Pacificism
This article takes a look the phenomonon that I first talked about here.
"September 11 has lent me one of the most nettlesome mental challenges I have ever encountered — seeking coherence in the leftist orthodoxy on what has happened since. For me, especially confusing is those who rue our not having met 9/11 with "pacifism."
To wrap one's head around others' views and perceive how those views are compatible with intelligence and morality is an urgent task. But I have been just barely adequate to it when encountering a Berkeley professor who vehemently opposed our attacking Afghanistan, or another who thought that we should turn the other cheek to terrorist attacks."
The author asks if these pacificsts would maintain their pacifism if they had a family member who had been killed in the attacks. The answer, sadly, is yes. Many that I have spoken to in Minnesota have said just that. He then speaks a truth that these pacifists refuse to realize:
"There would seem to be a prescription for the public sphere that one exempts one's actual self from. Or if the motivation is not this selfish, then there is, at least, an interesting dissociation of self from one's civic position. A professor at a talk I gave in early 2003 condemned the Bush Administration's "militarism" and the room exploded with applause (and this was before the Iraq war). Somehow people like this, so repulsed by America defending itself, seem unaware of the fact that the America Islamic terrorists despise includes them."
He also addresses those that think that the threat of more terrorism is "exhaggerated":
"But as to "pacifism" über alles, the carnage in Al Qaeda attacks abroad is not a lie, nor is what the Mayor New Orleans, Ray Nagin, has so felicitously called a "hole in the ground" in New York. The people doing this don't want to chat. Surely there is some sense in finding and stopping the ones we can find. I pass aforesaid "hole" riding the PATH train to New Jersey, and when I hear that there was a plot to blow up one of its tunnels and drown thousands of people, I'm uncomfortable."
The people doing this DON'T want dialog. They want submission. Just take a look at what their reaction to Pope Benedict's speech has been.
"September 11 has lent me one of the most nettlesome mental challenges I have ever encountered — seeking coherence in the leftist orthodoxy on what has happened since. For me, especially confusing is those who rue our not having met 9/11 with "pacifism."
To wrap one's head around others' views and perceive how those views are compatible with intelligence and morality is an urgent task. But I have been just barely adequate to it when encountering a Berkeley professor who vehemently opposed our attacking Afghanistan, or another who thought that we should turn the other cheek to terrorist attacks."
The author asks if these pacificsts would maintain their pacifism if they had a family member who had been killed in the attacks. The answer, sadly, is yes. Many that I have spoken to in Minnesota have said just that. He then speaks a truth that these pacifists refuse to realize:
"There would seem to be a prescription for the public sphere that one exempts one's actual self from. Or if the motivation is not this selfish, then there is, at least, an interesting dissociation of self from one's civic position. A professor at a talk I gave in early 2003 condemned the Bush Administration's "militarism" and the room exploded with applause (and this was before the Iraq war). Somehow people like this, so repulsed by America defending itself, seem unaware of the fact that the America Islamic terrorists despise includes them."
He also addresses those that think that the threat of more terrorism is "exhaggerated":
"But as to "pacifism" über alles, the carnage in Al Qaeda attacks abroad is not a lie, nor is what the Mayor New Orleans, Ray Nagin, has so felicitously called a "hole in the ground" in New York. The people doing this don't want to chat. Surely there is some sense in finding and stopping the ones we can find. I pass aforesaid "hole" riding the PATH train to New Jersey, and when I hear that there was a plot to blow up one of its tunnels and drown thousands of people, I'm uncomfortable."
The people doing this DON'T want dialog. They want submission. Just take a look at what their reaction to Pope Benedict's speech has been.
posted by The Lady Logician at
7:19 AM
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