Recent disturbing events in Naples that have shocked Europe and sent shockwaves around the world from the United States to Australia, and an Indian immigrant’s congressional candidacy in the state of Tennessee are two polar opposites of the same coin.
Over the weekend just past two young Gypsy girls went for a quick swim at a crowded beach in Naples, Italy. They were caught up apparently in rough surf and both were drowned. Their bodies were recovered and placed under towels on the sand. Beachgoers continued to relax, drink their drinks, chat their chat, and enjoy their day at the beach only feet away from the bodies of the two unfortunate children. “Indifference is not an emotion for human beings,” said the Archbishop of Naples cardinal Crescenzio Sepe in horrified response to learning of the events and seeing the photos showing people relaxing nearby the two bodies.
English newspaper “The Independent” describes a now ubiquitous photo of the two girls under towels and beach goers relaxing in the background in “The picture that shames Italy”. The majority of media coverage on this horrible story places it in the context of Italian racism against the Roma (Gypsies).
While there is an ongoing conflict between Italians and Roma placement of this event in that context alone misses the point entirely.
This failure of human compassion and respect shown so appallingly at the beach in Naples is an illustrative moment not only of indifference by Europeans towards Gypsy children who have died in a tragedy it is also indicative of a much larger failure across western society. Not only in Italy have there been such cases where passers-by stand mute to a tragedy; where a lack of interest in others’ pain lead to inaction and further tragedy; where individuals are denied aid and comfort because bystanders are indifferent and lack compassion.
Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”, as quoted in USA Today, reported that “While the lifeless bodies of the girls were still on the sand, there were those who carried on sunbathing or having lunch just a few meters away.” According to the press in Europe and around the world this event and the photo showing people completely unaffected by the tragedy have caused a “furor” and “shock” - which it should. But, it should also bring with it a great deal of soul searching for us all.
Those callous people at the beach relaxing near the bodies of the two girls have been described as disinterested and “unmoved”. This is a lack of compassion, and a complete ignorance as to what is considered civilized behavior around tragedy, death, and loss.
This loss of perspective is closer to nihilism than it is to what we in the United States understand European culture, in its best forms, to represent. The events on the beach, the passivity of the beachgoers and their complete lack of concern or empathy for the two drowned girls and their families is illustrative of a deep cultural break that is not limited to Italy alone - it is rife across the West.
A society without compassion is a broken society; a culture that does not respect death, or have a care for the deep loss and tragedy of others is deeply troubled; the west is at a moral and ethical crossroads illustrated by the horribly thoughtless and cruel events at the Naples beach in which the majority appear to have no understanding that they are in the wrong. This moral confusion is the foundation upon which Islam makes such large inroads into western societies. Typified in the United States by leftist’s moral relativism and confusion that, in its more dangerous and absurd embodiments, identifies climate changes as the greatest threat to Americans and ignores the clear and present dangers of terrorism, radicalism, and cultural indifference to standards and morality - the culture of the west is the perfect place for philosophies of absolutism like Islamism to gain ground.
Islam is considered the fastest growing religion in the world, but why should be this be so? In a society where previous norms have been over-turned, and previously understood and universally accepted fundamental concepts of culture and how we relate to others are in doubt, absolutist philosophies can take root at a much faster rate. We are seeing it daily.
The rise of Islamism and radicalism, terrorism, and leftist subversion of cultural and political institutions and norms have put the United States and Europe at grave risk. When people aren’t sure anymore what to believe in because the old institutions and foundations of society have been deconstructed and undermined, absolutist philosophies and religions can appear attractive - mainly on account of their complete surety on every issue. New adherents no longer are required to think, as all decisions have already been made.
This rise of absolutist thinking and in particular religions with violence and misogyny at their core is a grave threat to our culture and country. There are few who seem to understand this, and fewer still who will take a stand and speak out. In Nashville, there is one man who is speaking out, speaking truth and even more importantly he is running for Congress in the 5th Tennessee Congressional District, ironically Al Gore’s home district. Mr. Vijay Kumar’s candidacy gives me a sense of pride in my city and gives me hope that the American people will have a voice in Congress on the most critically important issues of our time.
Mr. Kumar is the only person in American politics who I am aware of running for national office on a solid Reagan Conservative foundation but with a great twist. Mr. Kumar is entirely anti-Sharia. In fact, his stand against the encroachment of Sharia into our culture and institutions is the premier platform of his campaign.
Sharia is the brutal “legal system” of Islam that the Islamic extremists want to implement in this country and every country in the world. The American people need to hear Mr. Kumar’s voice, fully knowledgeable on this issue and dedicated to defending American institutions and sovereignty. We face a very determined enemy whose goal is nothing less than the complete undermining of our institutions, system of government and justice, and accepted cultural norms. The horizon of the Islamists is a long one, much longer than most Americans, used to quick solutions and unaware in the main of history and political contexts that explain these tactics, can conceive.
Mr. Kumar is an immigrant to these shores. How fitting that an immigrant, as we all Americans were at one time, should be the clearest voice for defense against the cultural and society-wide onslaught that we face from the Islamist extremists. Must we have another 9/11 before the majority of our people will awaken to this cataclysm that is encroaching upon us? Even today in New York, the Islamists want to advertise their special brand of religion, on the public subways! We must stand against this invading philosophy and political movement whose goal is the destruction of our country. Nothing less than our existence as a people and a nation is at stake. Do our people on their way to work in the New York subway system, in the very city of 9/11 need to see advertising for the religion that was behind that horror? When do we stand up and say to those who want our destruction, No! We will not allow it! The time is now, and we are late in doing it. Mr. Kumar is prepared to be the standard bearer in saying, No! to Sharia and no to Islamic radicalism and their projects of propaganda and incitement.
Mr. Kumar’s positions are classic Conservative. He supports the War in Iraq, the “War on Terror”, is Pro-Life, Pro-Gun rights, etc. You can see his positions all explained in detail here: http://www.kumarforcongress.com/Issues/
Mr. Kumar is for secure borders, free trade, English as the official language of the land, and more. Can there be a more attractive list of issue positions such as this coming from an American politician at this time in our history? Mr. Kumar supports Israel and positive relations with the largest democracy in the world, India. But it is his position on Sharia that makes him most exciting and so very important. There are no American politicians currently serving at the national level who speak cogently, clearly, and as bravely as Mr. Kumar does on this existential issue that effects all Americans.
His anti-Sharia platform begins:
“Sharia (Islamic) Law is slowly permeating America. We are focused on the global ‘War on Terror’ and are ignoring a more dangerous threat developing within our country.
Muslims are beginning to insist that they do not have to follow our laws and customs. Some of their activists are making demands requiring that Muslims’ religious rights be put above our Constitution. This ploy is particularly pernicious, because the United States Constitution is based in Judeo-Christian principles. These principles conflict fundamentally with Islamic principles”
This identification of a fundamental cultural conflict is the essential truth of our times. Mr. Kumar has identified the issue, and will speak out to educate the people and our leaders at the Capitol. We need Mr. Kumar’s voice to ring in the halls of Congress and the parlors and meeting rooms of the White House.
I like to send interesting stories and commentary to my friends.
Recently, I sent a friend a link to an article written by Alan Dershowitz, the great Harvard lawyer and champion of American liberty and of Israel, which defended and explained Israel’s right to defend itself against the ongoing rocket attacks by the terrorist group Hamas I thought quite convincingly. (You can read the article here.) My friend did not like the article at all, finding fault in it, and declaring himself in disagreement with it.
I had thought Dershowitz’ arguments solid and difficult to refute as they were so grounded in international law, precedent, and logic. The reaction of my friend, which so confused me, gave me great pause and took me on a path that finally led me to the beginning of understanding how some Americans, otherwise intelligent and thoughtful, can be so self-hating and so seemingly out-of-context that what they consider reasoned, thoughtful argument is, in actuality, some form of Orwellian anti-rational intellectual and moral confusion.
To me, my friend, a very religious man was, in his astounding refutation of Dershowitz a man sunk in moral confusion. I wanted to understand how this could be so.
I asked him to explain.
I wrote, “What are your counter arguments?”
He replied, “They are all insane over there. I hope someday sanity will return.”
“They are not ALL insane,” I replied. “There is such a thing as good and evil.”
The correspondence continued with his reply, “Those who are in power over there have chosen the path of mutual destruction. That is evil. Nothing good will come of this until another path is chosen. You see, I can tell the difference. It is obvious.”
I replied, asking, “Those in power in Israel have chosen mutual destruction because they are defending their country from attack which is their right according to every international law and treaty? Your world is upside down.”
My friend replied asking if I thought that “mutual destruction is their right? Now whose world is upside down?”
Things were getting very interesting. I could sense that this discourse would lead somewhere important. And maybe I could understand finally how and why he thought in a way that I simply could not comprehend.
I replied that I had never suggested such a thing (that mutual destruction is either party’s “right”).
I asked, “Are you suggesting that self-defense is equivalent to mutual destruction?”
His response was instructive. “Yes, you are finally starting to see the light. In the long run, (making war) in self defense or any reason=mutual destruction. Both sides are engaging in a conflict that NEITHER can win.”
My friend concluded by writing, “They are both engaged in hurting themselves. This is insane and evil. It is important for everyone to understand that what is going on over there has got to stop.”
What was happening here? My friend, an otherwise brilliant and caring fellow, was deeply confused about the morality that characterized the aggressor and the defender (or victim). For him, conflict itself was evil and any party engaged in it was “wrong” regardless of the fact that they were defending themselves from attack.
This moral confusion does not allow him to differentiate between right and the wrong in the midst of conflict, the attacker and the victim. I finally began to understand. My friend could not, would not, make a moral stand and identify aggressor and victim, both were in the wrong, because both were in conflict. This irrational approach to the world is contrary to all of human history and contrary to our own experience of 9/11 and our post-9/11 world.
In his mind the United States is wrong to be in Iraq, though we have freed an entire country from despotism and are building a nascent democracy in a region that has never known freedom. Our several thousand casualties are mourned by us all. The cost in treasure and blood is high. However, in the context of previous wars the cost has been comparatively low in the bloody calculus of war. Consider: at Antietam 5,000 casualties in 15 minutes; at Cold Harbor 5,000 casualties in ten minutes; at Franklin 7,000 casualties in 4 hours. Comparatively, the war for Iraq has been astoundingly low in casualties after conquering the country, fighting a brutal insurgent enemy, and having some 3,000 American’s killed in 5 years of war there to keep the country free and to prevent its return to barbarism and tyranny. This does not include the ongoing fighting in Afghanistan where fighting has been increasing lately. If we are successful in Iraq and Afghanistan, our futures are all brighter as are the Iraqis and Afghan people’s and that is why we fight.
There is the complaint (and demand) that the soldiers must come home- now! But the war is not over, and to leave would create a vacuum that would be filled by our enemies nullifying every gain, and showing our hardened and callous enemies that we are weak. The context of history shows that restructuring countries and cultures is time consuming-WW2 ended in 1945, but US forces are still in Germany, and still in Japan.
During World War 2 the refrain had often been “this is why we fight”. The country was reminding itself that the horrifically high costs of fighting Nazism and Japanese Imperialism in blood and treasure were justified. Our current war is much different.
9/11 was a far more horrific attack than Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor the entire society of the United States was mobilized for war. But since our enemies now do rarely wear uniforms but turbans and beards and burkhas, and a book, the response has been quite different. The West has long been in conflict with Islam. Wars have been fought in the past between the West and Islamic expansion, this current conflict is the newest campaign in a centuries old conflict of attack and defense. Now, we in the United States who look mainly to the future are faced with an enemy who looks to the future only as a means to return to the distant past. This is an enemy we can barely understand… but slowly it is sinking in with some of us that their goals are contrary to our own survival as a nation and a people, and that they will do anything and everything to achieve them. Fundamentally, their goal is the destruction of our society, culture, religions, and way of life. How many beheaded Americans, and blown up office towers does one need to understand the goals of the enemy?
My disturbing but enlightening correspondence with my friend got me to reading and research. How can my friend be so confused? The answer is complex and simple. Please watch the video posted at the end of this thread. I found it very enlightening and very important.
I read “The Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom. Professor Bloom makes a convincing case that the culture and our higher educational institutions are to blame for my friend’s moral confusion. Our universities teach inclusiveness, to the exclusion of all else, and political correctness - we mustn’t offend, we mustn’t suggest that our culture is superior, that our way of life of government is better than some other form(s). This could cause offense or upset. So it must be avoided. But the fact remains that our system is by far superior to most other forms currently in existence or those that have passed into history. It ought to be no crime to suggest it, or state it.
Our enemies see this pervasive almost bizarre desire in American society to be inclusive, to not offend as one of our greatest weaknesses. They exploit this flaw in our culture and political and legal institutions and our rampant moral confusion to undermine our society, sow dissent and legitimize their own cruelties and destructive and malicious goals. Our enemies have a long-term horizon that we can barely even conceive.
Albert Einstein was the greatest thinker of the 20th century. A native German who fled the rise of Nazism, Einstein’s mother tongue was German. When he died in 1955 his last words were heard, but not understood. I compare the modern American left with Einstein’s nurse.
“He died in his sleep at a hospital in Princeton, New Jersey on April 18, 1955, leaving the Generalized Theory of Gravitation unsolved. The only person present at his deathbed, a hospital nurse, said that just before his death he mumbled several words in German that she did not understand. He was cremated without ceremony on the same day he died at Trenton, New Jersey in accordance with his wishes. His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location.”
It seems that so much is happening, so much that is so clear and so important, but simply cannot be seen by so many. It’s almost as if a great segment of the country has become Einstein’s nurse and the world is utterly unintelligible to them.
There is more of course.
An angry, deeply confused columnist in the Philadelphia Inquirer today posted a piece stating that the United States has “sinned”, and that “America doesn’t deserve to celebrate its birthday.” Mr. Satullo suggests that we have betrayed the July 4th “creed”, and that we have trampled the vows we have made as a country. He says that we must “put out no flags” on the 4th, and that we mustn’t sing patriotic hymns as “we deserve no Fourth this year”. Mr. Satullo demands that we all “atone” for our “sins…in quiet and humility”.
Can there be a more disrespectful, clueless, bitter, partisan, out-of-context screed anywhere published in the country more abysmal and disgusting than this tripe from a disaffected Utopian in Philadelphia - for July 4th during time of war?
Where is Mr. Satullo’s condemnation of our enemies? Where is the congratulations for our brave military men and women? Where is the acknowledgment of our current economic difficulties and tribulations? Where is the appreciation for the greatness of this country?
I ask all of my readers to cancel their subscription to the Philadelphia Inquirer. I ask any reader who advertises in the Philadelphia Inquirer to cancel all business relationships with that company.
Otherwise intelligent people like Mr. Satullo, apparently have no context in which to judge the actions of the United States; have little understanding of international events and their complexities, have a minimal grasp of conflict and of warfare and of history.
Abraham Lincoln, considered by many to be the greatest President in our history might have closed the Philadelphia Inquirer for sedition, had Mr. Satullo been published in 1862 or 1863. Mr. Lincoln actually did close newspapers for sedition in Baltimore. I am not suggesting that Mr. Satullo be censored, or the paper closed.
I am hoping instead that a groundswell of public revulsion will greet the Philadelphia Inquirer in the coming days and months so that they are impacted where it hurts the most for them - in their pocket books. If every reader of that publication were to abandon it- that would be perfectly acceptable to me.
Undermining our will to fight, supporting our enemies who want us all dead or enslaved - during wartime - is an abysmal thing and ought not to be countenanced. Mr. Satullo is certainly welcome to his mistaken opinions, but he should understand that most Americans do not concur with his self-hating and ignorant ideas. In fact, most Americans most assuredly find his article reprehensible and worthy of strong criticism.
The moral confusion of my friend, and the obvious self-hatred and ignorance of the Philadelphia Inquirer columnist are not isolated or rare events.
This deeply confused and morally corrupt approach to the world, based on a slanted mis-education from our universities overrun with leftist activist “educators” to a culture that demands a legitimazation of philosophies having even our own destruction at their core, and the diminishment of our martial abilities and a revision of our recent and distant pasts so that we will not fight, because as my friend has stated, “fighting is wrong” is a hideous response to attack and will not sustain us. We must accept that the world is not Utopia, and likely will not be, ever. IF however, Utopia is possible, we must defeat evil first in order to bring it about, yes?
But we must fight - there is no alternative.
Can one convert a Nazi? Can one convince a Hitler that world domination is not the best course? Can one overturn centuries of hatred and arrogance with words, when the world is overrun with swords and bombs and guns - and a book that instructs adherents to “kill the unbelievers”? We are almost too sophisticated for our own good. Too many of us cannot conceive that there can be so many millions who believe that “unbelievers” (us!) must die, that no form of religion is acceptable to them but theirs and that no form of law or society can exist but theirs.
How can it be that 9/11 was not “enough”? Do we require another attack before the country will unite and fight against this horrific philosophy whose goal is our destruction and enslavement? I pray not.
We are in an existential fight. To quit, or undermine our will to fight, is the end of all things.
There is right, and there is wrong; there is evil and there is good. Our country G-d bless her has the finest government ever conceived, and blessed by our brave men and women who protect our way of life and guided by the brave and selfless of ‘76, of ‘12, of ‘61, of ‘18, of ‘41, of ‘65 and now in 2008 we have our path, we have our heroes, we have our cause. G-d help us all.
Because so many cannot see evil does not mean that it does not exist; because so many cannot see the greatness in their own country does not mean it is not great. Happy 4th of July, and G-d Bless America.