Dennis Prager's Moral Monsters
Right on the heels of this, Dennis Prager has something even more irresponsible to say:
This is important to note because it gives one a clearer picture of the type of the person the Islamist is. We have here a level of moral primitiveness unknown elsewhere in the human race. There are bad people in every religion, in every country, and in every group. But we do not know of any group, let alone millions of people, who believe that murder is a proper response to an affront to their religion (or to their country or to their ethnic group).
This is in the context of a column about the American Left’s tendency to see “moral equivalency”—to say, blame the satanic pastor Terry Jones for the murders he incited in Afghanistan last week—between immoral American acts and Islamist atrocities. This (predominantly) right-wing complaint has been around since the very early days after 9/11, when anyone who dared discuss the political context of the attacks might as well have pronounced themselves a Bin Laden supporter.
Jones did a despicable, damnable thing, but however wicked it may have been, it justifies neither Islamic violence nor the tossing aside of his legal rights in this country. In trying to make the point that Islamists, and not American fundamentalist Christians, are responsible for the murders committed in Afghanistan, Prager reiterates the worst bit of that deliberate post-9/11 blindness about why Islamic terrorism exists and how the West should respond to it.
The core of the conservative argument against what they call “moral equivalency” is the pathologically murderous, morally primitive Islamist, the type of person whose evil is, as Prager put is, “unknown elsewhere in the human race.” I honestly don’t know how Prager could type that clause without immediately realizing its outrageousness. On the contrary, that kind of moral primitiveness has been on display everywhere else in the human race throughout history—history is nothing if not a long parade of people who believed in killing those who affronted their identity, from Sir Thomas More to the American colonists to the CIA. To acknowledge the fact is not to defend Islamists, it’s to realize that they hardly represent an unprecedented low in human morality.
(However sickened one is by the illegal torture, renditions, killings and support for despots that have happened at the hands of Western powers, I would like to hold onto some tenuous distinction between the actions of “legitimate” state agents and straight-up mob violence. That almost no modern society has proved itself incapable of producing hateful, deadly mob violence should make plain that Islamic hardliners are no exception.)
I bring up the demonization of Islamists by people like Prager to point out, once again, the blatantly anti-theoretical bent of an American right that wants to put Islamic grievance with the United States in a “fascist” or “psychopathic” box and promptly commence blowing it up. The examples are innumerable: Victor Davis Hanson calling Islamists “fascists” and saying the only response is “military defeat”; Jonah Goldberg calling Islam a “religion of war and bigotry”; Joseph Loconte in The Weekly Standard saying “radical Islam is the philosophical cousin to European fascism,” with which it shares a “nihilist rage.” Any attempt to understand the enemy we’re confronting, which Sun Tzu might say is one of the first tasks of conflict, is greeted by these people as “appeasement,” or “Islamoschmoozing” or “American weakness.” And they call the Islamists the blinded warmongers.
The Afghan mob murders that followed Jones’ Koran-burning should be thoroughly condemned, but they did not happen in a vacuum. Prager, like many a conservative before him, wants to prove Islamists’ inhumanity so that the West can wash its hands of its responsibility for them. In fact, these horrific murders happened within a complex historical and political context, one in which the United States is deeply, profoundly culpable. Without Western meddling—which includes the deliberate, systematic creation of the militants we now call our nihilist enemies—Islamic terrorists as we know them might well not exist. Prager and others are suggesting that we declare them “moral monsters” and substitute the real political events that sparked their acts with an almost farcical denial of history. Frankly, I expect more from an ideological tradition that prides itself on its realism.
No American individual, not even Terry Jones, is personally responsible for the people who died in Afghanistan last week. But people “who believe that murder is a proper response to an affront to their religion (or to their country or to their ethnic group)”? If Prager doesn’t see that type of people anywhere outside the Muslim world, then he isn’t looking very hard.
[Cross-posted at Patrol]
Jones did not do a “despicable, damnable thing” any more than PZ Myers did in the The Great Desecration. As Americans, we have no duty to respect religious symbols, and we may desecrate them and blaspheme them to our hearts’ content. We do not grant a heckler’s veto to murderous thugs who find those views offensive.
— Hyman Rosen · Apr 12, 07:42 PM · #
Mr. Sessions,
Where to begin. First, let’s start with our agreement. Prager is wrong to single out Islamists as unique in human history as a group of people “who believe that murder is a proper response to an affront to their religion (or to their country or to their ethnic group).” Prager of all people should appreciate the Nazi’s exterminationist ideology (did I just invoke Godwin’s law?) Or to strike closer to home for me, I was just reading about the dreadful persecution of the Cathars as part of the famous Albigensian Crusade “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” So you and I agree that Prager needs to brush up on his history and current affairs.
Other than that, your piece is bizarre. Apparently you think America is to blame for radical Islam. Now I know you think those of us who disagree with your ‘analysis’ are somehow “anti-theoretical”, but did you ever consider the possibility that many of those you quote (among others) have actually studied the radicals, listened to them and come to a different conclusion than you about what motivates them and why we think they are crazy, ideologically motivated killers?
Finally, concerning Pastor Jones, why do you think what he did was “damnable” or “despicable”? Do you think the same thing about the Danish cartoonists? Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses? Where do you draw the line?
Here are some more appropriate thoughts about the good pastor:
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2011/04/appeasing_mohammedan_rage.html
— Fake Herzog · Apr 12, 07:46 PM · #
Absolutely incredible. Sessions, you are a walking, writing cliche.
Try this:
Al Qaeda in Iraq actually baked a family’s child and served it to them.
And you want to blame American foreign policy for the behavior or terrorists. What the hell is wrong with you?
— jd · Apr 12, 08:28 PM · #
jd: Do you have a citation for the baked child anecdote? That seems like a story that even the mainstream media would cover.
Regarding the quoted story about Col. McMaster, nothing he describes sounds particularly unusual for a war. We have seen atrocities committed by all sides of all conflicts. What of the systematic rape of women in Bosnia or Sudan. Nanking at the hands of the Japanese in WWII? My Lai? Obviously I’m not defending the actions of the insurgents Col. McMaster was fighting, but it seems pretty clear that unspeakable horrors can be committed in wartime by soldiers, regardless of religion, ethnicity or nationality. Islamists in Iraq or Afghanistan don’t seem particularly unique in this regard.
— M. Anderson · Apr 12, 09:24 PM · #
“Obviously I’m not defending the actions of the insurgents Col. McMaster was fighting, but it seems pretty clear that unspeakable horrors can be committed in wartime by soldiers, regardless of religion, ethnicity or nationality. Islamists in Iraq or Afghanistan don’t seem particularly unique in this regard.”
That’s an important point, M. Anderson.
I’d add that right now, if I’m not mistaken, per capita GDP in Pakistan is about what it was in the US during the Civil War. In the US, a race of people was enslaved, women were the property of men, enforcing a priori rights in courts was unheard of, etc etc. Wartime + lack of development = bad behavior, in Central Asia as in all other places in all of human history.
And you’re quite right, David, that however atrocious and immoral the behavior of the Taliban, they didn’t just pick “The United States” out of a hat due to their hatred of freedom, giving a lucky break to Japan, Luxembourg, Sweeden, et al. They may be immoral, murderous extremists, but they’re not 100% hate-blinded irrationality.
— reflectionephemeral · Apr 12, 09:44 PM · #
Yes, Prager and VDH, among others, are blowhards and make over the top statements. But should we not recognize evil, regardless of its cause. Yes, we should analzye the cause in a particular instance. “Without Western meddling—which includes the deliberate, systematic creation of the militants we now call our nihilist enemies—Islamic terrorists as we know them might well not exist.” Yes, the all powerful american government created Islamic terrorism. We simply don’t have that kind of power. Mr. Sessions is making the same mistake many make – seeing the terrorists through US eyes, and not on their own terms. I don’t care for Prager’s lazy analysis. But Mr. Sessions is equally lazy – if the goal is learn about the enemny, competitor or friend.
— JC38 · Apr 12, 11:49 PM · #
I am really interested in what you wrote here. This looks absolutely perfect. All these tinny details are made with lot of background knowledge.
— CNA Job · Apr 13, 10:02 AM · #
M. Anderson:
Here’s a citation from the guy who reported it: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/baqubah-update-05-july-2007.htm.
That seems like a story that even the mainstream media would cover.
Nah.
The mainstream media has chosen sides and it ain’t mine.
So far, the comment thread here seems to agree that nothing done by Islamists is new. I tend to agree. As Ecclesiastes said, there is nothing new under the sun.
But the systematic use of terror as a tactic, targeting civilians (children), willingness to kill themselves, all of it as part of a religious belief, sets the Islamists apart, don’t you think?
There is a qualitative difference between the atrocities of all past wars and the actions of a frighteningly large number of religious zealots all committed to a single goal. And they have shown that they are not driven by American foreign policy or even their hatred of Israel: they are driven by a heretical form of Islam which kills everything and everyone in its path.
That seems like a story that even the mainstream media would cover.
— jd · Apr 13, 12:40 PM · #
jd,
I’m still not sure that as a historic phenomenon, what the Islamists are doing “sets them apart”. On the other hand, you and I agree that from a qualitative perspective in the here and now, their actions deserve attention, harsh rhetoric, and lots of coverage by the mainstream media.
Again, what is really scary to me, is that when I put on my conservative theoretical hat, that Mr. Sessions claims all of us “blinded warmongers” refused to wear, I have learned exactly what you have learned about the Islamists: they are driven by Islam (I’m not sure which version is heretical, so I will go ahead and condemn the entire false religion) which kills everything and everyone non-Islamic (important to add that qualifier — after all, they would like to convert us) in its path.
— Fake Herzog · Apr 13, 03:50 PM · #
My problem with all the right wing egghead psycho babble surrounding terms like “islamofascism” is that its essentially useless. At worst it’s just a bunch of namecalling catharsis, at best, it’s some strange attempt at western solidarity. It doesn’t really lead to an understanding of any enemy. True understanding requires empathy, and once you start talking in absolutes like “evil” and “good”, you’ve essentially closed off any true idea of understanding. Call it relativism if you want, but without empathy, you’re just on the road to dehumanizing your enemy so you’re more easily able to justify support for your own atrocities.
We aren’t facing some alien menace. There’s nothing foreign about al-qaida’s thought process.
I mean, like the comment above by jd. Sure, I could bring up some counter examples (see: Japan/WWII) but that’s useless. The above poster is seeking ways to set the enemy apart morally from his self/culture. He’s not making some sociological study on radical islam.
— Console · Apr 13, 04:15 PM · #
How is the boobytrapping of children in order to kill the parents any different from what we do with public schools? Or from what Americans used to do to Native Americans, in taking kids away from the parents, sending them off to boarding schools in an attempt to “civilize” them, and thereby lure the parents into the new American way of life. It was more a way of death than a way of life, though. This technique was a little slower-acting than a bomb, so I suppose there is a slight difference. Russians did it to the native peoples of Siberia, too.
I’m still not sure that as a historic phenomenon, what the Islamists are doing “sets them apart”. On the other hand, you and I agree that from a qualitative perspective in the here and now, their actions deserve attention, harsh rhetoric, and lots of coverage by the mainstream media.
I agree with what’s on both hands here.
— The Reticulator · Apr 13, 04:24 PM · #
Call it relativism if you want…
You can’t have moral relativism is you don’t believe in moral absolutes of good and evil.
/s/ Moral Relativist
— The Reticulator · Apr 13, 04:27 PM · #
The above poster is seeking ways to set the enemy apart morally from his self/culture. He’s not making some sociological study on radical islam.
I think you’ve nailed it. It’s not unlike what the left tries to do to Tea Partiers and Fox News. We saw some of the worst of this on display in the wake of the Giffords shooting. We also see something similar in treatment of Terry Jones by top military guys and politicians.
— The Reticulator · Apr 13, 05:01 PM · #
David Sessions wrote:
history is nothing if not a long parade of people who believed in killing those who affronted their identity, from Sir Thomas More to the American colonists to the CIA.
Yup. There’s David Sessions making the case for moral equivalence. Now perhaps you could explain how Sir Thomas More and American colonists and the CIA make the case for moral equivalence with Islamists. Perhaps once you have shown moral equivalence, then maybe give some examples of Americans celebrating those atrocities in the streets.
— jd · Apr 13, 05:15 PM · #
then maybe give some examples of Americans celebrating those atrocities in the streets
Does it have to be in the street? Would the head of any enemy stuck on a pike, streetside, for a ten year display be close enough?
— The Reticulator · Apr 13, 05:50 PM · #
Does it have to be in the street? Would the head of any enemy stuck on a pike, streetside, for a ten year display be close enough?
Explain how this is relevant.
— jd · Apr 13, 06:00 PM · #
Explain how this is relevant.
I skipped the moral equivalence part and went straight to the American colonists celebrating their atrocities in the streets. Do you have a problem with that?
— The Reticulator · Apr 13, 06:40 PM · #
Just to get it on the record: You believe American colonists were (are?) morally equivalent to Islamic terrorists?
Because that’s what we’re arguing here. We’re not arguing whether Americans or any other human beings have done inhuman things in the past.
— jd · Apr 13, 06:49 PM · #
Just to get it on the record: You believe American colonists were (are?) morally equivalent to Islamic terrorists?
I don’t have a measuring instrument finely calibrated enough to tell me whether the atrocities were equivalent. I am also prejudiced, because I tend to favor my own side. But the differences between the atrocities on the two sides, if any, are not large enough to make me want to base a foreign policy or war policy on them.
— The Reticulator · Apr 13, 07:09 PM · #
I can identify examples of Americans celebrating atrocities in the street with truly unfortunate ease. Consider the widely distributed lynching postcards of the early to mid 20th century.
— John Spragge · Apr 13, 07:30 PM · #
To put it in perspective, I think the American system of constitutional, limited government with a bill of rights is a thousand times better than Sharia Law, and a thousand times better than any derivative of Marxism. In the American Revolution, I think American treatment of British POWs was much better than British treatment of Americans POWs (though not anywhere near a thousand times better). I think Ann Coulter looks at the left through rose colored glasses. I think the religion of the Pilgrims was better than that of the Puritans, and the religion of either better than any of those of Native Americans. But early American colonists as terrorists vs Islamists as terrorists? That’s a much tougher call.
— The Reticulator · Apr 13, 07:34 PM · #
Reticulator,
I’m a bit confused by your comments today — normally you are a voice for sanity around here. However, if I read you correctly, you are making a case that booby trap murders are equivalent to bad schools? Really? Do you need to go on one of your long bike rides to clear your head?
jd,
Sessions examples were awful, but I still stand by my point — history is actually filled with crazy people who killed other people because they were motivated to do so by religious passion, or a murderous ideology, or they were full of ethnic/racial hatred, etc. I mean, Rwanda wasn’t that long ago. Anyway, as I said before, other than this minor pedantic point, you and I are on the same page.
John,
How do you know all those lynchings were atrocities?
— Fake Herzog · Apr 13, 07:58 PM · #
Reticulator writes: How is the boobytrapping of children in order to kill the parents any different from what we do with public schools?
Not really that hard a challenge.
Key difference: If, looking through Rawls’ veil of ignorance so that I didn’t know whose child it was, I had to choose between (1) putting a child in public school, or even a forced boarding school and (2) murdering that child, then booby-trapping the corpse so that the parents, recovering the child in their grief, would then be blown up themselves, I would strongly prefer choice 1, because I am willing to bet that while damaging, it’s less damaging to the child and his/her family than choice 2.
Additional difference: I’m fairly confident that people who set school curricula and/or tried the various assimilation programs honestly thought they were benefiting their charges and their families. At best, people who blow up kids and their parents think that they’re benefiting those people in the afterlife. May not be a material difference to you, but it is a difference, and it material to me.
— J Mann · Apr 13, 08:39 PM · #
In a word – LOLWUT? Oh, but then I see that I’m responding to someone who questions whether lynchings are atrocities.
— Ch3t · Apr 13, 08:44 PM · #
Reticulator:
I know that we usually argue for the same side. And to tell you the truth, I was hoping I was wrong about your post skipping the moral equivalence part (on the chance that it was tongue-in-cheek).
So if I concede that there was no difference between American colonists and Islamic terrorists perhaps then you can find the Osama bin Laden, the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of the American Revolution.
Patrick Henry doesn’t count.
— jd · Apr 13, 09:06 PM · #
John Spragge wrote:
I can identify examples of Americans celebrating atrocities in the street with truly unfortunate ease. Consider the widely distributed lynching postcards of the early to mid 20th century.
With truly unfortunate ease, David Sessions has the correct response to lynchings:
…should be thoroughly condemned, but they did not happen in a vacuum…In fact, these horrific murders happened within a complex historical and political context…
— jd · Apr 13, 09:27 PM · #
Ch3t,
Let me be clear — of course I reject vigilante justice. But, it is not so clear to me that every single instance of such justice is an outrage or better yet “an atrocity”. For example, one could with some sympathy understand the mob that lynches the child murderer or rapist. Again, a civilized society should bring the criminal to justice, not the mob, and that justice may indeed include the death penalty — but the child rapist lynched by the mob — I’m not sure I would call that an atrocity.
— Fake Herzog · Apr 13, 09:49 PM · #
On context:
The murders in Afghanistan took place in the context of a culture that had derived much of its identity and pride from a long history of effective resistance to, and freedom from, foreign domination, and has now spent twenty of the past thirty years with foreigners, first Russians and then NATO troops, occupying its urban centers and a significant proportion of its countryside. Unfortunately, a great deal of ugly history validates the instinct that allowing an outsider to both dominate your country militarily and also to express contempt for your culture leads to very bad outcomes.
The lynchings took place in the context of a dominant culture repressing racialized people to exploit them as cheap labour, and also members of that culture attempting to bolster their sense of self worth by visiting extreme violence on a subject population. The historical context also makes an interesting contrast: in the Afghanistan, the historical context has as its most distinct feature the violation of a long tradition of proud independence and self reliance. The lynchings, by contrast, took place in the context of the relatively recent liberation of African Americans from one of the only two or three truly pervasive systems of slavery in history: a system which had a uniquely depraved character, even among slave-holding societies.
In short, the murders in Afghanistan represented, to a significant degree, the lashing out of historical victims. The lynchings, and particularly their reproduction as entertainment, amounted primarily to a flaunting by the victimizers of their impunity.
— John Spragge · Apr 14, 12:55 AM · #
“In short, the murders in Afghanistan represented, to a significant degree, the lashing out of historical victims.”
So let me get this straight. The mob that attacked the UN workers were victims? John, you can write paragraph after paragraph of that “context” and it will still make no sense.
— Fake Herzog · Apr 14, 02:30 AM · #
Maybe the cynical decision to fund a rebellion in Afghanistan that would draw the Russians into a debilitating war, the create “Russia’s Vietnam” had nothing to do with the murders of four UN workers. Maybe the past three decades of war occupation and poverty didn’t matter to a single member of that mob. Maybe the fact that people whose politicians had helped visit misery on their country also considered it OK to desecrate their holy book as an expression of contempt didn’t really bother anyone in that mob. Maybe “context” doesn’t matter.
Fine: let’s have no excuses for anyone. An Afghan mob did, in fact, kill four UN workers. Americans in the South during the first half of the last century time did, in fact, celebrate, revel in atrocious acts of degradation and murder, flaunting in the most obscene way not only the horror of their acts but also the impunity with which they committed them. They committed their monstrous acts to paper and consigned that paper to the public mails, secure in their belief that the larger society they belonged to would condone their actions, and that larger American society proved them right. If you want to make excuses for the American mobs, you must evaluate those excuses against the ones available for the current Afghan mob. And here, I can only say that nobody made Americans into pawns in a great power game; the American mobs who tortured and murdered their African American neighbours and then recorded and reveled in their brutality did not set out on journeys with their families under the malevolent eyes of drones remotely operated by people all too willing to turn their cars into infernos with hellfire missiles. No outsiders subjected White Americans to three decades of conflict and its accompanying ruin and dire poverty. If you want to make excuses, you will find more available for the mob from Afghanistan than for the mobs from parts of the United States.
— John Spragge · Apr 14, 03:40 AM · #
What John (so eloquently) said. Thrice.
— M · Apr 14, 07:50 AM · #
It’s so affirming to know that one can always find excuses for inexcusable behavior. Thanks, Spragge.
After 9/11 we were supposed to ask, “Why do they hate us?” And now we know the slaves should have been asking, “Why do they hang us?”
If you’re going to discuss the degree to which some people can be excused for inexcusable violence, there is certainly no reason we can’t discuss the degree to which some groups are moral monsters.
But, what the hell, Spragge, it’s just an academic exercise for you. No matter the monstrosity of the morality, you won’t fight the war to end it. If you had been an American during the 1800s, you wouldn’t have fought the war to end slavery, either.
— jd · Apr 14, 11:56 AM · #
Conservatives tend to get confused when they throw around the term “moral relativism”. Human beings aren’t really capable of being relativists. The real question to ask left-liberals is why won’t you stand up for yourself? How can you not take sides on behalf of the civilization that invented the liberalism you purport to espouse? How can you believe that American imperialism caused Islamic terrorism, when the latter predates the Holy Roman Empire, in violation of the laws of causality found everywhere outside Phillip K. Dick short stories?
Oddly enough, the answer may be found in the writings of Slavoj Zizek. To quote:
“The politically correct version enacts a weird reversal of racist hatred of Otherness — it stages a kind of mockingly Hegelian negation/sublation of openly racist dismissal and hatred of the Other, of the perception of the Other as the Enemy which poses a threat to our way of life. In the PC vision, the Other’s violence against us, deplorable and cruel as it may be, is always a reaction against the “original sin” of our (white man’s imperialist, colonialist, cetc.) rejection and oppression of Otherness. We, white men, are responsible and guilty, the Other just reacts as a victim; we are to be condemned, the Other is to be understood; ours is a domain of morals (moral condemnation), whilst that of others involves sociology (social explanation). It is, of course, easy to discern how, beneath the mask of extreme self-humiliation and self-blame, such a stance of true ethical masochism repeats racism in its very form: although negative, the proverbial “white man’s burden” is still here — we, white men, are the subjects of History, whilst others ultimately react to our (mis)deeds. In other words, it is as if the true message of PC moralistic self-blame is: if we can no longer be the model of democracy and civilization for the rest of the world, we can at least be the model of Evil.”
Professor Zizek has clearly met Mr. Sessions – or someone enough like him to make no difference.
— Pithlord · Apr 14, 04:10 PM · #
Ah yes, more right wing psycho babble where pointing out anything that makes white people look bad is reverse racist. Whatever the hell that means. Isn’t racism just racism? Aren’t you buying into PC nonsense by granting it a separate name altogether?
— Console · Apr 14, 04:59 PM · #
Zizek’s a communist Lacanian, so while “psychobabble” might be fair “right wing” would hurt his feelings.
— Pithlord · Apr 14, 05:57 PM · #
Pithlord,
Thanks for stopping by — I tend to think Zizek is crazy myself, but I must admit that is an interesting quote.
John,
One last time, although like jd, I’m not sure why I bother. Here are the points I was trying to make:
1) Contra Prager, I don’t think Islamic terror is unique when looked at from a historical perspective but I do think it is one of the most vicious ideologies today driving Islamic men and women to commit horrors that we all had hoped might have been over with the Fall of the Berlin Wall;
2) Unlike Sessions (and apparently you), I don’t think the political context of the Middle-East helps much in understanding Islamic radicals;
3) Instead I actually think they are motivated by their ideology/understanding of Islam which tells them among other things to throw out or kill all the infidels in the Middle-East and eventually take over the world for Islam (through force or through stealth, e.g. immigration and subversion).
4) In the past, in America, there were evil men and women who were racists and thought enslaved Africans deserved to remain slaves all their lives. As a result of this racism, at times these men and women committed evil deeds, including mob violence against innocent African-Americans (e.g. Emmitt Till). Lucky for all of us, after the Civil War their racist ideology didn’t hold much appeal to most Americans outside of the South and didn’t inspire a world-wide movement of terror. But they are their fellow travelers in the North did damage enough, especially if you were African-American, up through the 60s.
5) Meanwhile, also in America, there were at times mobs who committed lynchings against African-Americans who for you all or I know were guilty of crimes. The first picture I pull up from your postcard link is inscribed with the words “Killer of Jack Daw Aug 3, 1935 vengence in Siskiyou County.” Now maybe poor Clyde Johnson is as innocent as Emmitt Till — again, you and I have no way of knowing. So all we can say for sure is that mob violence is to be condemned, although not justice for those who commit crimes.
6) I’m glad we in America are now civilized enough to expect the state to administer justice for the people. If we were really running an empire, we’d bring civilization to the Afghans, Iraqis, and others as necessary. I’ll close with one of my favorite stories from the British Empire concerning Sir Charles Napier, the British commander in India in the early nineteenth century. Told that immolating widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands was a cherished local custom, Napier said “Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
— Fake Herzog · Apr 14, 07:10 PM · #
Pithlord:
Conservatives tend to get confused when they throw around the term “moral relativism”. Human beings aren’t really capable of being relativists.
1. Is being confused by relativism a conservative thing? Can liberals be confused by moral relativism? Or are they immune to the confusion, just like they’re immune to hypocrisy?
2. Care to explain how humans aren’t really capable of being relativists?
— jd · Apr 14, 09:04 PM · #
You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.
I hadn’t heard that story before. I like it.
— The Reticulator · Apr 14, 09:31 PM · #
Is being confused by relativism a conservative thing? Can liberals be confused by moral relativism? Or are they immune to the confusion, just like they’re immune to hypocrisy?
In my experience, leftwingers and libertarians are the strictest moral absolutists. Especially libertarians and athiest leftwingers. Conservatives, especially those that are somewhat religious, sometimes make good relativists, even though they think they are against moral relativism. Some of them ought to pay more attention to what the founder of their religion taught.
As for liberals, well they all went extinct in the late 1980s, so there is little point in talking about them except as a historical curiosity.
— The Reticulator · Apr 14, 09:48 PM · #
Humans can’t help but make moral judgments. When you make a moral judgment, you necessarily assert that the opposite judgment is wrong. So human beings can’t be moral relativists. A few think they are (I suppose mostly liberals), but they’re wrong.
Some conservatives worry that moral relativism is a serious problem, which will undermine our way of life. This is confused, because humans can’t be moral relativists. It would be equally confused to think moral relativism is great because it will lead to a world of tolerance and equality.
I’m not unsympathetic to conservative worries about threats to our way of life. Such threats exist. But moral relativism isn’t one of them.
(To some extent, I agree with the Reticulator that belief in the Absolute “relativizes” everything else, including human undertsandings of right and wrong. Moral judgments, like scientific truth, can be relative in the sense that they are not of ultimate importance, but you can’t help but make them, and thereby deny their opposites. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. But whatever your judgment might be, it ain’t the Judgment.)
— Pithlord · Apr 14, 11:01 PM · #
As for Zizek, he’s essentially a stand up comedian for people who spent too long in grad school. Like any decent stand up, he notices a lot. It’s a bit terrifying to realize that there are people who take him seriously, but they seem unlikely to be the Lenins and Trotskys of the twenty-first century, so I typically worry about other things.
— Pithlord · Apr 14, 11:06 PM · #
In particular, jd, I think your complaint could be better rephrased, “There isn’t enough pro-Western Civilization team spirit in Western Civilization.” Maybe there was too much such spirit in the nineteenth century, but there isn’t enough now.
That’s a debateable proposition. You might think that pro-Western Civilization team spirit has it’s good points and it’s bad points, and more of it may or may not be good for what ails us. But it has nothing to do with moral relativism. The judgment that more pro-Western Civ team spirit would be bad is just as absolute as the judgment that it would be good.
To me, Western Civ seems like somthing too big to be either for or against. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to decide what you think about bombing Libya or remain in Iraq past 2011 based on whether you think Western Civ is really, really good or mostly good, or somewhat good, or evil and depraved. I could be wrong though. How would things be better if we were all louder in our support for Western Civilization?
— Pithlord · Apr 14, 11:37 PM · #
When you make a moral judgment, you necessarily assert that the opposite judgment is wrong. So human beings can’t be moral relativists.
This second sentence seems to me a non sequitur to the first.
How about replacing it with this statement: “Human beings can’t be nihilists.”
I realize there is more than one usage of the term nihilism. I don’t mean the stupid one that asserts nihilism to be opposition to whatever it is that I like.
— The Reticulator · Apr 15, 02:44 AM · #
Well, what do you mean by moral relativism?
— Pithlord · Apr 15, 04:21 AM · #
Jones did a despicable, damnable thing, but however wicked it may have been, it justifies neither Islamic violence nor the tossing aside of his legal rights in this country.
The burning of the Koran should be safe, legal, and rare. The building of victory mosques near the sites of attacks on the U.S. should be safe, legal, and rarer still.
— The Reticulator · Apr 15, 04:26 AM · #
Well, what do you mean by moral relativism?
Shades of gray, depends on the situation
— The Reticulator · Apr 15, 04:32 AM · #
Pithlord:
I’m not unsympathetic to conservative worries about threats to our way of life. Such threats exist. But moral relativism isn’t one of them.
That’s just plain wrong. If we don’t have and keep high standards of right and wrong it all goes away.
We have had high standards. Many times we have lived up to them. At other times we have failed miserably at keeping them. But you can’t deny that we have had them. By “us” I think I’m agreeing with you in that it has been Western Civilization that has these high standards. I think the United States has been singular in its economic freedom. Add economic freedom to the moral foundation of Western Civilization and you get the most prosperous and moral nation that has ever existed.
And I don’t see that as team spirit. I think it’s just an undeniable fact based on any measure you can think of. I don’t feel like a cheerleader. In fact, my basic feeling about the US is that it’s the worst country possible—except for all the rest.
— jd · Apr 15, 12:33 PM · #
reticulator:
As for liberals, well they all went extinct in the late 1980s, so there is little point in talking about them except as a historical curiosity.
Can you explain what you mean by that? ‘cuz someone’s pushing against us in this country and I don’t remember the mass extinction.
— jd · Apr 15, 12:38 PM · #
jd,
High moral standards could either mean, “Moral standards difficult to comply with” or “Moral standards which are in fact right.” If it’s the former, then I’m not sure (a) we always want higher moral standards or (b) Western civilization has the highest moral standards. I’d think of traditional monkish ascetic ideals as pretty high standards on this basis. I’m not sure the standards (leaving aside the practice) were that different between Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity and various Eastern religions. Protestantism never had much truck with such things, but required higher standards of its lay people.
Stereotypically blue America has lower standards in this sense on some things than red America, but is way more anxious about what it eats, how it refers to ethnic minorities and how it deals with its garbage. From your perspective, these probably aren’t genuinely moral issues, but they are sometimes a pain to comply with.
Of course, some Islamist radicals, including possibly the most dangerous and fanatical ones, have high moral standards — in that sense. Some of them live ascetic lifestyles and take physical risks. It doesn’t stop them from being evil bastards.
If by “higher moral standards” you mean moral standards which are correct, then of course we want higher moral standards. But that doesn’t really help us figure out what those are. Of course, our view as to what are the correct moral standards is going to be a product of the civilization and historical moment we live in. Religious freedom is a value that only arose even in Western Civilization in the eighteenth century. With respect to religious freedom, it may have been violated in the West since 1750, but no one anywhere else even thought it was valuable.
Not killing innocent people is a bit longer-standing and more universal than that, but Western Civilization has been bigger on the value of the individual life than anyone else. I’d be hard pressed to think of another civilization that valued due process the way the West came to. Again, of course, there are plenty of examples of Western violations of those values, and they were hardly extended to all people when they were first announced, but that’s a different question.
Religious freedom and due process are clearly local values, in the sense that most human cultures most of the time haven’t valued them much if at all. (Maybe you could say the same of security of property and freedom of contract (economic freedom), but I’m less sure of that — was the Abbasid Caliphate more or less economically free than contemporary Icelaand? Does that comparison make sense?)
None of this has much to do with moral relativism. Someone could say, “Religious freedom is important to me because it is fundamental to who we are as Americans” — which sounds pretty relativist. Or they could say, “Religious freedom is a universal truth which was only discovered in the late eighteenth century by guys with wigs, just like similar guys discovered that the force of gravity between two objects is inversely related to the square of the distance between them” — which sounds more universalist. Either way, though, if you say people are entitled to religious freedom, you deny that they are entitled to coerce other people relgiously, and you are no more or less relativist than the people who disagree with you.
— Pithlord · Apr 15, 06:42 PM · #
On “team spirit”, I wouldn’t see that as the same thing as cheerleading. If I’m a loyal member of my team, that doesn’t mean I think my team is the best. In fact, I may know that we are getting our ass kicked all the time, we can’t skate worth a damn and we really could use a new goal tender (I’m Canadian, so I tend to hockey metaphors – feel free to substitute one of your local pastimes.)
So too, patriotism doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) depend on thinking your country is great. Ask yourself this. Suppose Obama has two terms and is followed by some even more socialistic successor, and the US ends up in 2020 with policies inferior in every way (from your perspective) to those of the United Kingdom. You’d still be an American patriot, not a British one. Patriotism is (or ought to be) about love of one’s own, not about the content of public policy.
— Pithlord · Apr 15, 06:52 PM · #
As for Pastor Jones, I would say he did a foolish thing, but I have trouble seeing how it could be wrong, morally or legally. The rioters in Afghanistan clearly committed murder.
If Sessions points out this murder has social and historical antecedents, then he’s not wrong. But the same is true of every murder.And of course, it is true that Jones came from a particular social-historical situation as well.
If Sessions wants to be coolly analytical about the mob in Afghanistan, he should do the same with Jones. If he eschews sociology for moral condemnation for Jones, he must do the same for the mob. Otherwise, some of us around here are moral agents and others are vectors of social analysis, and Zizek has your number.
— Pithlord · Apr 15, 08:42 PM · #
pithlord, you have obviously thought long and hard about moral relativism. I, on the other hand, quit thinking about it when I became a Christian. (What I mean is, I can’t think and write about it as well as you.) At that point, I realized what my standards had to be, and that I will never meet them. Since then, in retrospect, I can see that I have “improved” by narrowing the gap between my actions and my beliefs. I wasn’t really aware of it happening, but I can see that it has.
I can’t really argue with any of the points you have made (some of them I’m just not capable). However, you wrote:
I would just simply say that, in the broadest terms, we already know what those are. Or, to put it another way, if we have to figure out what they are then they will be flawed.
The 10 commandments were written in stone. Nothing can change them. Our constitution was written on parchment; we should behave as if it was written in stone, until we’re able to change it by amendment. I think moral relativism just shrugs at those traditions and walks away. I think liberals don’t have the humility to submit to a law that’s bigger than humanity. It’s too easy therefore, to see the Constitution as dated.
Moral relativism also substitutes new standards. I would argue (along with Allan Bloom) that the virtue of tolerance has been elevated way beyond the damage point. It has unleashed hell.
— jd · Apr 15, 10:02 PM · #
Like most people here, I don’t believe Islamists hold any special monopoly on depravity. Most people here accept the basis of David Sessions’s argument. I’ll repeat what I have said before, here and in other contexts: Muslims and Islamists have no monopoly on depraved behaviour or religious repression. My example of a “Western” culture celebrating extreme violence, namely the prevalence and celebration of lynching, makes a good example in this respect, because the phenomenon of lynching in the American South and elsewhere during the last century did most emphatically not arise out of any conviction that the justice system failed. As even the most cursory examination of the local, national and international political and ideological context of the culture of lynching makes clear, both the lynchings themselves and the obscene celebrations of the impunity the perpetrators enjoyed took place in the context of the white supremacist movement. This movement accounted for a far greater number of murders than any Islamist organization, and far more severe religious and cultural intolerance than anything countenanced by Islam.
— John Spragge · Apr 15, 10:09 PM · #
I think we all also agree that the rioters in Afghanistan committed murder. However, I think many poster here have failed to understand the full extent of the offensive and dangerous nature of Terry Jones’s action in burning a Q’ran.
It makes sense to start with the obvious: the offense Terry Jones committed did not consist of arson; it consisted of expressing the clearest form of disrespect and hatred he could muster for Muslims. And he did that in a context where American troops now occupy two Muslim-majority countries, and where their military operations inevitably lead to the deaths of civilians. This context of an expression of contempt for Muslims and power over a Muslim population makes his actions toxic. History clearly shows that the combination of power, including the ability or authorization to use lethal force in an occupying role, and contempt adds up to a dangerous combination, one which has in the past led to atrocious results. American military personnel stationed in Florida work at analyzing images from predator drones in Afghanistan. If they make mistakes, ordinary Afghan men women and children can find themselves under attack by hellfire missiles. Exposing people with these responsibilities to a barrage of propaganda that depicts Muslims as worthy of contempt can affect their judgments. It makes sense that the people of Afghanistan would evaluate what Terry Jones did as not only despicable but threatening. What they did about it, of course, did not make moral sense. But to hold Mr. Jones innocent in all of this ignores some very hard historical lessons.
— John Spragge · Apr 15, 11:19 PM · #
Like most people here, I don’t believe Islamists hold any special monopoly on depravity. Most people here accept the basis of David Sessions’s argument.
Nah.
This movement accounted for a far greater number of murders than any Islamist organization, and far more severe religious and cultural intolerance than anything countenanced by Islam.
You got some numbers to back that up?
— jd · Apr 15, 11:44 PM · #
Number of murders attributable with the white supremacist movement late 19th through 20th century:
Congo Free State (Colonialism): 5-8 million murders.
Tasmanian Aborigines: ~3 thousand murders in the course of a complete genocide
Lynching: 3500 murders 1882-1968
Islamist murders: ~3000 at 9/11
possibly as many as 100000 by the Taliban
Islamist movement: possibly as many as 100000-200000 murders,
white supremacy movement 1860 – 1970: 5-8 million murders
— John Spragge · Apr 16, 12:49 AM · #
Can you explain what you mean by that? ‘cuz someone’s pushing against us in this country and I don’t remember the mass extinction.
They became leftwing fascists about the time of the Bork and Thomas hearings. They had some tendencies before that. In the very early 80s I started a file of news clippings that I labeled “liberal intolerance.” It was one of my bigger files. But they went over to the dark side completely with the Bork hearings, and confirmed it during the Clintons’ obstructions of justice. All sense of fair play was gone. From then on it has been just a question of wielding power, and any means to that end. In the early 80s I still called them liberal, because they still could have chosen to listen to their better angels. I refuse to call them liberals now that they are anything but. You will still find some fine liberal sentiments expressed by them, but only as a bludgeon to beat up their opponents. They never apply those liberal sentiments to themselves.
During the Bush years the other side did much the same, but you had maybe 5-10 percent that would not sacrifice their intellectual and moral integrity for their own side’s partisan gain. That 5-10 percent is a huge difference.
— The Reticulator · Apr 16, 01:48 AM · #
Why is expressing contempt for Islam worse than expressing contempt for Christianity or Buddhism? Jones believes Muhammad was a false prophet. Are we supposed to ban Dante and Shakespeare? Repeal the First Amendment because of King Leopold?
I tend to agree that it is impolite to be gratuitously offensive to other people’s religious beliefs. But if some anarchists burned the US flag and a roving gang of Tea Partiers set fire to the ACLU office in Topeka, I wouldn’t condemn the anarchists.
Of course, we know that wouldn’t really happen – for all the talk of Christianists and the violent right.
— Pithlord · Apr 16, 02:04 PM · #
It makes sense that the people of Afghanistan would evaluate what Terry Jones did as … threatening.
No, it doesn’t.
— The Reticulator · Apr 16, 04:57 PM · #
I don’t think they evaluated it as threatening. They evaluated it as blasphemous.
— Pithlord · Apr 17, 12:55 AM · #
It doesn’t matter how any individual Afghan evaluated Terry Jones’s actions. Strictly speaking, mobs do not really “evaluate” anything; they act on mass emotions, which makes them highly irrational phenomenon. The fact remains that when you combine a situation in Afghanistan, where American analysts looking at video and deciding whether or not to fire missiles into Afghan vehicles, with what Terry Jones did, encouraging Americans to have contempt for Islam and Muslims, you produce an objectively dangerous situation.
By now you may have noticed the incompatibility between pure freedom of speech on one hand, and war on the other. We talk about peace and freedom in a single phrase for a reason. When American analysts sit in dark rooms and puzzle over video images and make decisions that may well send, and in fact have sent, hellfire missile crashing into cars with Afghan women and children inevitably compromises Terry Jones’s claim to freedom of expression. The degree of personal freedom you can claim varies inversely with the amount of violence you, as an individual or as part of a society, use.
— John Spragge · Apr 17, 05:25 PM · #
John,
Sectarian mobs have been killing people because of perceived blasphemy for a lot longer than the US has been around. It’s true that if there were no UN mission, then these particular victims would not have been available. But similar things are happening all over Africa in places where the isolationist preference for letting post-colonial nightmares alone has prevailed.
— Pithlord · Apr 17, 09:39 PM · #
Also, you are wrong about a link between peace (in the sense of absence of even colonial wars) and freedom. Victorian England was the freest society the world had yet seen and was constantly involved in colonial wars. The legal limits to what can be said in the US are even fewer, and it has been essentially perpetually at war since 1941.
— Pithlord · Apr 17, 09:44 PM · #
Most of us know about the behaviour of sectarian mobs and religious terrorism, from the IRA to the Jemaah Islamiyah. I do not for a second mean to suggest that the mob which stormed the gates of the UN compound consciously reasoned through the threat Terry Jones’s behaviour posed to them, still less that their murderous rampage made any kind of sense. I have a completely different point to make: Terry Jones’s action did indeed pose a threat. We cannot know what the members of the mob thought; we know that as a mob, they didn’t think period. But whatever the perceptions of the mob, objectively the expression of contempt for a people, a culture, a faith in the present circumstances does endanger the people who find themselves on the wrong side of that toxic combination of guns and contempt.
As for matters of peace, freedom, and history, I will leave you with a snippet from “George Orwell”, who had significant experience with these matters: “However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police. The Empire was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its vast extent, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state.”
— John Spragge · Apr 18, 03:04 AM · #
This means we had better not express any more contempt for the religious right on this blog, or there is going to be a murderous rampage. So let’s all remember to denounce people who say things that the RR might consider blasphemous. Those American Scene bloggers are guilty of inciting murder.
— The Reticulator · Apr 18, 12:08 PM · #
The Empire was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its vast extent, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state.”
Spragge, you never fail to miss the obvious: did you ever stop to think that it was because those few men were armed that there was peace?
By the way, your quote is commonly known as the “appeal to authority” fallacy.
I’m feeling a “murderous rampage” coming on and so are all my friends. First up, tedious Torontonians. I’m pretty sure Calgary would be happy to send a few angry white racists to help in any plundering of Toronto.
— jd · Apr 18, 01:00 PM · #
Given that some of the people who posted declined to address my point, I honestly don’t see why they bothered to respond to what I wrote at all. I don’t flatter myself that nobody can find flaws in what I write, but if you don’t look for flaws, or indeed address the argument at all, why waste time typing?
— John Spragge · Apr 19, 01:06 AM · #
“Terry Jones’ action did indeed pose a threat.” How do you know this, Mr. Spragge. Seems like his actions provided a pretext or an excuse, not a threat, but I am speculating as you are.
If Mr. Jones’ actions are the type of threat that will trigger mass murder, then we better prepare for a lot more of these types of murders, regardless of the location of our troops or of our foreign policy.
I agree with your general points about American own terrible history, though that discussion is not terribly relvant here. We can talk about man’s capacity for and history of violence and oppression all day. And the Afghans’ situation may make them more likely commitment these murders, no doubt. A byproduct of war, in part.
But: “The degree of personal freedom you can claim varies inversely with the amount of violence you, as an individual or as part of a society, use.” Wha? Don’t tell that to the Boers or the Indians.
The British Empire example doesn’t work. When pressed, the British used maximum, brutal and cruel force. Also, their empire exisiting in a brief but unique time period when technological, political and cultural developments put Europe in a position to dominate the undeveloped world with relative ease.
Please name an example of what you are talking about. Most famous relavitely free societies have engaged in constant (and often imperialistic) warfare – ancient Greeks (always at war), France before and after the revolution (always at war), American (always at war). People used to think that the Mayans were some ideal peaceful society because the ruins of their cities had no walls, but now we know the opposite is true. I am not saying being at war is desireble or proof of freedom – or that there is no tension with war and freedom. But historically a state that is not good at war making doesn’t last long – the state gets absorbed into something else. Maybe small, isolated tribal pockets work – but modern states? What is an example?
By the way, if Jones committed a crime of insightment as you suggest, I guess Van Gogh committed a far worse one…. And as we know about the “riots” over the cartoons – a lot of those were organized and intentionally inflamed for political reasons as authoritarians (aspiring or actual) of various types have done through out history. If we go down the “insightment” crime path, there will be a lot of illegal speech. And it won’t stop when we leave Afghanistan, though I wish it would
— JC38 · Apr 19, 11:14 PM · #
opps. Insight = incite. I don’t think anyone is accusing Jones have any insights.
— JC38 · Apr 19, 11:18 PM · #
If you encourage people to have contempt for a group of other people they have the power to injure or kill, you threaten the latter group. American pilots and soldiers have the task of examining footage of people in Afghanistan and determining which of these people pose an insurgent threat. Contempt for Afghans, their customs, culture and religion, affects the way these people do their jobs. We know that because at least one published report (which I linked above) indicates that American forces attacked a group of Afghan families because the American analysts interpreted the families innocently getting out of their cars to pray as hostile.
Why would American analysts do that? They wouldn’t interpret people going to a church as hostile. If you interpret Muslims unrolling prayer mats as evidence of terrorism and not, say Catholics going to Mass as evidence of IRA activity, then it makes sense to conclude that anti-Muslim bigotry has distorted your thinking. And if the decisions arising out of your perception end with hellfire missiles slaughtering innocent men women and children, then Muslims can reasonably conclude that this kind of bigotry poses a direct threat to them.
A number of posters have attempted to answer this logic with various tangents: for example, the observation that Terry Jones has constitutional free speech guarantees. He does indeed. But the American constitution, and the constitutions and traditions of other democracies, do not prevent other people from pointing out how offensive, irresponsible and dangerous we consider such speech. It does not stop us from pointing the difference between rioting in response to a religious disagreement, or even a perceived expression of disrespect, and rioting in response to an expression of bigotry.
— John Spragge · Apr 20, 10:35 AM · #