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Saturday, February 25, 2006

Sent to Jim Geraghty (TKS) in response to the piece linked at his name:

I agree that government and newspaper response to the cartoons is awful. But conservatives and libertarians are supposed to know better than to think they're where the action is. From the secret distribution of books and pamphlets to internet chatter to faxes to mobile phone communication, the people talk, as individuals. Whether it's Muslim radicals in Paris, bloggers in America or democracy activists in China, people are talking and governments that try to stop them are at their wit's end while newspapers and media that try to ignore their voices are being tuned out.

When a Senator talks, does anyone care? When the President talks, do all the networks even always cover it? When the average citizen walks buy a newspaper stand, does he drag out a quarter? The reason the comics and sports aren't above the fold on the front page is that if people could read them for free, they wouldn't buy the paper.

While we lament the State Department's tendency to send diplomats to talk to other diplomats, those of us who grew up in an earlier framework think the same way. We think the governments set the rule, the media sets the tone, that concentrated power is of the essence. In reality, it's just easier to see - and by design, lest people consider alternatives. But the alternatives are always there. Ask the Communists about the masses that swarmed to save them when the Soviet government crumbled. Ask the Taliban about the millions who organized mass movements to maintain their chains.

The great thing about the cartoon wars is they have caused individuals to come out of the cracks, google for images to find out what the fuss is about and discover that the newspapers and government alike are full of .... Is this not what conservatives and libertarians want?

I know that if you read the papers or listen to the important people and the mobs shouting the loudest, things sound awful. But they're caught in a cycle where government and the mob think they're important because the newspapers cover them and newspapers think they're important because that's what they've chosen to cover. But it's paper tigers talking to paper tigers while people the world over go to work, do their jobs, take care of their families and do their best to stay out of it - to make it not matter.

The story of the next century will be how the Chinese joined the Soviets in their inability to have enough freedom for growth without setting the stage for their own overthrow. Will be about Muslims joining Jews and Christians in relative secularism as overreaching mullahs make it more painful to go along with their newest whip up the masses foolishness than to ignore them. Will be about those governments that seized on terrorism as a tool for increasing power falling democratically or by force as the case may be.

The thing about totalitarianism of any stripe is that it's easier to go along with than fight it up to a certain point. And that gives totalitarian systems and ideologies the appearance of having the power and the staying power to outlast champions of individual liberty and freedom. But totalitarians want total control. This always leads to overreach - and self-destruction. Every totalitarianism ever to challenge us has fallen apart. This one will too. So before you prepare for the world's surrender to Islam and America's failure to stand tall, go read the newspaper op-eds from the 70s about how rough it's going to be for us in the future if we don't cooperate with the communists now.

This struggle will be won.

posted by gbarto at 10:07 AM

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Capitulez à l'enfâme!

-Voltaire, as quoted by the Boston Globe

(Tolerance is the ultimate Enlightenment value? Not when I took 18th c. studies.)

posted by gbarto at 12:56 PM

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

So in London a computer security firm handed out free CDs with a Valentine's Day promotion to see how many people would open them. Bruce Schneier is appalled, wondering where people would get the idea you could pop in a free CD without thinking twice about potential dangers.

I found out about this after firing up AOL. Yup, my very first time using AOL, thirteen years ago, I popped a 3 1/2" disk in the floppy drive - a free disk they had out front at the college bookstore. Five minutes later, I typed in a credit card number and the computer automatically dialed the phone and connected with a computer in Virginia. Where do people come up with this stuff.

Tonight, I'm looking at this stuff with my Mozilla web browser. I downloaded and installed it because some guy whose site I like said it was all the rage. I wonder where people come up with this stuff.

The bottom line, in this day and age, is that there's a fine line between being secure and being paralyzed. I gave blogger the password for the server space TurkeyBlog is hosted in too. After my fifth post, I'd had it with re-entering my information all the time.

I've gotten burned a few times, but the only time I really got clobbered was when I used a disk in the college computer lab and brought it home.

* * *

Where I work, we have a computer for clients to use in conjunction their education programs. We can't run most of the programs because the regional IT guy has the computer locked for safety and we can't upgrade QuickTime. We also can't connect a printer. Which is great: when we do corporate testing, we have to email the results to another computer to print them.

Which is also idiotic.

Those who say that the biggest job for IT is to take it out of our hands and spend extra resources to protect us from ourselves are, I think, probably right. Because in our office, which has seemingly been virus-free quite a while, computer security is a hassle that prevents us from doing our jobs, rather than something that creates an environment in which we can get our work done effectively. Just like the cop is only supposed to arrest criminals, not stop you for going seven over when you're late for work...

Just a few thoughts.

posted by gbarto at 10:32 PM

Yeah, but...

Instapundit notes Eric Raymond writing about memetic warfare, American thoughts on ideas, etc:

By contrast, ideological and memetic warfare has been a favored tactic for all of America’s three great adversaries of the last hundred years — Nazis, Communists, and Islamists.

What I don't understand is it sounds like he's critiquing us and warning about the superior sophistication of our enemies. So... where are the Nazis and Communists?

If Al Qaeda is fighting the same sophisticated war fought by the Nazis and the Communists, well, it spells trouble, true enough, but we also know how this one ends.

posted by gbarto at 5:13 PM

Monday, February 20, 2006

This comment by Tony Guitar over at Protein Wisdom doesn't leave much out.

Bottom line: Why are Muslims sanguine about the slaughter of Nigerian Christians, and so many others, in their name, yet incensed about a few cartoons?

They’re outraged because it is part of the Islamic jihadist culture to be outraged. You don’t really need a reason. You just need an excuse. Wandering around, destroying property, murdering children, firing guns into the air and feigning outrage over the slightest perceived insult is to a jihadist what tailgating is to a Steeler’s fan.

As we noted, yesterday, on a more hopeful note, the vast majority of Muslims vote against this by their non-participation in activity supposedly necessary to getting into Paradise. But their failure to take their religion back is going to have strong earthly consequences for their faith, which will justly face much scorn if its own adherents won't stand strong on its behalf.

posted by gbarto at 1:17 PM

Sunday, February 19, 2006

To summarize the post below:

"It's like the West has already won."

Basra, February 19, 2006: Despite the stinging rebuke to God's will presented by the American army's presence in Iraq, tens of millions of Iraqis today failed to take up arms against the infidel army.

A street vendor, speaking confidentially, said he'd love to die in a blaze of glory for Allah and spend an eternity in Paradise in the company of houris, but that at the moment his top priority was selling two more bushels of fruit so he could buy a better cell phone.

Among those who failed to die for Allah today were Osama bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri. "It's a scandal," a local imam told me, "though there's no higher calling than dying in the smiting of infidels, our greatest leaders live in hiding even as this plague spreads across the Caliphate." Later in the conversation, the imam confessed that he, too, had failed to die in the glorious smiting of infidels.

More cynical observers said local Muslim leaders seemed to be "all talk and no action," but lamented especially that while millions of their fellow Muslims claimed to be true believers, their actions indicated that an infidel presence in their land was just fine with them:

"It's like the West has already won," said a barber, speaking off the record, "they come into our land, they eject our rulers, they take over our infrastructure and we act as though having electricity is more important than serving Allah's will." When pressed to elaborate, he said, "Look buddy, I got bills to pay, if you want a haircut have a chair and we talk."

posted by gbarto at 1:10 PM

But what is truth?

When I walk down the street and see an attractive woman, I do not rip out my eyes, lest an impure thought occur.

When Jimmy Swaggart tearfully confessed his sins, he did not castrate himself after.

When Jewish children go a little crazy, the likelihood of their being stoned is exceptionally small.

It was once observed (maybe by Spinoza?) that though we claim to be believers, we are not. We do not live our lives exactly according to faith. Rather, the most devout - in theory - turn around and find ways to live life in relative harmony with a world that does not believe as they do. In so doing, we choose, it would seem, eternal damnation and the loss of thousands, millions, of fellow souls, in an effort to fit in.

Yet the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament call upon us to stone intemperate youth. And in the New Testament, Christ Himself says "If thine eye offend thee..."

What's up? In a nutshell, I think there is something in the Old and New Testaments, an element of humor and understanding, that allows us to find hyperbole and appreciate the truth it exposes, or to see a rule for the survival of an exceptional tribe whose relevance was then. Certainly, it is possible to see the Epistles as letters to particular churches at particular times - they were just that.

In the Judeo-Christian world - in the West - we have a place for those whose belief in the absolute literalness of the Bible goes from theory to full-time practice: the asylum and the prison, depending on the damage done.

In the Islamic world - they think - they have a place for those whose belief in the absolute literalness of the Koran goes from theory to full-time practice: leadership.

But this is poppycock, poppycock of the same variety that made Louis IX of France a saint and Hitler the father over his people. The problem with Islam, in this moment, is not Islam, per se, but that so many of its followers live in backward societies, tribal nations that can pull a trigger but could never on their own devise a gun.

What happened in Nigeria is the latest outrage from what is ostensibly the religion of peace. But Islam does not mean "peace," it means "submission."

In theory, Islam represents submission to the will of God. In practice, it is submission to those totalitarians who claim its mantle.

In theory, Christianity calls for the giving of one's life to God's purpose. In practice, it was - and in some cases remains - the giving of one's life to the purposes of another mortal who purports to speak for God.

What we see in the cartoon wars, in the massacre in Nigeria, in the suicide bombings all over the place, is not submission to the will of Allah, the one true God. Rather, it is submission to a vision of the Nietzchean will-to-power in which powerless, backward rubes for one brief moment get to be God-on-earth, settling matters of truth and justice and delivering their own law. Our word for this is blasphemy. But if we all on passing find the Maker we conceived of as creating our world, a fair share of Muslims will not be getting their 72 virgins, as promised, but hellfire for the crime of wearing Allah's mantle.

Mohammed, some historical traditions indicate, had a much better sense of humor about himself than many of his followers. Let's hope they catch up.

In the meantime, though, it is right that the West be on the offensive. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we are making it clear that those who claim to be on the side of Allah are, mysteriously, on the losing side. Yes they've got their bodycounts, but people keep eating and sleeping and living and voting and acting as though there's a higher purpose than detonating the enemy invaders. 99%+ of Iraqis have demonstrated by their failure to take up arms against us that either they are not true Muslims fighting for Allah or that there is more than one understanding of what Allah wants and how to honor that as a Muslim. As I say, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Iraq reject the views of AQ, of the insurgents, of the whole crowd that say this is part of the ultimate battle. Not according to polls, not according to surveys, but according to their very actions, actions which tell us that they are not convinced that going out and dying and collecting their 72 virgins is where it's at.

In Nigeria, and in the cartoon wars, too, there is a suspicious failure to actually risk or give over one's life for these beliefs. When the shops are closed and you've got some free time, you might go to a protest or massacre a few Christians. But if the rent's due, a lot of Muslims who believe in the omnipotence of Allah become awfully worried about taking care of themselves rather than doing what Allah wants with the knowledge He'll take care of them. Or so it would seem.

In Malcom Gladwell's Blink, he talks about speed-dating and how its results were analyzed by an economist and - if I recall correctly - a psychologist. The subjects were given questionnaires about what they looked for in a person. They got the same questionnaire after meeting someone they liked. Asked about the discrepancy, the economist sagely noted that if you truly want to know where people stand you have to look at what they do, not what they say.

To listen to the loudest voices speaking for Islam, you'd think we were in deep doodoo. But while attitudes are not unimportant, in the end, it is actions that count. And in the end, the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject the totalitarian visions of the Islamonutters. When passions are high and risks are minimal, the hooligans come out in force. But when fire is returned - as we saw even in France, ultimately - conviction turns quickly to cowardice or moderation - interpret it as you wish.

Which makes the answer to the Nigeria massacre, events in Iraq, etc. very obvious in theory, if tricky in practice: Work to create circumstances where Muslims must choose, where they cannot both live out normal lives and act out extreme views. The overwhelming majority, like the overwhelming majority of Christians and Jews, will find their way to an expression and understanding of faith that keeps bloodshed at a minimum. That starts, unfortunately, with forcing the most fervent into confrontations - necessarily violent - in which they must choose between their lives in this world and their peculiar convictions about what the next one holds. Which is why we're right to act in Afghanistan and Iraq. And why this will be won, but a long ways down the road.

posted by gbarto at 12:23 PM