• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Mindset of the antiwar crowd

Interesting to juxtapose this with Chris Hitchen's latest book "God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".

I just had someone this morning express concern that "Religion" was getting a bad rap because the "Secular" 20th century, which abhorred (in their view) religion was one of the bloodiest of all time.  My response was that religion is not about God, or Allah or the other 9 million names of God - it is ultimately about belief.

While previous centuries saw wars between Protestants and Catholics, Muslims and Hindus, Christians and Pagans, Arians and Augustinians the wars of the 20th Century were between German Nationalists and French Nationalists (amongst others) and then between Communists and Fascists and then between Communists and Capitalists.  Currently we are engaged in a war between Islamic  Crypto-Fascist Socialists (or some other suitably trendy label) and Running Dog Hindu Christian Social Democratic Capitalists - fairly amorphic but no doubt some historian of the future will define suitable isms for class room study.  And coming soon to a newspaper near you - the Environment wars between the followers of Gaia and the Deniers.

The problem is not with God.  The problem is not even with the belief.  The problem is with the proselytisers: those people that prey on the fears of many that they will be victims of communal punishment unless they get their neighbours to hew to the one, true belief that will save the world and them individually......and if they have to sacrifice the neighbours to save the greater part of humanity, including themselves, then so be it.  Their reward is a better life in this world, or a better life for their children or a better life in the next world.

All of these people: the Marxist-Leninists, the Suzuki-Goreites, the Islamo-fascists, the Russo-Communists and, I regret to say, many Christian evangelicals and charismatics are driven by many of the same urges - the need to save everybody else in order to save themselves.  It is little wonder that they find kindred spirits in otherwise disparate movements.

I saw an article in today's National Post by an American name of David Brooks - the article seems to be protected on the internet yet (probably available tomorrow) - "Where History Reigns Supreme".
He, like me, is an unabashed Britophile.  Unlike me he is an American, an outsider, and writes much better.  Two or three paragraphs in the centre of his piece caught my eye.

"History, in the British public culture, takes precedence over philosophy, psychology, sociology and economics.   And with a few obvious exceptions, British historians have not seen the human story as the march towards some culminating Idea.

Instead they've seen history as a hodge-podge of activity - as one damn thing after another. (Edit:originally attributed to Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915) and subsequently revised by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950) to "It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over." )   As a result, George Orwell generalized, the English "have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic 'worldview' ".  This isn't because they are practical - that's a national myth, Orwell wrote - it's just that given the stuttering realities of history, they find systems absurd.

Even philosophers in Britain tend to be skeptics.....Burke distrusted each individual's stock of reason and put his faith in the accumulated weight of tradition.  ....Smith put his faith in the collective judgement of the market.  Michael Oakeshott ridiculed rationalism.  Berlin celebrated pluralism, arguing there is no single body of truth.

......while the British can be socially deferential (Edit: less true these days), they are rarely intellectually deferential.  The French and the Germans might defer to their intellectuals, and the Arabs might defer to their clerics, but the British are incapable......".

I think that Brooks is onto the fundamental difference between those that have a need for a firm belief (and more importantly the need to make others believe) and the underlying pragmatism that permeates the Westminster tradition.  There is no single underlying belief system behind the Westminster system.  All of its separate components have been the results of compromises between people with strongly held beliefs, made over the course of more than a thousand years.  It is full of internal contradictions.  But that doesn't matter.  Pragmatic accomodation and incrementalism are the order of the day.  That makes is hard to explain to those that demand clarity what the rules are because the rules are whatever we say they are.  And that is anathema to all the Marxists, Fascists, Environmentalists and Socialists as well as most "Religionists".

If you want a succinct expression of English philosophy I think you could do worse than this: "What's the use. We're all going to die.  Whose buying?"  ;)  Too many of the aforementioned twits don't get that and leave themselves open to the proselytizers - like Gore, Suzuki and Bin Laden
.



 
Kirkhill: I largely agree with you but the English do have something rather milder:

The Whig Interpretation of History
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whig-Interpretation-History-Herbert-Butterfield/dp/0393003183/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-8985412-7656448?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178830660&sr=8-1

And there is this aspect of American attitudes:
http://www.globaljournalist.org/web-content/stories/2006_12/02missourichina/page1.html

"with God's help we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City." ;)
http://www.globaljournalist.org/web-content/stories/2006_12/02missourichina/page1.html

Mark
Ottawa
 
Mark - I plead guilty to Whiggish methodology (searching the past for clues to the present - and with my personal bias intact).  I like to think that I steer clear of the Whiggish requirement to find "Progress".  With Algerians of 14,000 BC drawing images of Archers battling each other,  Sumerians sending out dunning notes for late payment on a delivery of cattle and Roman soldiers on Hadrian's wall sending notes back home to Italy requesting warm underwear - I am not convinced that things change all that much.

I think "Whigs" rather go to prove my point.  We were doing quite alright as an Empire, minding our business, convivially raping, pillaging and profiting alongside similarly inclined locals, until those reforming minded Manchester Methodists with their socialist Co-Operative societies decided we needed to fix the world.    It was all down hill from there. ;D

Champagne "socialists" stirring up the under-classes donchano.

The Americans are very much the inheritors of the Methodist tendency (that is why, in a previous post I linked Jack Layton and George Bush as springing from common stock). 

While Brits have been able to work up a lather over various issues in the past I think that there is enough of a folk-memory of history that there is an inate cynicism that goes along with being a Brit and that permeates all aspects of life.  That cynicism has tended to temper many excesses.
 
Kirkhill: Mancunians have a lot for which to answer.  And I fear "Brits" are a dying notion.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n6_v45/ai_13580898

"That cynicism has tended to temper many excesses."  Not in Canada.  Pity.

A relevant section of "A Dance to the Music of Time":
http://www.amazon.ca/Dance-Music-Time-Third-Movement/dp/0226677176/ref=sr_1_2/701-9840826-9598762?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178839436&sr=8-2

Mark
Ottawa
 
Unfortunately I think you might be right on the Brit issue.  It was always something of an artifact and more "popular" amongst the Scots than the English.  It was James VI & I that introduced the concept of Britain in 1603 with the Union of the Crowns, but it wasn't popularized until the Union of the Flags in 1707.  And then it became largely Scots (lowlanders) saying to the English, "See, we're just like you....all Britons together."  The Tcheuchters from the Highlands never really bought into the notion, nor did most English - as I can attest from schoolyard discussions in England.

So the Islands are at risk of coming unstuck along very well known fault lines.

As to the Mancunians - their most grievous fault was David Beckham.  :)

I haven't read "Dance".  Was there a particular reference that was appropriate?  It looks like an interesting read.
 
Kirkhill: The war novels of Powell and, if you haven't read them, also the "Sword of Honour" trilogy by Evelyn Waugh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_at_Arms_(Evelyn_Waugh)
http://www.amazon.com/Sword-Honour-Trilogy-Everymans-Library/dp/0679431365

The Crete section of "Officers and Gentlemen" is very good:
http://www.amazon.com/Officers-Gentlemen-Evelyn-Waugh/dp/0316926302

Waugh also served with Randolph Churchill liaising with the partisans in Yugoslavia and was, shall one say, left without illusions:
http://www.abbotshill.freeserve.co.uk/USIntro.htm

Mark
Ottawa
 
Personally I have always liked John Masters's WWI trilogy "And now God be thanked" as well as his WWII "Man of War".  The latter is particularly interesting for young soldiers in a peace time / constabulary army.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masters
 
Then there is "Nightrunners of Bengal":
http://www.amazon.com/Nightrunners-Bengal-John-Masters/dp/0881843555

Love a good chapati.  Slipping just slightly off-topic.

Mark
Ottawa
 
They're still at it:

http://cjunk.blogspot.com/2007/05/marriage-of-convenience.

14 May 2007
A Marriage of Convenience

What do Islamists, Marxists, Socialist Utopians, Greens, and Anarchists have in common? A desire to completely undo and remake our society ... apparantly:

    Making Marxism relevant in this post-Soviet age of terror might seem like the mother of all struggles, but organizers of a four-day "Festival of Resistance" in Toronto are trying hard to pull it off -- and they've cast their net as widely as possible to do it.

    Rather than focus on the evils of capitalism, the unlikely top billing of the opening night of the festival was devoted to a discussion about building unity between Muslims and the left; the keynote speaker was the controversial Islamic thinker Zafar Bangash, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, who is in the news these days because he is in the midst of a heated battle to open a mosque in Newmarket -- not because he wants to see a dictatorship of the proletariat.

    Desperate for new brothers in arms, Marxism appears to be doing some serious social networking. If this weekend's series of workshops at the festival is any indication, Marxism has a disparate cadre these days: green activists, the anti-war movement, the transgendered, members of First Nations, traditional Islam.
 
The complete link for the previous comment:
http://cjunk.blogspot.com/2007/05/marriage-of-convenience.html

More:

Brothers (and sisters?) in arms:

1) "Marxism: a festival of resistance", May 10-13, 2007, Toronto:
http://www.carleton.ca/socialists/marxism/

'a four day conference of over fifty workshops, artistic display and performances. If you are against imperialism, war, corporate greed and destruction of the environment, if you want to learn about and organize for a new world of peace, freedom and liberation then don't miss Marxism: A Festival of Resistance'

2) 'TorontoMuslims.com, "Where Toronto Muslims go first", Events:'
http://www.torontomuslims.com/events_display.asp?ID=3652#

'Type: Political Title: Building Unity: Muslims and the Left Date: 5/10/2007 Time: 7:30pm to 10:00pm

Speakers:

Zafar Bangash – Director, Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought
Ali Mallah - Ontario Vice-president, Canadian Arab Federation
Peter Leibovitch – Peace and social justice activist
Ausma Malik – Vice-president, Equity, University of Toronto Students' Union (2006-07)
Wahida Valiante – National Vice-president, Canadian Islamic Congress
James Clark – Leading member, International Socialists

Registration: Registration info and full schedule at:
http://www.socialist.ca

Suitability: Men, Women, Youth, Non-Muslim, New Muslim

Contact Info: Marxism 2007: A Festival of Resistance
Phone: 416-972-6391
E-mail: marxism@sympatico.ca

Place: Bahen Centre for Information Technology
40 St. George Street
University of Toronto
TTC: Queen's Park (walk west to St. George, walk north of College)

Comments: George Bush's "war on terror" has been accompanied by a wave of rampant racial profiling and Islamophobia. Hear this diverse panel of activists discuss the opportunities and challenges for building a united movement against war and Islamophobia, and for social justice and a new world of freedom.

This talk is one of two opening meetings for Marxism 2007: A Festival of Resistance, a four-day conference of over fifty workshops, artistic displays and performances.

If you are against imperialism, war, corporate greed, and the destruction of the environment, if you want to learn about and organize for a new world of peace, freedom, and liberation, then don't miss Marxism 2007: A Festival of Resistance.

NOTE: Group rate — Five full weekend registration passes from $100 (that's $20 per person for the full weekend pass!!)

Registration info and full schedule at:
http://www.socialist.ca'

Mark
Ottawa
 
Can't believe I'd missed this earlier. These actions sound dangerously close to treason. I'd love to see a bloody peace activist be connected to terrorist action. Bloody Hypocrites. Send them here.
 
Terry Glavin has a good article in today's Vancouver Sun following up on this.

Anti-war left makes an unholy alliance
Key leaders from the Canadian peace movement have far too eagerly linked up with the Islamist far right
Terry Glavin, Special to the Sun
Published: Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Last week, the Ottawa Citizen provided its readers with a rare glimpse of a scandal that has severely damaged Canada's ability to effectively engage in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and it has nothing to do with the ill-treatment of Taliban detainees ("Canadian antiwar activists sat down with terror groups," May 8).

The scandal involves a bizarre, backroom alliance between key leaders of Canada's so-called "anti-war" movement and the Islamist far right......
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=b08979b8-6aa7-4876-95db-34461a886d04
 
Kirkhill,

I appreciated and agree with these comments in particular;

The problem is not with God.  The problem is not even with the belief.  The problem is with the proselytisers: those people that prey on the fears of many that they will be victims of communal punishment unless they get their neighbours to hew to the one, true belief that will save the world and them individually......and if they have to sacrifice the neighbours to save the greater part of humanity, including themselves, then so be it.  Their reward is a better life in this world, or a better life for their children or a better life in the next world.

To paraphrase - It's not the belief, it's the activism that is the problem.

If Islamofascists didn't resort to terror - who would care?
If Envirofascists didn't beat the drum constantly - and I mean constantly
they might actually do some good.

The ends do not necessarily justify the means.

Am I on the right track?






 
Absolutely Flip.

I don't know what your road map to heaven looks like. My own is pretty faded. My decisions may take me to the other place but they are unlikely to cause you to end up there.  I don't know what right is.  I know what I believe right is. 

I trust that we can treat each other civilly and politely, even if it involves a degree of hypocrisy, in order to ensure a harmonious environment in which we can mutually prosper. 

When that isn't possible ..... then other means must be resorted to ..... fight, flee or adapt.
 
Too many one sided faces here a little more north of the border then I thought.
I am sure theres probably "spies" from the violent wings of these terrorist groups at the "conference", hence where my skepticism would stand. BUT, I am sure theres a few there from these "terrorist" groups that actually want PEACEFUL remedies to the situations at hand. Such as members who lost ALL their children/grandchildren/spouse to it and don't want to see it continue.
If we are not willing to even take a chance and be willing to listen, or offer our views then you might as well either pull the pin on yourself now, or go down south where ya belong!
...not willing to listen also puts you in the same "shoes" as those Taleban leaders, Insurgent wings,..etc.


MedTech said:
... treason... I say they should be arrested at the border for suspected terrorist activities. They should be locked away under the Anti-Terrorist Legislation's. 'nuff said.

Well, ya better charge me for treason then.
I am 100% against the actions that ANY terrorist group does that is harm mentally/physically/financially to any person/organization/nation.
BUT, theres always back doors to any organization to "secretly" hold peaceful talks to try to resolve any violent/political motives/actions they do on a daily basis. If the outcome can be less hostility/killing innocent people, and both sides getting "something" they want, I am ALL FOR IT!

Lesson learned countless times: Only way for any victory in any conflict is either one side with overwhelming military superiority or 2 sided talks (with neutral member if req'd) with the willingness to COMPROMISE from BOTH/ALL sides of a conflict.

 
A column by Barbara Kay:

Don't you know there's a war on?
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=32fda2d0-c6cd-47fb-a348-b270b02bf91e

Final para:

Our ruthless, supremacist Islamist enemies should be acknowledged as the fascists they are, a word leftists generally prefer to apply to ideological adversaries at home. This is real life, not a movie. The question is no longer rhetorical: Don't you know there's a war on? Sacrifices must be made. Go to the beach, eat eggs, make love. But consider jettisoning such consequential peacetime luxuries as naivete and apathy. The politically mainstream media must go even further, though, and forswear their default tendency to indulge the kind of anti-democratic perfidy from the extreme left that they would never tolerate from the right.

And the audio of an interview May 15 of Terry Glavin by Steve Madely, CFRA, Ottawa:
http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/Terry_Glavin_May15.mp3

Terry Glavin's blog:
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/

Mark
Ottawa
 
KaptKain said:
BUT, theres always back doors to any organization to "secretly" hold peaceful talks to try to resolve any violent/political motives/actions they do on a daily basis. If the outcome can be less hostility/killing innocent people, and both sides getting "something" they want, I am ALL FOR IT!

Lesson learned countless times: Only way for any victory in any conflict is either one side with overwhelming military superiority or 2 sided talks (with neutral member if req'd) with the willingness to COMPROMISE from BOTH/ALL sides of a conflict.

Perhaps you have heard of the Oslo accords, where Israel secretly negotiated a peace accord with the PLO. While the Nobel peace prize was awarded, history has shown there was no peace to be had; the Oslo accords were a misdirection or stalling tactic by the PLO and if anything violence became even greater.

The problem with your formulation is to assume the Taliban, AQ, Hamas, Hezbollah, LTTE or other terror groups actually want to compromise. They don't. In their world view any cessation of hostilities, peace feelers or withdrawal is a victory for them and a signal to carry out even more of the same actions which resulted in "victory".

Victory in the West has usually been confined to generation long holding actions, waiting for the leadership to die off, followers to become disillusioned by lack of results or attrition through military/police actions to take their toll on the insurgencies. This one combines a large critical mass of insurgents, fanatical idiological basis which admits no compromise and the backing of powerful State actors which can supply the logistical tail to keep the insurgencies going on a prolonged basis and on a global scale.

We will have to start using a lot more mental and physical resources before this gets better
 
KaptKain said:
Too many one sided faces here a little more north of the border then I thought.

If we are not willing to even take a chance and be willing to listen, or offer our views then you might as well either pull the pin on yourself now, or go down south where ya belong!

Consider this little tirade your freebie.....
 
Back
Top