the same thread.
And pretty soon, it's back to the meaningless one-liners.
I was using Huckabee's supporters in the Repug party as an analogy for the lower-class supporters of Hitler, who end up betrayed by the party that espoused populist rhetoric to get an electoral base.
You were disputing this by incoherently saying that McCain must also be getting the support of ordinary Americans among the Repug base, which is really neither here nor there.
The Republican Party of the USA uses and abuses its Christian fundamentalist base in order to preserve its power to serve various corporate interests.
The fact that you tied yourself up in knots with your lame attempt at sarcasm made this discussion stretch much farther than it should have.
To conclude, I attempted to understand what you were saying, but you were babbling, so I couldn't. You have accused me of not caring about what others say, but you're not even paying attention yourself.
Babbling? A cursory glance at my responses show that they are usually about 45 to 90 words long. Your responses ramble on for about 250-500 words. It's a bit like using a cadillac to swat a fly, isn't it?
"Babbling? A cursory glance at my responses show that they are usually about 45 to 90 words long. Your responses ramble on for about 250-500 words. It's a bit like using a cadillac to swat a fly, isn't it?"
This is why I have comment moderation. You've contributed less than nothing to this discussion. I shan't be posting anymore of your nonsense.
Bye Mark.
Here's a pithy one-liner you can delete:
You wouldn't last five minutes in a debate with Mr. Steyn before you would discover you'd soiled your own panties, putz.
Congrats on being Mark Steyn's reader of the day on his website www.steynonline.com
Trogluddite,
"You wouldn't last five minutes in a debate with Mr. Steyn before you would discover you'd soiled your own panties, putz."
OH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!!!!
[Merrily wipes tear from eye]
Thanks for the laugh!
What would we talk about? How he was totally wrong about Iraq being a success story within a year of the fall of Saddam? About how he's a gutless armchair war-monger? About how his book is a racist piece of shit?
You must really be limited to have to worship at the feet of such a mental midget!
How's Steyn's nut-sack taste? Shitty?
anonymous,
re: being reader of the day -
Yeah, it's been quite the honour.
Andre the Giant's school run driver was Samuel Beckett, not T.S. Eliot.
Mark Steyn is a scumbag.
I just finished Steyn's book this afternoon. I suggest you begin reading the news. Even by reading the NYT you should come to the same conclusions as Steyn. Wahhabi Muslims can't assimilate. Period
I read your post twice. You begin and end talking about the fear of change. Would YOU like to live under the Sharia?
Mark is a gadfly. God bless him for having the balls call things as they are.
"I just finished Steyn's book this afternoon."
You have my pity.
"I suggest you begin reading the news. Even by reading the NYT you should come to the same conclusions as Steyn."
You mean the newspaper of Judith Miller and now William Kristol? You might very well be right. Same level of garbage analysis. Thankfully I'm relatively immune to crude, moronic attempts at propaganda.
"Wahhabi Muslims can't assimilate. Period."
You might be right. But Wahhabi Muslims aren't a majority anywhere. And if you've really gotta problem with them, you should take it up with the US government which supports the Wahhabist Saudi government, which propagates such fundamentalism. Which is confusing for you, given your faith in the imaginary US "mission" in the world as described by airheads like Steyn.
"I read your post twice. You begin and end talking about the fear of change. Would YOU like to live under the Sharia?"
No. But that's as remote a possibility as being hit by a comet. I don't want to live under martial law with an insane, dictatorial government of liars and thieves, such as bush II's. That's the bigger threat. If you'd open your fucking eyes, and stop poisoning your brain with hacks like Steyn, you'd know that.
"Mark is a gadfly. God bless him for having the balls call things as they are."
You know, I was just joking when I asked the last Steyn fan-boy if he liked the taste of Steyn's balls. Apparently there's something to that after all.
Thanks for the response. But my 'fucking eyes' are indeed open. I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't read the news.
I was inflamatory.
What I meant for you or others to notice was the frequency and of terrorist attacks outside our country. A newshound myself, I was surprised by the number of attacks that I had forgotten about. At the very least you have to admit that he did a good job chronicling them.
I have not known Mark long. I had never heard of him until a few months ago when I met him at a National Review debate party. Compared to the other speakers, he was thoughful and fair. He didn't go for the juvenile conservative laugh line.
Killing children, beheading with pen knives, blowing up churches of a different Muslim sect in the middle a huge service, wiping out entire Christian villiages with machetes, or just suicide bombings are common throughout the Muslim world. It is rather hard to maintain that the bombings in Spain and England are not a sign of things to come.
As a Christian I worry about other Christians in the middle east. I am still disgusted by the killing of the Catholic bishop in Iraq a few weeks ago.
-Eric
That's some stream of consciousness! I suggest that when you come off your crack-induced buzz, you might actually read the books your deride. But in the Grand Tradition of the Left, I guess it's enough to "feel" that these books are off the mark instead of actually reading them.
And that will be the curtain for the comments tsk-tsking me for not having read the fat-head steyn's book.
Wherein, protests to the contrary notwithstanding, Steyn does indulge in the very same eugenics-inspired racism that I said he did, and does so far more crudely and incompetently than I had actually thought possible.
Even were this not the truth about steyn's thesis, the comment by Rod Blaine (a steyn fan) shows that it's also what he takes away from reading the book: That Europe's Muslims are all an undifferentiated mass of Wahhabist fundamentalist fanatics, seeking to out-breed white, Christian Europe and turn it into a Sharia EU.
Know this steyn fans: There are consequences for your actions. And little steynie-whiney's consequences for being such a complete and total shithead are to place him beneath my need to take him seriously.
And you steyn fans, so mentally restricted that you're forced to look to garbage thinkers like him in adulation, whose moronic books are all you're capable of finishing, ... well, the importance of your condemnations is nil.
Ta-ta!
Did you see the Pope baptized a Muslim last night? The Boston Globe (a liberal rag if there ever was one) wrote about the possibility of this new convert being assinated, as the Koran calls for death for apostates.
And your point is that all the Muslims in Europe are slavering for this dude's blood? (For switching from one delusion to another?)
Didja hear that bush II has opposed rescinding immunity for murderous Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq?
What do you think that says about our values and our intentions for the Muslim world? What do you think the Arabs get out of reading about such behaviour?
"I mean, the fact is that the Bush administration actually issued a statement opposing that legislation, and I want to read to you what Bush said. He said that law would have, quote, 'intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations.'"
You know, it's bizarre. We're actually goddamned occupying one of their countries (more actually) and we're rampaging all over the place, but you guys are incensed about a Muslim take-over of Europe.
Somebody up a few comments mentioned the murder of a Catholic bishop in Baghdad. While that's an atrocity, it's also a little irrelevant since Baghdad isn't in Europe.
Muslim fundamentalism is a troubling phenomenon, as is any obscurantism. But once again, for the third time, take it up with the US government which provides aid and comfort to the Wahhabist-propagating Saudis and the Taliban-supporting Pakistani government.
Also, nothing makes a people cling tighter to paranoid delusions of "god and country" like being attacked and humiliated by a foreign, rival culture that has declared a "crusade" on them. (And which has also destroyed and discredited secular, reformist alternatives.)
You guys are attempting to trash me for not screaming in terror at a problem that is a much smaller threat than you imagine, and which is also a monster, an "unintended consequence," of your own leaders' devising.
> "the comment by Rod Blaine (a [S]teyn fan) shows that it's also what he takes away from reading the book"
Thwap, did you actually read what I wrote? You don't appear to have grasped my point at all, even enough to answer it. Instead, you're still furiously whacking the hell out of a straw opponent of your own imagining - one that doesn't correspond very closely to your real life opponents.
Thwap's probably too far gone to be open to argument, but if anyone is undecided happens to be reading this much-trafficked site, I ask them to consider very carefully which side of this debate is using arguments and evidence, as opposed to which side is resorting to easy point-scoring and self-comforting slogans.
> "Somebody up a few comments mentioned the murder of a Catholic bishop in Baghdad. While that's an atrocity, it's also a little irrelevant since Baghdad isn't in Europe."
No, because if we're debating how closely levels of religiously-motivated violence in a society matches the proportion of Muslim citizens of that society, then a comparison between Baghdad and Europe is extremely relevant.
Thwap, here's your chance to play "Gotcha! Tu quoque!" by finding and linking to a news item about fundamentalist Christians in Alabama lynching a convert to Islam, or burning down the local Secular Society meeting room. Go on, I'm sure it will only take a few seconds to google some...
Rod,
There's an answer for you here.
Well, Thwap Man, let's hear it for people who just LOVE one of the many "Steyn's just a racist" précis to be found floating around generally poison penned primarily by people who've never read his stuff in detail, but never go much further than a cursory cruise of the Leftoblogosphere for their....well...."insights"
Typical leftist drivel:
Unsupported--and thus unsupportable--glush and mush slung against the wall in hopes that the dirtiest mudball thrown is the one that sticks, without need or reference to original source material, hybridized with the merging of terms like culture and race to cover up or murk the waters about what's really going on with the Sons of Allah and their headnipping ways.
Nicely done.
But I was unfortunately beaten to the punchline on what you really represent, sir.
Said one of your many interlocutors:
In your very long aside, you concurred with the basic contention of my reply: you did not bother to read the book. Does this not in fact say it all?
Seems Anony-man had it dead to rights. Yes, that about says it all. But I've found it's common among Steynian detractors.
Moving from the realm of function to form, here are some last notes for future reference:
Most people curse, yes, and I'm not here to claim that I've never let out a few choice Anglo-Saxon explicatives now and then when the day gets off to a particularly nasty start. But online, it is rather ill-mannered and glaring for the revelation that frustration--not facts--is what generally gets the better of you.
Not cool, brother. It's like belching at the table and constantly licking your fingers and making tongue motions at females in the erroneous belief that the intensity with which something is done is more indicative of your honor and valor than utter childishness. Word to not-so-wise.
And while you are certainly free to consider Steyn as a mere idiot who is not "worth your time", this still would not be supportive of your accusation of his supposed sublimated racism. Further, doubly odd as the man not worth your precious time has taken up some considerable time on your blog.
Apparently, this "idiot" lives rent free in your troubled mind. After all, the very title of your original post indicates such.
That being the case, one DOES have to wonder who is the bigger idiot, as it is doubtful Steyn ponders so much as an exclamation point regarding YOU on even a semi-annual basis.
It's over, and you had your insides roasted here. On your own blog, at that.
On the plus side, if Keith Olbermann or David Brock ever get sent back to the loony bin and have people spoon feed them again, you'll have a job waiting at Media Matters and/or other Soros-funded gigs and outfits. Soros apparently is in dire need of more handy stenographers, and your style for some odd reason closely mirrors theirs: Contextless postings posing as "content" along with all the latest Multi-Culti pieties, and of course the ever-obligatory references of modern concerns about demographics to the circumstances of anti-Semitism in Europe. Oddly, this Leftist feigned concern for Jewish safety in history evaporates even the phony part, when it comes to the Sons of Allah's insistence on turning all of Israel into a dustbowl. But still...
I could easily get into the whole transparently phony "Palestinian" issue regarding those squatters and the fact they're not culturally or ethnically nor religiously all that distinct from their Araba brethren whence they hail, and how they're being cynically used by Arab nations to keep this issue on a good boil, but how the Pallies have no rights in THOSE lands, and how the Balfour Declaration set the rules on this decades ago about where they were to live and how the Sons of Allah decided it was a no go, and to this day wish for Israeli extinction. For that matter, I could demonstrate how the so-called "Palestinian" schools are utterly barbaric in their assertions and blood libel about how the Jews turn Pally kids into sausage, complete with lesson plans on jihad, handy pictorials showing what we call "Israel" as being listed as "Unliberated Palestine", the tactics used to kill Jewish schoolchildren and rip flesh off their bodies, or use the brain matter from their tiny opened skull for a bloody paste to draw swastikas on Jewish homes.
But enough. I think you know the truth.
I DO eagerly await news/pictures of severed heads on pikes, eviscerated bodies, and half-buried, stoned, bruised women in some backwater Deep South hamlet espied along with the glorious shouts of "Praise Jesus!" and then from there the use of the same (plus bombings of buildings) to attempt alter international politics--via the grotesque. Al Quaida got this gig to work on Spain, and so who knows it might not work from the pulpit of First Church?
Happy hunting.
I have to level with you Wakefield. I didn't read even 1/4 of your offering. You tend to go on and on and on about nothing.
Thanks for posting!
1/4 is mighty fine site in that case. And I feel honored, and a lucky lad at that. Because when it comes to most other people, it would seem based on responses you read something around nothing of their posts.
And that's my leveling-off moment here.
SO touche'
ave et vale
Thanks.
Wakefield,
Whatever floats your boat sport. We both think the other is an idiot.
.."sight"...not site, that is.
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