Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Constant Reader who wrote (39006)	8/16/2005 2:04:39 PM
From: mph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

cia.gov Now I know, too:-)

To: Constant Reader who wrote (39006)	8/17/2005 1:19:32 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

I see where you are coming from, but I think you're overly pessimistic about the prospects for a more peaceful Islamic world or even the progress in Iraq. You say no improvement in two years, but just this year we have seen free and fair elections with voters enthusiastically defying the terrorists our press so romantically calls "insurgents". We are now seeing the various religious and ethnic factions (with the obvious exception of the would-be totalitarian rulers - a.k.a. the terrorists) hammering out a constitution for a stable, unified Iraq. But western liberalism is not going to suddenly take hold there by us getting more aggressive than we already are with the terrorists. Nor will it by us pulling back or negotiating with them. Nor by throwing more foreign aid to existing governments in the region or making nice with Iran. No, it can only take hold as, little by little, the culture of, and the philosophies that influence the Iraqi people (and much of the rest of the world's Islamic people) change. We can help it along by preserving enough security for the Iraqis to build the institutions of liberal government and the rule of law, but we can't just hand them the model and say "this is what you need" and expect it to stick. And it's not a simple matter of prosperity leading to freedom, either. Overcoming a way of thinking takes time. Islamo-fascism is called that because they are enemies of western liberalism in the same fashion that the Nazis were. They have the same goals - 1) stamp out the liberal, "commercial" philosophies based on individual freedom that have governed Britain, America and a few other countries for more than two hundred and fifty years, and substantially all the rest of Europe and the western hemishpere for varyingly shorter periods, and 2) spread their totalitarianism, which only superficially differs from Naziism, over the entire world. Their philosophies, regardless of quasi-religious trappings, are the same - destroy the rule of law in favor of arbitrary rule, objective truth in favor of official doctrine and morality in favor of the will of the state or cause; control all behavior and thought, extol and require the sacrifice of the individual in service to the cause or state, and glorify war, death and cruelty. And both have claimed to be creating a more just world at the end of it all. As Hayek put it when writing about Germany from the Second thru the Third Reich, it is a "romantic" or "heroic" philosophy of organizing and sacrificing for the greater good - for the glory and power of the state - which saw itself as superior to and must stamp out the comfortable, tolerant, individualistic, self-interested, "commercial", "English" liberal philosophy that came to the fore in the 18th century in England and America. It's a philosophy that despises freedom of any kind. This is the same conflict, but with a new fascist enemy, and we can't defeat it - defeat the idea, not just the active combatants - by saying "you guys fight your own battles - we've spent enough money." It would be helpful if we could make France, Germany, Russia and a few others realize the importance of defeating it, but we can't just sit at home and say "get back to us when you grow a spine and unlock your wallets."