So you’re anti Bush, and you don’t like a rose tinted view of the world? Now I’m completely confused.
My money is on FDR. We need more presidents like him.
Lincoln and Washington also get a nod. But everybody always answers one of those, so their position is a relative given. Jefferson wasn’t a bad one either.
But what about Grant? People don’t give him enough credit. You want to talk about groundbreaking, boy, he set the precident for Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Taft, you name it.
To the poster who suggested that the USSR and militant Islam would join forces . . . wtf? Militant islam is by-and-large the child of American influence (at the very least America provided the fertilizer). You know, funding the Taliban and all that. Godless Communism and Militant Islam are antithetical.
When it comes to confronting a common enemy, religious differences have never stopped believers and infidels from making common cause. The Soviets were active in Catholic Latin America and officially atheist China aided Pakistan in developing nuclear weapons. Egypt under Nasser accepted military support from the communist USSR. Geopolitics, Xunzian, makes for strange bedfellows. When America is the enemy, do you think a terror organization is going to cherry pick its allies?
Now, let’s deal with your delusional nonsense about America being the author of militant Islam. The central tenent of Islam is “jihad”, that is, “holy war”. Do you think Bin Laden engineered al Qaeda as a vehicle to avenge past American violations on the Islamic world or to redress for American imperialist plunder of his region? Because never has Bin Laden called for a fairer redistribution of wealth. He’s hardly in a position to, coming from one of the world’s richest families, who live in Saudi Arabia, where wealth is distributed to the royal family in most part.
It is important to be clear how Muslim “extremists” are actually extreme. The are extreme in the faith. Extreme in their devotion to the word of the Koran and the hadith (the literature recounting the sayings and actions of Mohammed). This is what leads them to be extreme in their belief that modernity and secular culture are antithetical to moral and spiritual health. They are certain that the exports of Western culture are driving their wives and children away from God. They also believe our unbelief to be the ultimate sin, meritting death when it impedes the spread of Islam. These passions are not analyzable to “hatred” in any ordinary sense. How many of these hatred-ridden soldiers of God have been to America or even met an American? What’s more, they have relatively meager grievances with American imperialism than is the global norm. Their oil might still be under the stand, were it not for Western MNCs.
Muslim extremists suffer from a fear of cultural contamination. Beneath their murderous passions lies a consuming feeling of “humiliation” humiliation over the fact that their civilization has foundered while they have had to watch a sin-loving, godless people become the masters of everything challenge set in their way. They may want to deny it, but they know this feeling is a product of their faith. And the outrage that results is not that of the poor deprived of life’s necessities, but of a people who believe themselves chosen, subjugated by barbarians. Bin Laden hardly wants for anything. He has never called for an equal distribution of wealth. Even his call for statehood for Palestineans seems an afterthought, stemming more from anti-Semmitism than solidarity with Palestineans. His call is for eradication of the West, not a Palestinean homeland, and 911 was not an act of war but what I’ll try to explain.
911 was designed to instill panic and psychological trauma in the American people, and to do so under the unsteady command of an error prone leader. Al Qaeda could rely on the 24 hour news cycle to burn the image of devastation on the mass psyche and the indiviual constituents thereoff. Every 15 minutes they were devastated again and the day after 90% of Americans bonded with a man on a bullhorn, and that bonding parlayed into a virtual deification of the wrong man at the wrong time. Bin Laden probably predicted Bush’s prudential errors, having known the Bush family and sized up their fortunate son with his none of the right stuff.
The bottom line, Xunzuan, is that 911 was not our just dues for past exploitation. It was an act stemming from a desperate act of religious ferver, carried out in calculating cynical anticipation of the effects on American society and politics
Muslim fundamentalism is based on fear, humiliation and anger, not righteous indignation as you imagine it in you knee-jerk anti-American unthinking response. The fear of modernity seeping into their culture and moving their women and children to question some of the warped beliefs and practices of Islam is, to Islamic fundamentalist, unthinkable. When they see their world lagging pitifully behind a sin-loving enemy who are vastly ahead by any measure, be it scientific, military, technological, economic or healthwise, they are filled with humiliation which gives way to anger, and are disposed to act irrationally, hoping to transform through catastrophic acts of violence what they are impotent to do in any competitive arena. America never bred this suicidal terroristic mania, Xunzian. They also bombed Australians in Mali. What’s your pro-Muslim rationale for that.
Think before you post your unconscious keystrokes. If we still had a cold war enemy, it would exploit any disadvantages we had to damage our interests. Your “thesis” that religious differences bars marriages of convenience falls into no known school of foreign policy analysis. Read up and learn rather than think you’re the teacher, only to find you first need to unlearn what you picked up from someone trying to recall what someone told him that someone who read Chomsky said.
When you don’t know, say nothing and don’t embarrass yourself. Because this is what’s called killing a gnat with a sledgehammer, or exploding a soap bubble with a machette.
I think he means that not Islam itself, but militant Islam is a result of economic and/or other types of American aggression. That seems pretty obvious to most people. You just want to fight Ric. I mean, is the “central tenet of Islam” really holy war? Do you actually believe that?
Yeah . . .
'Cause it was the USSR that funded the Taliban and put them in power. Riiiiight.
There is honestly so much wrong with that post that I don’t know where to begin.
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Why is America the enemy? This is unaddressed and assumed in your post. Generally people become enemies for particular reasons (even if those reasons aren’t reasonable).
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Islam has 5 pillars. Some consider Jihad to be a sixth ‘unofficial’ pillar. Your analysis of Islam is incredibly ignorant. So much so that it frightens me.
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I do agree with your analysis of fundamentalist Islam. That is, for the most part, the ‘stick’ end of religion that gets emphasized in any fundamentalism. Your point?
This, I thought was most revealing, “Think before you post your unconscious keystrokes. If we still had a cold war enemy, it would exploit any disadvantage we had to damage our interests.” This statement is totally 100% true, except that it wasn’t the Soviets backing fundamentalist Islam for that purpose . . .
Honestly, I’ve tried to respond to your post as best I could, but it is really a mish-mash of non-sequiturs followed by vitrolic rhetoric. It is also devoid of any logical coherency. Your overall argument is both unsound and invalid. Shockingly so.
Read the edit and address the whole thing. Yes, “Jihad” in one of its meaning, means holy war. Do you know the other one? Xunzian just took a silly line from what was in the air and posted it, thinking he had a cheap victory. I have an unfair advantage. I’m read and I’m driven to question. He can fight his own battles. Anyway, what’s wrong with debate? He baited me with a falsehood and this is philosophy, “love of knowledge”, not exchange of easy one liners. I don’t post often, but when I do it’s thorough and exhaustive.
suggested reading: Sam Harris : End of Faith. That post was drawn largely from there. Not from air
Good points don’t need poetic or flowery language to make them valid. Usually when I see so much of that I just nod my head.
It is generally considered poor form to go back and re-write a post after people have responded to it.
I’m headed out for the evening. I’ll take care of your post in the morning.
For now, I’ll just point out that Harris is largely incorrect in his analysis because it is far too Hegelian. Given his philosophic stance, a Hegelian outlook is more than a little problematic to start with, but running with that stance in the matter he does teeters on being disingenuous.
Edit: Also . . . how is pointing out that America provided the fertilizer for the problem of radical Islam that we are now dealing with ‘anti-American’ and ‘pro-muslim’? I am neither. Though describing me as ‘pro-American’ and ‘anti-muslim’ wouldn’t be an apt description either.
I just reviewed your counterpost. I was posing a hypothetical and drawing my meagre knowledge of history as examples. If you agree a hypothetical Surviving Soviet Union would exploit our crisis with Islamic zealots, that’s all I was posing. My analysis of Muslim extremists and their actions is one of my closely held theories of what drives some of their outrageous exploits, and if you calmly review it, you can see its merit while dissenting.
A true mish-mash of non-sequiturs would present and very easy target. My overall argument is drawn from extensive readings from recent books and journals of note. I don’t draw my conclusions from the alternative press or my gut.
Just a lot of denials of my posts, some name-calling and no argument. If I hurt your feelings, show me wrong, and I’ll admit it. You engage in what you accuse me of – “Vitriolic rhetoric”. You as much as called my suggestion that a cold war enemy in league with islamo-terror was a misguided no-brainer, and when you get it back, you cry foul. You can’t have it both ways. You said you didn’t know know where to start and you never did start. So, why did you bother with posting at all. Any reference book on Islam will tell you that Muslims are enjoined to fight a holy war (jihad) till all non-Mulsims are either converted or dead. The substance of my post is shared by noted scholars, and you didn’t address any points I made, just spouted the anti-American line. BTW, your choice of Presidents was fine. The “New Deal” was a pivotal point in American political history which should be built on, not eroded like Reagan and Bush have tried.
Maybe you’re right about everything, but then why the hostile tone?
And what’s this about no shame in admitting you don’t know something? What is it that’s not known? If you think that the key focus of Islam is to convert or kill everyone, then you’re just wrong. You’ve got yourself completely convinced that you know everything and that no one else knows anything. Talking to you is like having a yelling match. Get a grip man, it’s just the internet.
Also, maybe we should just create another thread for the pugnacious crowd.
Check this out:
ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewto … 67#1880267
Now if you please…
Who is your favorite US president? Why?
I try to become informed on as much as my leisure time allows. Learning is fun. If you read the posts I respond to, you’ll notice a note of provocation, and when the poster gets it back, they cry foul. But your point is well taken. I find your posts inviting a sharp response on purpose. Philosophy has an eliminative functions. I take the calling seriously. Maybe i should stick to the tougher forum, forums.philosophyforums.com. But damnit, Scot, I’ll miss you!!
Let’s be friends.
I had to edit to avoid double posting. I’m going to take this to a new thread. This obviously has nothing to do with which presidents we esteem the most. I’ll keep the thread within Social Sciences and Label it “Islamic Extremism: The Seeds of Terror” Not now, but tomorrow pm. BTW, Harris’ book has no trace of Hegel. You’re thinking of Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations”. edit: Or did you mean Lee Harris’s “Civilization and Its Enemies”, which admittedly is influenced by Hegel.
I’ll wait for the new thread. Though I will say that Harris’s thoughts are extremely influenced by Hegel because he does take an idea-driven model of history and action (that plays a huge role in his criticisms of religion, especially Islam). This contrasts strongly with his postion as a neuroscientist claiming that the human mind can be reduced to physical.
One really can’t have it both ways. Either thought is part of the physical response to a given stimulus (the neuroscientist’s view and one that he has espoused before) or thought is qualitatively different from other responses and is able to be generative in some way. For history to be thought-driven, then you require the latter view.
His views on how thoughts come to be is in direct conflict with how he feels thoughts operate.
As for starting a new thread, it is worth noting that you’ll be shifting the grounds on which this disagreement started (which is fine), however, it doesn’t address the non-sequitur nature of your response. I think the question is interesting enough to persue, so I’m fine with that.
The best president was the president who died the quickest after being elected into office, or who left office the quickest after being elected.
So as a rule of thumb, a good Amercian president is a dead Amercian president.
I really expected you to say Truman Detrop.
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You must have read a short abstract of some piece of Harris’s. You haven’t read the book in question and you’re constantly finding something to snivel about. Make arguments when you address me. Save the snivelling and complaining about ghosts for someone who cares. I like substantive argument, not cries of "OH! He’s Idea driven! Like Hegel!! ’ Read him squash pernicious religions, one of which I suspect you subscribe to, in “End of Faith”. He’s gentler than Dawkins, or is Dawkins “idea driven” and damned too?
Regardless of his Marshall plan and pact with remaining communist countries, which was only a moral front so he would gain allied nations support in establishing capitalism (spreading the disease) in communist countries, as well as a means to hinder Russia’s competition in the cold war, he authorized the use of the atomic bomb on Japan, a country which attacked America because it ordered an embargo on trade in the first fucking place.
I stand by my claims: a good American president is a dead American president.