“Dance Me To The End Of Love” And Other Things To Reflect Upon

It isn’t always about politics. There are other things that matter, much closer to home.

See Dance Me To The End Of Love.

When you’re done, see Who By Fire, a Cohen classic. This version features the great Sonny Rollins on sax.

Blame The Anchoress. She started it.

Reading Between The Lines And Other Thoughts

“What we have here, is a failure to communicate”.

We want to take a look at linguistics and how language plays a role in how we define the world around us. This is a deadly serious topic. How and why we perceive the threats around us the way we do, determines how we respond to those threats.

To do that, there are a few words you need to know and understand. Simply put, linguistics is defined as the study of language. Semantics is the study of language meaning and sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to its sociocultural context.

There are many other concepts, but we since this is an initial conversation, we’re on the KISS plan.

When we argue with a neighbor over some real or perceived slight, we regard them as our enemy, to be argued with, shunned, gossiped about or even fenced in, once and for all. We hold our ground and won’t be convinced that the relationship between us will change until there is an apology for the slight (real or imagined) and a truce of some kind is entered to. After a while, the reason for the confrontation is forgotten and life resumes.

In fact, that neighbor was never really our enemy. That neighbor was our opponent. An opponent is someone like ourselves, with whom we have a disagreement or who might have offended us, personally.

An enemy is someone with whom we, as individuals and as a community, have fundamental differences. An enemy has values and beliefs, that are very different than out own. An enemy wants to deprive us of our beliefs and values, because that enemy finds our beliefs repulsive or threatening to their own. Enemies will fight to the death, should they choose to engage us or we choose to engage them.

There are people who believe that enemies are opponents- that is, they can reasoned with and rationalized with and common ground can be had. Believing that an enemy can be an opponent is what led much of Europe to appease Hitler, in the beginning. Herr Hitler, it was believed, was after all a European. Surely he could be reasoned with. Surely he would respond to the rational idea that war was catastrophic.

Just as surely, every attempt to appease Hitler and turn a blind eye to his publicly stated goals failed, because Herr Hitler turned himself and his nation into enemies of European and democratic values. There were those on September 1, 1939 who were in shock that Hitler had invaded Poland.

Even with all the technology available to us, it can take us a up to year to prepare for war. It took the Germans years to prepare for the invasion of Poland and Europe- and there were still those that were shocked at the invasion of Poland. The world watched Germany prepare for war- and remained in denial about the obvious German intentions. The Germans could never be enemies, they believed. They might be opponents- but never enemies.

In fact, the differences between radical Islamism and Nazism are virtually indistinguishable. Both ideologies can be defined with violence, racism and the determined desire to deny people free will. Both Nazism and radical Islamism are similar in that they believe they had the right and blessing of destiny, to impose those ideologies by force if necesary, on a global scale. Both ideologies cannot tolerate dissent.

 ’Moderate’ Muslims are today a carbon copy of the German Volk, hoping against hope that Hitler’s words were mere rhetoric. The lack of outrage and action by the German people against Hitler was to become the cause of ruinious destruction and would tar the German people forever. The same will happen to Muslims.

There are those today, who everyday, plead for us to engage radical Islamists as opponents, as if we could actually come to terms with those whose stated goal is to destroy us. Their intent is admirable. There is no more worthy goal than the pursuit of peace- none. However well intentioned, they are lacking in the understanding of the differences between enemies and opponents. Alexandra, of All Things Beautiful noted,

A lawyer defending al Qaeda-linked suspects standing trial for the 2003 suicide bombings in Istanbul told a court that jihad, or holy war, was an obligation for Muslims and his clients should not be prosecuted.

“If you punish them for this, tomorrow, will you punish them for fasting or for praying?” Osman Karahan — a lawyer representing 14 of the 72 suspects — asked during a nearly four-hour speech in which he read religious texts from an encyclopedia of Islam.

The November 2003 blasts targeted two synagogues, the British Consulate and the local headquarters of the London-based HSBC bank, killing 58 people.

“If non-Muslims go into Muslim lands, it is every Muslim’s obligation to fight them,” Karahan said.”

There is a fundamental differences in belief here. Even for one not religious, the reality is that societies and cultures are more often than not influenced by religious beliefs. The differences between radical Islam and the Judeo-Christian ethic are at the moment, so vast, that there is hardly a possibility for reconciliation. While we might be opponents at the dinner table, we are enemies at the most basic and primal levels.

To be clear, that does not mean it is inevitable that we fight each other. Certainly, there is room for ‘peaceful coexistence’, if that choice were to be made. Further, we have evolved culturally as well. Christianity is no longer wears military adventurism or violence on it’s sleeve. ‘Religion’ has now come to embrace the notion that God speaks to us in different ways. John Paul II’s greatest legacy may be that he embraced all mankind, without exception or precondition. Clearly, religion can- and has, changed.

Just as clearly, it is apparent that the choice for ‘peaceful coexistence’ with radical Islam is not an option now. There are those that demand we submit and others insist we abandon our beliefs, political and otherwise- beliefs that are predicated on our values.

We are fighting one war on the battlefield of ideas and ideologies and we are fighting another on the front lines of combat. These wars are very different, yet the enemy’s goal is the same. We, and our values, are a threat and must be eliminated.

We don’t want enemies because enemies require from us a commitment that we don’t want to make. Those enemies that declare war on us must be beaten. They must be forever vanquished, so their evil will not find a even a moments repose, to collect itself, rest and fight another day. Fighting an enemy is a long and dirty business. Fighting an enemy that fights in the name of some bastardized and polluted notion of God’s will make the fight longer and harder.

The Israelis at times, delude themselves into thinking they are fighting an opponent, with whom they are at odds. In reality of course, that is a dangerous illusion. They sit a table to talk peace, even as the Palestinians preach death and destruction from the pulpits and teach hate and murder as a part if their school curriculum. Day and night, their media reinforces that culture of hate- and they applaud themselves in the process.

They could have reached a peace decades ago. Instead, the Palestinians publicly declared that killing the enemy was preferential to living in peace. It mattered little that their populations lived in squalor and degradation, because their populations supported those ideas. Think about that. Even those loving in squalor would reject peace and prosperity in the name of an ideology. Please read Shame, the Arab Psyche and Islam, by Dr Sanity. It is one of the most important articles the enemy we have ever read- and we read a lot of them. It is a clear and concise explanation of what exactly it is we face today.

There are people living in comfort and security, funding the Jihad against us, with little fear of retribution or consequence. Why? Because they know that we are divided and that many of us look at them as opponents, equals, but of a different set of beliefs. Everyday, when they speak in our language, they sound so reasonable. In fact, they laugh at our gullibility. As Abu Hamza, of the Finsbury Park Mosque in London said, “We will use your democracy to destroy you.” He wasn’t kidding.

Our soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and in covert operations, are fighting an enemy, not an opponent. We had better come to fully understand that, and soon. We cannot allow the constitution and the niceties of the rules of war to limit our fight. This war must be fought by ’serious people’, as The Anchoress once said. If we don’t, we are going to pay an unimaginable price.

Freedom, along with millions of lives, will be lost.

Portions of this post were originally published on 23 January, 2005.

Sigmund Freud Once Said, “I Have A Dream…”

A few days ago, we wrote The Beast That Is Israel, in which we noted a few disparities that make it easy to distinguish the differences between the Israelis and Palestinians.

An essay written by Carolyn Glick that appeared on the Jerusalem Post opinion page (given her presentation of the facts, it is hard to understand why her piece is opinion), that meshed well with our own post. Ms Glick notes that in the State of Palestine- replete with peace loving Palestinians fighting the dysfunctional Israelis- , a full

…88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.

In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.

In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines.

In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition’s television stations.

Welcome to the real world of Palestine, where simple racism, bigotry and hate no longer provide enough dysfunction. Whereas once only rabid anti semitism was the only world class achievement in which Palestinian and Arab societies and cultures excelled, it is clear that the Palestinians are now looking for yet another gold medal in dysfunctional behavior.

This time the Palestinians are trying to reach for the stars by ensuring they will never allow a civilized culture or society to take root.

After billions of dollars that were poured into the Palestinian Authority over the decades, the only results of that largesse are non existent- unless corruption and theft are taken into consideration. There are no schools or hospitals that have been built by the PA since Oslo or any other major public works projects. That said, the PA did spend millions to build a now shuttered casino.

The Palestinian obsession with Israel as a moral failure is absurd. If it weren’t for the Israelis, the Palestinians would still be in the dark ages, without heath care, education or even sanitation. One has to ask oneself, what is the obsession with Israel all about? Well, if you say you don’t know, think again. At least be honest with yourself. A transparent sheet is still a sheet. Further, let’s get real about who we are dealing with. The PA, past and present, rival the UN in it’s level of corruption. Arafat squirrerled away billions while Israelis provided health care.

Have you ever wondered why there were never any demonstrations against the building of the now infamous settlements? Can you imagine the PR value of a hundred little school girls, sitting in the road and blocking a bulldozer? The reason for the marked lack of protest against settlement building in the West Bank is because PA ministers own the construction companies that build those settlements. It’s been going on for years and only recently, has the matter been discussed in the Arab press. Sadly, ‘Cementgate,’ as the story was called is no longer on the Arab press agenda. Israeli settlements are being built by Palestinian companies, owned by PA ministers and big wigs. That is another reason the Palestinian at the top are in no rush for a peace deal- the Israelis pay. Arab nations that promise money do not. Besides, other Arabs might make unreasonable demands- such as accountability and transparency.

When it comes to money and aid to the Palestinians, the words of Charles De Gaulle come to mind- ‘We shall stun them with our ingratitude.‘

Wretchard notes in Those Happy Faces, that

The collateral damage inflicted upon the people of the Third World by the Left in pursuit of their fantasies will someday rank with the Slave Trade and the Holocaust in the annals of historical outrage. It is the last form of imperialism. And the worst.

Bullseye.

Sigmund Freud once said, ‘I have a dream…’ In the case of the Palestinians his remarks would clearly refer to nightmares.

The dream of a Palestinian state as an equal participant on the world stage is a mirage, not unlike the nightmare of being on a stage naked in front of a laughing crowd. The Palestinians need to dream about a civilized behaviors and functional, productive society. Without that, they will be unable to establish or maintain a state of any kind.

The left has hitched their wagon to the Palestinian cause, thus ensuring yet more generations of dysfunctional behavior from those they have turned into beasts of burden, carrying the heavy load of failed ideologies, societies and cultures.

Eventually, the Palestinians will get out from under the ether of dysfunctionality and as Wretchard notes, there will be hell to pay.