Full video here.

Kurt Westergaard, cartoonist behind the image of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, had a visit from a Somali Muslim with an axe. Westergaard is doing well, apparently, as he retreated to a safe room specially prepared for such an incident until police arrived.  He’s been threatened many times in the past.

Cartoons here. (Westergaard’s is the 2nd down, I don’t have the rights to reprint).

Addition from the Christian Science Monitor-The same man was plotting an attack against Hilary Clinton in Kenya?

See Also:  If you thought the cartoons were bad, more on the Fitna movie here.  Libertarians stand firm on this issue:  Repost-A Canadian Libertarian Making Noise: Ezra Levant

Via The A & L Daily-Interview With Christopher Caldwell At Spiegel Online

Christopher Hitchens At Slate: Yale Surrenders

Full post here.

“More than 600 civilians have now lost their lives to such attacks since the Pakistan Army began a military offensive in the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan in October.”

We need Pakistan to ramp up these efforts to prevent safe haven for the Taliban if Obama’s troop increase is going to work.  What do the Taliban represent to many Pakistanis and to the tribes of the region?

Freedom Fighters against occupation?  Over-zealous enforcers of a rigid vision of Islam?  Corrupt Warlords? Providers of Security?  Keepers Of The Faith?  Mountain Rubes?

Also: From Commonweal: Andrew Bacevich “The War We Can’t Win: Afghanistan And The Limits Of American Power”

And:  Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads

Full interview here.

Caldwell raises some important points, and sheds light onto the Muslim immigration debate in Europe:

“SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is America more successful when it comes to integrating immigrants?

Caldwell: For now, yes. I think the first reason is the ruthlessness of the American economy. You either become a part of it or you go home. There are more foreigners in the workplace, and that’s where a lot of integration happens.”

It’s the economy, stupid.  But we also have an immigration debate problem of our own (about which I think the Republicans have the best chance to unify now with reasonable, hands-on compassionate policies from the grass roots).  The right sees the flimsiness of overextended multi-culti ideas and overly idealistic egalitarians…but I believe also needs to avoid over-reaction (protectionism and scare-mongering) in response.

There are genuine immigration problems to solve and small-business growth, economic freedom and economic opportunities (and neither Bush nor Obama bloated government solutions) may be the best way to address them.  We’re Americans after all.

Just my two cents to avoid the pitfalls of the kind of debate they’re having in Europe.

See Also On This Site: A review of Caldwell’s book:  From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”

Are secular humanism and the kind of political freedoms we enjoy in the West really incompatible with Islam?:  From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism

Are we becoming more like Europe, or is this too a false premise?:  Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People

Ayan Hirsi Ali is a Muslim immigrantto Europe, who seems quite populist and anti-Islam:  Ayan Hirsi Ali At The CSM: ‘Swiss Ban On Minarets Was A Vote For Tolerance And Inclusion’

A long time ago, and not so long ago.  *chiwai*’s photostream here.  Excellent photo.

Part of Bryan Magee’s series:

Nietzsche directed his thought against Christian morality, secular morality (Kantian and utilitarian), was quite anti-democratic, and anti-Socratic Greek (the beginning of the end).

See Also:  Jacques Derrida discusses deconstruction here.

From a friend…found here on wikipedia’s Leo Strauss’s page.  How do you read the Greeks, or any text, for that matter?…:

“Strauss wrote that Friedrich Nietzsche was the first philosopher to properly understand relativism, an idea grounded in a general acceptance of Hegelian historicism. Heidegger, in Strauss’ view, sanitized and politicized Nietzsche, whereas Nietzsche believed “our own principles, including the belief in progress, will become as relative as all earlier principles had shown themselves to be” and “the only way out seems to be…that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth”.^[4] Heidegger believed that the tragic nihilism of Nietzsche was a “myth” guided by a defective Western conception of Being that Heidegger traced to Plato. In his published correspondence with Alexandre Kojève, Strauss wrote that Hegel was correct when he postulated that an end of history implies an end to philosophy as understood by classical political philosophy.”

A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche’s Moral And Political Philosophy..A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection…Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy

Full piece here.

Hitchens has some unkind words for Pakistan.  Some of his motivation is likely his anti-theism, but he does point out the following:

“Successive U.S. administrations used to keep certifying to Congress that Pakistan was not exploiting U.S. aid (and U.S. indulgence over the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan) to build itself a nuclear weapons capacity.”

We’ve been sending a lot of checks to Pakistan (and Musharraf played us quite well, as I don’t think you can ask a leader to be too far from his people).  Pakistan is not an entirely reliable partner in pursuing our aims due to the circumstances on the ground.   Yet, we need Pakistani support to prevent haven across the border if the plan in Afghanistan is going to work.  So, we’re making more deals and sending more checks.

He also takes a parting shot at anti-war liberals:

“American liberals can’t quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he’s ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less.”

Part of my fear has been a sitting liberal President picking up a war and feeling pressure to act aggressively.  But let’s not put more of that kind of pressure on him to spite liberalism.  He’s been pretty reasonable so far in my opinion.

Also On This Site:  From The CSM: ‘WIll Pakistan Military Go After Taliban In North Waziristan?’

See Also:  Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads

Full piece here.

Rather than see the vote as a failure to allow Muslims their religious freedoms (populist response to the immigration wave?), Hirsi Ali suggests the ban rather should be thought of, in part, as a check upon the political ambitions that stem from Islamic theology:

“Islam is an idea about how society should be organized: the individual’s relationship to the state; that the relationship between men and women; rules for the interaction between believers and unbelievers; how to enforce such rules; and why a government under Islam is better than a government founded on other ideas. These political ideas of Islam have their symbols: the minaret, the crescent; the head scarf, and the sword.”

Because this fits into a view that many Europeans already have about how their own societies should be run:

“In their response to the presence of Islam in their midst, Europeans have developed what one can discern as roughly two competing views. The first view emphasizes accuracy. Is it accurate to equate political symbols like those used by Communists and Nazis with a religious symbol like the minaret and its accessories of crescent and star.”

According to Ali, it’s not an attack on religion per se, but rather a workable European solution to to Islam’s inability to separate politics from religion… because (what I think is the real target here) there’s another view of Islam in Europe:

“The second view refuses to equate political symbols of various forms of white fascism with the symbols of a religion. In this school of thought, Islamic Scripture is compared to Christian and Jewish Scripture. Those who reason from this perspective preach pragmatism. According to them, the key to the assimilation of Muslims is dialogue.”

and:

“These two contrasting perspectives correspond to two quite distinct groups in Europe. The first are mainly the working class. The second are the classes that George Orwell described as “indeterminate.” Cosmopolitan in outlook, they include diplomats, businesspeople, mainstream politicians, and journalists. They are well versed in globalization and tend to focus on the international image of their respective countries.”

As a good American, I don’t know where I stand on day to day European politics, I’ll try and leave that to Europeans.   I have to say, though, Hirsi Ali is a pretty smooth political operator herself in a cosmopolitan, populist sort of way.

Are you convinced?

Addition:  I think Hirsi Ali correctly points out how much room for improvement there is in Europe’s handling of Muslim immigration…

See Also On This Site:  Ayan Hirsi Ali in The NY Times: Lee Harris’s ‘The Suicide Of Reason’ Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…From The Middle East Quarterly Via A & L Daily: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic

Full article here.

So, how do you prevent growing tribal grievances and anger by the people left out of India’s recent economic growth from becoming support for the violent and revolutionary hard left..?

“This time, India has to get the mix right. For the tribal people, there will soon be opportunities; for the Maoists, there will be no mercy.”

See Also On This Site:  Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal

So, where did Marx get his ideas, anyways?  Peter Singer discusses Hegel and Marx

A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”

Full article here.

A harrowing, detailed account of the Mumbai terror attacks.

Full post here. (From Althouse, with interesting comments)

There is an argument attached to the Hasan killings; namely that Hasan may have been giving signs of a belief in a more radical Islam that would conflict with his military duties (though it’s perhaps not reasonable to suspect that such extreme and violent action would ever be taken).  The argument states that an environment of fear (or oversensitivity, at least) has been created and potentially institutionalized in the military.  Such an environment (motivated by an overly pc cultural climate) might have led some who were alarmed at Hasan’s behavior to turn their heads and avoid the problem, and thus may have helped to prevent the extreme outcome.

As the facts are discovered, it seems Islam was likely a motivating factor in Hasan’s decision to attack soldiers who would soon deploy to fight Muslims, and it may even be that he was connected with specific groups that would support such an action.  Muslims of course, are free to practice their religion, and to follow the laws, and most do. However, there are clearly an issues of concern here for further consideration (also some on the American right which will too easily incite the passions into a mold of religious conflict for political gain…mostly thanks to Hasan).

Addition:  Or perhaps people were monitoring him but he fell through the cracks.

——————————–

More broadly, a friend of mine further on the right than me is making the argument there are at least two issues:

1.  the real threat of radical Muslims willing to attack American targets from abroad and potentially at home, in the name of their religious beliefs…and how to best handle this threat…and the underlying reasons which help to cause it.

…as well as:

2.  An overly relativistic and confused set of ideas guiding the political left, which might not be deep enough to handle the type of situation that Hasan has presented us with.  In addition, such lack of depth (on full display in the Times article) forces us into more bitter partisanship, creating deeper rifts in the body politic.

——————————————————-

A few facts and a lot of generalizations…your thoughts and comments are welcome.  Here’s a quote from Simon Blackburn I put up a while ago:

“Nigel: Has relativism had its day as an influential philosophical position?

Simon: No – and I don’t think it should ever die. The danger is that it gets replaced by some kind of complacent dogmatism, which is at least equally unhealthy. The Greek sceptics thought that confronting a plurality of perspectives is the beginning of wisdom, and I think they were right. It is certainly the beginning of historiography and anthropology, and if we think, for instance, of the Copernican revolution, of self-conscious science. The trick is to benefit from an imaginative awareness of diversity, without falling into a kind of “anything goes” wishy-washy nihilism or scepticism….”

See Also On This Site:   From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…How do you reasonably deal with relativism anyways?: From Virtual Philosophy: A Brief Interview With Simon Blackburn…From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”

D’Souza is a Christian, and while debating Daniel Dennett at Tufts University, he brings up Nietzsche’s argument that God is dead.   From the depths of Nietzsche’s thinking, D’Souza argues he was able to see the coming crisis in Europe; that Europeans could no longer base their lives upon defunct Christian metaphysics without radically and creatively developing new thinking from the ground up.  Nietzsche also supposed that few if any would heed his call and realize the depth of this crisis, and so would likely lumber into the tremendously violent conflicts of the 20th century.

D’Souza then charges Dennett with a similarly shallow approach; over-simplyfying the metaphysical depths of Christianity from the relatively stable position of present day scientific analysis (which, as D’Souza’s argument suggests, grew out of Christianity itself).

D’Souza is a Christian, as mentioned, and Dennett not.   Nietzsche would probably have not thought much about either a 20th century man still resting upon a belief in God…nor a 20th century man analyzing such a belief from an understanding of science (as a philosopher, Dennett, with a background in science).  Nietzsche, of course, was almost entirely ignorant of science.

You might have to come up with more than that to get to Dennett.

Good debate.  Argument starts at 5:30:

See Also:  A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom:  The Nietzsche Connection…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…: A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche’s Moral And Political Philosophy