Diana West's No Fear

Diana West’s appropriately entitled book, No Fear, is an extensive account of United States policy toward the Middle East. She demonstrates that President Obama’s policy is essentially a continuation of the Bush policy. This policy is heavily influenced by political correctness, or a fear of accurately describing the enemy we are confronting. She quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s comment at his Harvard address: “Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?” What are people afraid of? In the United States this might include social ostracism, loss of employment or assignment to a re-education camp, sometimes called sensitivity training. In Europe it could include a jail sentence. In the Middle East it could involve beheading.
She quotes Secretary of State Clinton: “The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of other.” This from a government that has sacrilegious subsidized “art works” like “Piss Christ,” “Tongues of Flame,” “The Holy Virgin Mary,” “Tie Rack,” etc., etc., etc. As columnist John Leo stated: “In paintings and sculpture, the bashing of Christian symbols is so mainstream that it’s barely noticed.” The defenders of these examples of “artistic expression” are the same people who are outraged by the slightest criticism of islam.
More disturbing is the fact that numerous terrorists have been released from prison while U.S. servicemen are serving terms in federal prisons for apparent violations of the Rules of Engagement. These rules are so ludicrous that it prompted her to write, “They call this strategy COIN and wear uniforms, but really it’s psychosis and these strategist should be wearing hospital robes.”
This book illustrates how the elite has created much of the problems in the Middle East. Their nation building efforts have resulted in a surfeit of arms in the Middle East and the overthrow of admittedly corrupt regimes replaced by even more dangerous regimes. We must question the depth of the elite’s commitment to the U.S. by their actions. Our survival is at stake. As Diana West writes, “When a civilization no longer inculcates an overriding attachment to its own survival it no longer survives as a civilization.”

I “Misremember” You

Brian Williams’ “misremembering” has opened a can of worms.  Apparently “misremembering” is a common malady.  The incident has resurrected the “misremembering” of Hillary Clinton when she was under sniper fire in Bosnia.  Bill O’Reilly is being accused of “misremembering” during the Falklands war protest.  And, of course, there is Secretary of State John Kerry’s “misremembering” of his time in Cambodia: ”I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies. . . . The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real."  “I have that memory which is seared--seared--in me." Apparently he could not get the correct administration right.  This took place during the Johnson Administration, unless I am “misremembering.”

The Progressive/Islamic Coalition

           

“Progressives” have frequently been criticized for being “soft on Communism.” Communism claims to be a secular and scientific program to liberate the poor. It shares many of the progressives’ ideals if not their methods. Islam on the other hand has many major characteristics that are contrary to progressive beliefs. It is not Islamophobic to point out that women have a lower status in Islam or that homosexuality is officially frowned upon within Islam.  Islam is by definition theistic. What can possibly account for the apparent sympathy many progressives have for a rigidly theistic political movement?  What could Communism and Islam possibly have in common?

There is an understandable explanation for this affinity. Progressives, Communists and radical Muslims share similar enemies.  Perhaps Peter Hitchens explained it best.  “The Left can sympathize with it (Islam) as the enemy of the Christian monoculture and as an anti-colonial and therefore ‘progressive’ force.”  Hitchens contends that Islam shares an important goal of progressivism: it is anti-Western and therefore progressive.  Hitchens may be dismissed as a conservative critic of the progressive agenda.  However, the same conclusion was reached by George Galloway, a “progressive” member of the British Parliament.  When asked to explain his call for uniting Muslim and progressive forces, he replied,  “Not only do I think it's possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries, mainly Muslim countries. They have the same interest in opposing savage capitalist globalization which is intent upon homogenizing the entire world … So it's necessary to unite these two great forces."

Certainly not all progressives are motivated by hostility toward Western culture.  However, a significant number of the left’s opinion shapers are.   This would not be a problem if progressive intellectuals did not play such a significant role in policy decisions.  Once confined to small enclaves like Greenwich Village they were a curiosity.  Now that they control the “commanding heights” of our society, their influence is highly significant.

Opposition to a society’s culture appears to be a significant component of the progressive intellectual’s makeup.  It is not confined to the United States.  George Orwell claimed, “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.  In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution.”  M.V. Tugan-Baranovsky, the Russian socialist intelligentsia's theoretician described the typical Russian intellectual at the beginning of the 20^th Century: "he was permeated with revolutionary spirit and had the greatest disgust for Russian historical traditions, regarding himself in this respect as an out and out renegade. . . . As for traditional Russian culture . . . hostility to it is the most typical mark of the intellectual. . . . The Russian intellectual is uprooted from his historical soil and consequently selects the social ideal which seems best from the rationalist point of view.  This is the socialist ideal - cosmopolitan, supranational and suprahistorical.”

Here in the United States Eric Hoffer stated, “Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.” Thomas Sowell claimed, “There is simply a whole class of people who hate what this country stands for, who have contempt for its people and who exploit every opportunity to undermine its institutions and ideals.”

This hostility is best revealed by Susan Sontag: "Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. It is the white race and it alone - its ideologies and inventions - which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."

Sontag is not an isolated case.  There are literally thousands of university professors like Nicholas De Genova who stated, “I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus,” during an anti-war rally.  He was referring to the 18 servicemen killed during a battle in Somalia in 1993.   Professor Ward Churchill referred to the “techncrats” working at the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns."  This somehow justified their murder.  Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict, described this hostility to the West as, “a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological.”

Academics are not the only individuals who have a rather benign attitude toward Islamic radicals. Washington State Senator Patty Murray described Osama bin Laden in these terms, “He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building healthcare facilities, and the people are extremely grateful.”  She added, "We have not done that. We haven't been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure.” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D. Ohio) compared Islamic terrorists to American revolutionaries. “One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown.”

When politicians and policy makers have a tenuous allegiance to their culture and country there are obvious problems.  Our policies in the Middle East have led to a chaotic situation.  This can be attributed to an extent on a distorted view of America’s role in the world and a misunderstanding of radical Islam.

Rev Canon Patrick Sookhdeo: The condemnation of Western culture, especially its Judeo-Christian basis and its liberal tradition, has driven post-modern leftists into an unexpected alliance with radical Islamists, although on other issues leftists and Islamists take opposite positions.  Hatred of their common enemies has forged a bond between them.  Islam in Britain: The British Muslim Community in February 2005, The Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, 2005, p. 73.