Live, From Karachi…

The Sanity Squad will be podcasting live on BlogTalkRadio tonight beginning at 9:30 pm. PLEASE NOTE THE TIME CHANGE…due to time difference between here and Karachi, Pakistan.

In what promises to be a fascinating podcast, The Sanity Squad’s Dr Sanity, Neo-neocon and Shrinkwrapped will interview Fatima Bhutto, niece of Benizir Bhutto who is one of the opposition leaders in Pakistan. We will discuss the state of emergency in Pakistan; upcoming elections and the prognosis for that country and its relations with the U.S. and the West.

Ms Bhutto recently penned an important editorial for the LA Times.

Her Website can be found here; and More from wiki, with links and From MSNBC .

She will undoubtedly be a player in Pakistan in coming years, regardless of the fortunes of her famous aunt.

You will be able to call in live starting at 9:30 pm (until then, if you click on the link it will play the podcast recorded last Monday) .

The call-in number for the live program is (646) 716-9116

“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

The one constant of all wars lie in the origins of conflict. Wars exist as an extension of fundamental economics.  

Europe isn’t a Muslim dominated continent today, because the Islamic invaders that were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683, could no longer pay the price of advance. European defenders were extracting too high a price from the invaders. When it became clear to the invaders that war was no longer worth the effort, the Islamic invaders world found religious justifications to live in peace with their Christian neighbors. The same thing happened when the Crusades failed. Christan European found a way to be Christian and live with the Levant with their Muslim neighbors in peace.

The vast majority of Germans and then the nations that chose to join the German alliance under Hitler’s National Socialist regime, were willing to pay a very high price for the ‘Thousand Year Reich.’ The nations that opposed the vision of National Socialism and that thousand year dream were more numerous and were willing to pay an even higher price to stop National Socialism and everything it stood for. When it was all over, the cost to Germany for their aggressive war was astronomical. As a result of cost those dark times (50 million dead), there is little chance of future German misadventures.

Wars begin and end because of the various costs of waging war. That is as true today as it has been in the past, and that will be true in the future.

Wars have long term economic costs and moral costs. The moral costs of war can passed forward from one generation to the next, long after the economic costs have been paid. The Germans are still paying for the moral failures that led to the implosion of a nation, a continent and a world. In many ways, they have become the conscious of modern Europe.

Today, Dr Sanity noted in The Strategy Of The New Barbarians, that war means the rules of civilization are suspended. She remarks on moral confusion:

The conundrum that many on the left in the West seem to run into is the concern that, by fighting back against those manly modern barbarians who cavalierly behead innocents and slaughter fellow muslims with abandon; hide behind women and children and use children and babies as human bombs to murder infidels; and even by voicing a condemnation of such acts or criticizing the fanatical intolerance of Islam toward other religions–they are being, well…intolerant. And not politically correct; and–let’s face it–really really mean.

Dr Sanity makes her point crystal clear. In fighting this war- more of conflicting ideas than of weapons, she notes,

I am confident that we in the West are not in danger of losing our fundamental values; and that our overall moral heading can be recovered should we need to temporarily deviate from the course of the moral compass that guides us. Because, in order to combat and defeat this new barbarism, we must confront it directly and be willing to do whatever it takes to defeat it.

If we appease or ignore it, it will continue to menace everything we hold dear; and sooner or later, it will sink us–no matter how moral we are or how much restraint we demonstrate to their provocations. Moral virtue and saintly restraint will not win this conflict, at least not without the help of pure, unadulterated brute force to back them up.

But, first we must be sure in our own hearts and minds of the endurance of our own values in order to use whatever force is necessary. Morally vacuous intellectuals; and historically ignorant churchmen are not the kind of leaders that will help Western values and Western civilization triumph over the new barbarians. They are plagued by pervasive doubts about the worth of our civilization, and are not troubled by the idea of its demise and replacement. In fact, they rather stupidly believe that their own little socialist version of utopia will win over the new barbarians to their way of thinking; that, their lovely tolerance and good intentions will convince the jihadist that he can safely live in peace with them…

Peace among nations is arrived at when the cost of war becomes overwhelming. Racism, bigotry and hate are overcome when the cost of racism, bigotry and hate becomes too great for society to bear.

As long as nations and peoples perceive the cost of war as acceptable, then we will have war.

Wretchard once noted that wars are fought as wars, not as tea parties. Innocents die, great cities are laid to waste and vast populations suffer for years. Bad things happen, and in the heat of battle, barbarism will occur. That is all part of the cost of war. If most people had their say, there would be no aggressive wars. They after all, are the ones who suffer the most and they understand who really bears the cost. The leaders of nations and faiths that demand war aren’t usually made to pay the price till long after most if the damage has been done- if ever.

The problem is that most people don’t have a say. Nations and leaders that demand aggressive wars are not free nations. They are ruthless tyrannies that exist only to serve themselves and their needs. As we have noted,

When nations that are that are led by or are under the influence of tyrants or dictators, attempt to justify those actions, we can rightly assume that justification is false. Tyrants and dictators do not make moral choices, because moral choices can only lead to the demise of the tyranny.

Anyone that comes to the defense of tyrannical regimes and their leaders, have themselves made a conscious choice to defend and stand by what is immoral. It should be repeated.

Abba Eban remarked that

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

The economics of conflict, explained clearly.

Dr Sanity:

The best strategy of these new barbarians seems to be to unleash their own barbarism, then let the intellectuals of the West make the appropriate apologies for them.

In other words, we are paying the price for Islamic radicalism, bigotry and hate because there are those on the left who equating radical Islamic stated ideologies as equal to our own.

The radical Islamist’s readily admit to their agenda of a global Caliphate. Those agendas are finding greater acceptance, as we ‘talk’ and ‘discuss’ them, even as the radicals become more vicious and violent- and all the while, chemical and biological agents are cooked up in bathtubs. Hamas has threatens to use those weapons.

It also has to be made clear that the problems in the Middle East are not derivative of Israel’s existence. 

American troops would have been invited to the region’s Kings and Princes, regardless of Israel. Saddam would have invaded Kuwait and years earlier, the Egyptians would have used chemical weapons in Yemen. Hafez Al Assad would have butchered 15,000 to 30,000 in Hama, irrespective of American foreign policies .

Israel’s fight with Lebanon based Hizbollah is not political and never was. Hizbollah sees the conflict with Israel as an existential, having nothing to do with politics or borders. Indeed, Nasrallah, Fadlalah, et al, have made clear that the existence of Israel, with any borders and regardless of peace treaties, cannot be tolerated. Nasrallah makes not even the slightest attempt to hide his agenda. He rejoices that there are many Jews in the land he wants to eliminate. In speaking of his murderous intentions toward Jews,  he is deliberate- ‘It will save us the trouble of rounding them up.’

Clearly, as far as Hizbollah is concerned, violence in the region is not predicated in political differences. The violent elimination of Israel are clear and unequivocal stated goals. In Hizbollah’s world, Israel is simply not permitted to exist. Most of the Arab world share those beliefs. They have thrown down the gauntlet, by refusing to recognize the Jewish state. They have issued the challenge.

It is up to Israel and the civilized world to reiterate, underscore and remind Hizbollah and other Arab opponents, the cost of their call to arms, to ‘’slaughter the Jew!’ or ‘Slaughter the American!’

There has to be a clear message at the upcoming peace talks at Annapolis. The cost of violence and terror will extract a higher cost from those who unleash that terror and violence. To reward the Palestinians, Hizbollah and much of the Arab world for their venom by ‘holding back,’ and not repudiating their stated bigotry and hate is absurd.

The rules of civilizations are far more preferable to war. Those rules however, are applicable to those who understand that war is preferable to peace. For over 60 years, we have been ‘talking’ and ‘discussing’ with regimes that would harm our interests at at moment notice, and regimes who openly admit that if given the opportunity, would eliminate Israel, America and for that matter, the western world that doesn’t share the ‘values’ that celebrate misogyny and the subjugation a of women, the slaughter and oppression of some non Muslims, including Jews, gays, apostates and others. (That is no exaggeration. In 2002, Saudi Arabia’s ‘religious’ police prevented schoolgirls from escaping a burning school building because they weren’t wearing ‘appropriate’ religious garb).

For sixty years, the American position on Israel and the Arab nations in the Middle East under every administration since Truman has been remarkably consistent. Irrespective of the Republican or Democrat occupants of the White House, American policy has been remarkably consistent and clear:

• Cessation of hostilities.
• diplomatic recognition.
• secure borders.

What exactly is so onerous a burden for the Arab world? After 60 years, those things have yet to be fully accepted by the Arab world.

Imagine negotiating with the Nazi Party for 60 years, during which time it engaged in a limited- but relentless terror and war- as well as their stated genocidal aims.

There comes a point after which negotiations are pointless. Israel and the west reached that point 50 years ago.

Israel must do what it needs to do, as noted in this Der Speigel article.

The pacifist reaction that the Israeli defensive war has triggered in Germany and Europe is not well thought out and is disingenuous. It is also counter-productive. An immediate cease-fire would merely result in a worse conflict in the future. The consequences drawn from Adolf Hitler’s World War II — “Never again fascism! Never again war!” — were intended to prevent an anti-Semitic war from ever again taking place. Today, that lesson has been forgotten. “Never again war against fascism” is all that remains.

Israel must not be forced to abandon its war against Hezbollah, rather it must win the conflict. Just as Hezbollah is fighting the war as Iran’s proxy, Israel is fighting genocidal Islamism as the proxy for the rest of the Western world. The least Israel should be able to expect from the West is that it not be betrayed.

There is a cost to war and there is a cost to defending the rules of civilized nations.

 

From The Age Of Faith To The Age Of Reason And Other Imaginary Flights

One of the great assumptions (rarely questioned) of the ages, is that progress is the great impetus for secularism. In fact, many argue that secularism and progress are the result of the abandonment of religion and/or long held moral values. These are ideas are taught everyday, if not directly, then by implication, in schools across the country. By the time students hit college, to even question that assumption is to mark oneself as ‘uninformed’ and irrelevant. The well known sociologist, Bryan Wilson stated that modernity and religion are incompatible. Anyone who flushes a toilet or watches television cannot believe in the divine. How did that come to pass? Why is the assumption that progress, by necessity, means secularism, and that this belief is never challenged? We believe there are two primary reasons.

Firstly, religion has been removed from the public square. Of course, in our value system, religion, specifically any one religion, should not dominate that public square, for a myriad of reasons. Nor should the public square be used to promote the religious dogma of one faith over another. We can all agree on that. Nevertheless, it bears remembering that promoting universal religious values (remarkably consistent expressions in most faiths) is not the same as promoting religious dogma.

It is also clear that we have reached a point where there are no public debates where religion can have an equal voice in helping to shape our communities.

The great Town Hall debates, used to be held in churches, because it understood that in matters from morality to the settling of disputes, the churches had standing (that is not be meant to imply that churches were perfect). The secularists could not abide that. In their world, there was no place for God. They could not tolerate or risk a confrontation on issues of morality with the Churches. They wanted to stack the deck against religion and churches, by obviating and neutralizing them. Liberalism, evolutionary theory, Marxist ideology, and so on were all designed to exclude religion. Man himself was to be elevated to a god-like status. One didn’t need God to be merciful and high minded. We wrote in Battle for The American Soul, the forces that needed to dismiss faith in God as a source of morality and values, accomplished that by focusing on the ‘rights‘ society was obligated to provide, rather than the obligations of individual in society.

While it is true free societies naturally evolve, they must retain some of the original ‘DNA’ that was there at their creation. That original ‘DNA’ that served as the basis of free societies had less to do with the self and a lot to do with the society and community. What causes societies and communities to be be founded and succeed, is the abiding focus on the welfare of that society and community, as a whole. It is true that great emphasis in free societies is placed on the individual, but in the end, that focus is really about the place the individual has within society. In exchange for his contributions, the individual is accorded certain rights and privileges- in exchange for those contributions and obligations.

In addition to ‘neutralizing’ God and faith as sources of credible moral values equal to secular values, there was another movement against religious participation in society- and that ideology further aided the subsequent marginalization of believers. That movement was spearheaded with the false notion that religion and science were incompatible. One could not be a scientist and be religious. That of course, flies in the face of reality. Science was once the purview of the religious communities, from Catholicism, to Islam to Judaism, but it didn’t matter. Illiterate and ill educated masses, weaned on the false gods of agendized ideologies, were nothing more than pawns in a game played by those who sought what all ideologues seek- control.

History textbooks are replete with the idea that as social structure evolved, so did ‘consciousness’ (read- progress). What is left unclear is why technological progress, by itself, should undermine religion. It is also fair to ask why great migratory shifts, a dominant feature of industrialization, for example, should serve to undermine religion. These assertions are taken as truth- but in reality, they remain theories at best.

It is true that culture, philosophy and value systems are all subjects that merit study on their own. That said, they cannot however, be separated from the belief systems that gave them life- the religious, historical and social systems from which they arose. In fact, it is those origins that help those fields of study to keep on evolving.

It is the secularists that wish to make the distinction from religious influence to secularism a clear and cataclysmic event. The way we learn history reflects that. In less than a century, we were to have gone from the ‘Age of Faith’ to the ‘Age of Reason.’ Supposedly, the legend goes, we went from a universally religious society to an almost universally secular one. That too, is a lie. The idea that primitive man is religious while educated man is not, is a mythology, used as a marketing tool of secularism. The truth is clear- every single version of materialism, skepticism and spiritual devotion can be found across the spectrum of the human condition of recorded human history. Where there was man, there was the drama of human achievement and human failures, of greatness and pettiness, of good and evil. Those real truths correspond to the same spectrum of beliefs found today, all over the world.

In fact, the first real secularists were the Jews and Christians. They were to question everything. They were to debate the meaning of man and life. Within each religion were debates, wars, intellectual truces and eventual compromises. Not quite the description of religion taught, is it?

A strong and real argument can be made that religious thought is far more flexible than secularist thought. Moral beliefs are by fluid and solid at the same time. Trees have trunks that are solid and resolute- and yet, that same organism has branches and leaves that flutter in the wind. Religion has never been anything but forgiving and yet is always resolute. It is the secularist that demands ‘boxes.’

Religion and our struggle with faith, has come a long way, especially in this great nation. In fact, we have contributed mightily to the evolution of religion and the understanding of what is real faith. We wrote:

In truth, for a long time, religion was used as method of oppression. However, that expression of faith has no foothold here. We were founded by those who wished to escape that and other forms of tyranny. It is religion that allowed for and was the original guarantor of freedom in this country.

Is secularism the answer to our future? Secularism, and all it’s derivatives, were understandable reactions to being held underfoot by a Church and faith that cared not a whit for it’s believers. That Church, thankfully, no longer exists, in no small measure due to the reality that human dignity, especially under God’s Dominion, demanded freedom. When a slave broke the chains of his bondage, he didn’t stay long enough to have tea and say good bye to his master. He ran, as far and fast as he could.

Those former slaves to that less than whole and open Church, found a new replacement for God. That new religion, for many, was Science- and Ethics. Nietzsche defiantly and confidently declared that “God is Dead.” He was right. The God that Nietzche and the other starring cast of the Enlightenment understood and knew, was indeed dead. In it’s place a new belief structure arouse. As the Church once oppressed, in extremis, so too did the resulting backlash of secularism, in a hedonistic orgy of self centered obsession.

Those are not assumptions. They are a realistic assessment of where we came from, where we are and where we are going. Try as they might, secularists have not been able to kill God. The great and universal truth that the more freedom man is allowed, the more ready and wiling he is to accept God and faith as part of his reality.

Edward Shils wrote that Western intellectuals espoused four intellectual traditions: scientism, romanticism, apolalypticism and populism. The American intellectual community has embraced the first two traditions. Scientism is self explanatory. Romanticism, as an intellectual pursuit, can be understood as the appreciation of the genius of the individual. That is, anything that highlights and spotlights individual achievements. Traditions, family, community faith all are enemies of individual self expression. The market, and sense of communal obligation are anathema to the individual- they impose restrictions and preclude ’self expression’- as if self expression were the highest of human achievements. The notion that communities have expectations from their citizens is repugnant to these ‘thinkers.’ Communities are an enemy of genuineness and creativity. In The Battle for the American Soul, we posit that is an absurd notion. Neither religion or secularism is the enemy of progress. Each has been and will continue to be contributory to mans advancement.

The religious community must remember that Free Will is just that- free will. We have a choice in how we live our lives- and that is between man and God. Non believers can be as moral or even moral than a flawed believer- and we would do well to remember that we are all flawed.

The secular community must remember that they do not replace the religious community. Scientific education and the secular study of ethics and morality do not make for an intellectual aristocracy, to be held in higher esteem than all others. One cannot negate the impact for good the religious community has had upon this nation and world. The value of that good is not demeaned by a relationship with God. Secular states that went to great lengths to marginalize religion have been some of the most murderous, evil and oppressive nations in history.

The Anchoress offered up a remarkable quote from GK Chesterton:

All conservatism, is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone, you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change.

That is an inescapable truth that applies to the orthodoxy of secularism or the orthodoxy of religious belief.

Portions of this post have been previously published.