Ten Years

Ten years ago, a band of Muslims attacked the United States of America. In the ten years since, the semi-free governments of the world have done exactly nothing about it except to surrender, yield, appease, and apologize. 

George W. Bush immediately (and correctly) called for retaliation against the regimes that harbor and support the killers--but he did it in speech only, not in action, then used his years in office to subvert it all by insisting that we are not a war with Islam and that it is a religion of peace. After this, Americans enthusiastically placed into office the most overtly un-American president in history, Barack Obama, a man who both figuratively[1] and literally bows to the leaders of Muslim nations (as did Mr. Bush). Ten years after the atrocity, we hear Tony Blair boast that he reads the Qur’an every day.[2] (Can one imagine Winston Churchill, ten years after the Blitz, boasting that he reads Mein Kampf every day?)

September 11th was not a tragedy; it was an atrocity. It was not a mass murder perpetrated by mere crazy people, disconnected from larger ideas, as the apologists would have us believe. It was an explicit attack of Islamists acting as Islamists upon the institutions of the West. Robert Spencer summarizes it well:

We were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by Islamic jihadists who explained, in writings they left behind, that they were committing mass murder in the name of Islam, inspired by the teachings of Islam, and in defense, as they saw it, of Islam. They struck the United States in service of their hope of destroying it, and ultimately imposing upon the U.S., the West and the world an Islamic government that would rule according to Islamic law, which denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience and equality of rights for all people.[3]

The fact that mass murderers hijacked airplanes was all but forgotten amid the rush to insist that the murderers hijacked a religion--a “religion of peace.” 

Islam is indeed a religion of peace in one and only respect: When every human being on the planet has yielded to Sharia law, devout Muslim men will at last consent to leave the rest of us in peace . . . to be the subjects of their cruelties, superstitions, appetites, and perversions. Until then, their holy commandment is to “slay the idolators wherever you find them.”(Sura 9:5)

Unlike Westerners, who with few exceptions do not understand the nature and purpose of the enemy, the jihadists know exactly whom they are fighting. In order to make room for Sharia, in order to achieve universal obedience to Allah, in order to enslave the human race to the will of Mohammed and his followers, it is necessary to destroy the human mind. One could hardly have picked a better target than the World Trade Center in New York City. The Twin Towers are--or rather, were--the embodiment of human achievement, set in the capital city of human achievement. Skyscrapers soar skyward with foundations that rest upon science and technology, which in turn rest upon trade, which in turn rests upon freedom, which in turn rests upon reason. The Towers were the conspicuous monoliths of modern civilization--the twin pinnacles of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution--and it is precisely those values that the jihadists wish to knock down. Free men do not obey Allah; thus, freedom must be destroyed.

It is beside the point to cite the fact that America has not been attacked on our soil since that infamous day in 2001. It is no matter to the Islamists if they knock down our institutions or if we will save them the trouble and do it for them. If David Letterman cannot crack a joke without being threatened by killers who are confident that they can get away with their threats, then we are losing--or have already lost--the war. 

War, you may ask? What war? The “war on terror” is not a war. Only Congress can declare war, and our Congressmen lack the courage to do so, despite our enemy declaring war upon us at least as far back as the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. War cannot be declared upon a tactic, terrorism. War must be declared upon an enemy: the states that support Islamic totalitarianism.

In the aftermath of September 11, there was much talk about the failure to “connect the dots,” aimed largely at the intelligence agencies and politicians who “let this happen.” But it is absurd to blame intelligence agents for failing to “connect the dots” when the weight of the mainstream intellectual elite is overwhelming dedicated to disconnecting dots--which is to say, performing the mental contortions required to hold countless Muslim terrorist attacks as disparate and unconnected events, and evading the meaning of the explicit goals and intents of our enemies.

If there is such a thing as a history book in the future--which, in this self-loathing culture bent on submitting meekly to a multiculturalist elite, is no sure thing--the men who are still permitted to read books will be amazed at these inexplicable events of our time. They will see the United States of America, the most glorious product of the Enlightenment values of reason and freedom, being defeated by a marauding band of anachronistic barbarians. 

Why, future historians will wonder, was the strongest nation in the world militarily simultaneously the weakest morally? Stranger still, why was this so when the United States was objectively the most moral nation in history--the nation explicitly founded upon individual rights, the nation born of the idea that all men must be free to live their lives as they judge best? How could mobs of primitive, superstitious thugs who explicitly embrace death cause a population of civilized people who want to live and be happy to doubt themselves?

The answer is that thanks to the philosophical trends of the last century or so, Americans on the whole have lost the moral conviction that we are right--and have lost the moral courage to say so. 

But it must be said: The American way, by which I mean the explicit, constitutional enshrinement of individual rights as the law of the land, is superior in every possible respect to the Islamist way, by which I mean the enshrinement of Mohammedan commands as the will of Allah. Reason is superior to faith. Thinking is superior to believing. Freedom is superior to slavery. Life is superior to death. Trade is superior to murder. Self-interest is superior to sacrifice. Capitalism is superior to theocracy. Acting on one’s judgement is superior to obeying the Qur’an (or Bible, Torah, etc.). The freedom to speak one’s mind (including the freedom to offend someone) is superior to the fear of being beheaded for doing so. Respectfully holding a door open for a beautiful, bare-shouldered woman as she passes is superior to beating her to death for not covering her face.[4]

For holding these apparently controversial opinions, I would be condemned as a “bigot” by nearly every journalist, university professor, and self-proclaimed enlightened intellectual, and condemned to death by perhaps a billion people on the planet. 

As Daniel Pipes has accurately identified, Islamist terrorism does not constitute a clash of civilizations but a clash of civilization and barbarism. The barbarians cannot possibly defeat us militarily, but they can defeat us by default if we do not stand up for what is right. Ten years after the September 11th attacks, we as a nation have yet to do so.

NOTES

[1] See, for example, Mr. Obama’s 2009 speech in Egypt, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09.

[2] “I read the Holy Quran everyday: Tony Blair,” The Express Tribune, http://tribune.com.pk/story/188297/i-read-the-holy-quran-everyday-former-british-pm-tony-blair/.

[3] Robert Spencer, “A decade out, we’re losing,” Jihad Watch, September 11, 2011, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/09/a-decade-out-were-losing.html.

[4] I used the term “is superior” here in a terse series of sentences only to emphasize the point from the aspect of cultural evaluation--namely, that America is superior to her enemies. Every sentence actually understates the case. For instance, “reason is superior to faith” hardly captures the fact that reason is the only means of obtaining knowledge and faith is absolutely impotent. Faith is not merely inferior to reason; it is nothing.

Dennis Prager: If There Is No God, Part 12

(Note: This is Part 12 in the series started here. The previous installment is here. In each post, I comment on one of the fourteen points made by Dennis Prager in his article, “If There Is No God.”)

Dennis Prager’s Point #12:

Without God, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being. [Note 1.]

Of course man is the supreme being!

Man is supreme because among all living things, he has the capacity to think. This faculty does not make him infallible, omniscient, or omnipotent. It does make Homo sapiens superior to all other creatures in the animal kingdom. This is true in both absolute and relative terms: absolute, because our conceptual faculty is an incomparably valuable asset for survival; relative, because I am a human, and thus regard it as improper to subordinate myself to other forms of life (not to mention to transparent superstitions).

By definition, hubris is excessive self-confidence or pride, meaning self-confidence or pride beyond what one may legitimately claim. This idea is consonant with the Greek ideal of moderation (sophrosyne), pride being a virtue flanked by the vices of vanity (excessive pride) on the one side and humility (deficient pride) on the other. For the Greeks, pride was good; but an hubristic hero of Homer who snubbed a god would find himself in hot water - or turbulent water, as the case may be. Though I do not agree with Aristotle’s formulation that holds the middle ground between vices as virtues, there is a sort of common-sense appeal to this arrangement: It is obviously foolish to hold an estimation of oneself higher than what one has earned, just as it is detrimental to underestimate one’s own abilities.

However, this pre-Christian Greek notion is not the one behind Mr. Prager’s statement. The Christian ethics hold humility itself as a virtue. Pride, which to an ancient Greek or an Objectivist would be a just recognition of one’s own achievements, to the Christian is one of the seven deadly sins. It is pride, not hubris, that is the target of Prager point #12.

Wikipedia image: Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things[Note 2.]

Both subjectivists and religionists might produce innumerable counterexamples that would seem to refute man’s status as a superior being. History is rife with endless bloody wars, barbarity, murder, and rape. Man, they may claim, is the lowest of all creatures, not the highest. He is vain, petty, foolish, and superstitious - a luster of power, a slave to his cravings. The religionist would claim that God is the only redeemer of such a base being; the subjectivist admits of no redemption.

I disagree with both perspectives. To claim that man as a species is supreme does not require that every man be rational and virtuous. It requires only that men be capable of reason and virtue.

What Prager is demonizing as “humanist hubris” is the egoism and self-confidence that drives a man to seek knowledge in the service of his own life. Prager rails against the pride of a man who looks to nature instead of to scripture, who judges right and wrong based on facts instead of commandments, and who deserves to feel good about his own efficacy. It is not quite true that such a man is his own God, as Prager suggests; this would imply a subjective arbitrariness to his judgments. Rather, such a man needs no God: hence the desperation of the religious in the modern world.

A man who thinks for himself is anathema to religious faith, particularly to the monotheistic religions that demand his exclusive faith and obedience. In ancient Greece, man took his first steps as a species undeniably worthy of the adjective supreme. He looked to nature, not heaven, to understand nature; to man, to understand man. He began to classify and systematize. He invented and applied logic. But this was interrupted by the Age of Christianity, and its offshoot, the Age of Islam. The Greek ideal was outdated; a man standing proud and upright like one of the gods he created had to be damned as “hubristic.” In the shadow of Christ, man was puny and ugly, “crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous.”[Note 3.]

This was the age of Mr. Prager’s Christian ideals: a dark age of self-imposed thralldom. For a thousand years, Prager’s hubristic pride was virtually absent from the earth (with the exception, perhaps, of the real hubris of those claiming to know of heaven and the hereafter). It was only when mankind threw off this bondage of his spirit, discovering once again his own efficacy, that he stood upright again. As I wrote of the Enlightenment in an earlier essay:

Individuals discovered that they had the ability to read for themselves not only the Bible, but other things as well. When Luther and Calvin shook the minds of men in order that each may contemplate his own sinfulness, they inadvertently freed those minds for other, more worldly thoughts. This could not be taken back. The Tree of Knowledge had been shaken, and it was apples everywhere; Sir Isaac Newton happened to be watching one of them as it fell, much to the benefit of mankind.[Note 4.]

This is the crux of the matter. According to Dennis Prager, the men who neither bow nor obey, but discover nature for themselves - the independent minds who dare taste apples plucked from the Tree of Knowledge - must be denounced as "hubristic."

Mr. Prager himself noted the remarkable achievements of Michaelangelo in an earlier point. That Michaelangelo (and Galileo, Bach, Newton, Locke, Jefferson, and Rand) existed is a testament that man is the supreme being. And so too are the innumerable lesser figures that produce, acheive, and flourish in relative anonymity, committed to living rationally and happily.

(Note: The next installment in the series is here.)

NOTES

1. Dennis Prager, “If There Is No God,” http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2008/08/19/if_there_is_no_god.

2. Image from Wikipedia entry for “Seven deadly sins,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Deadly_Sins.

3. The Confessions of St. Augustine, Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 2002, p. 138.

4. Stephen Bourque, “Faith in the West,” Aug 2008.

Faith in the West

Rob Moll, a writer and editor for the Evangelical Christian magazine Christianity Today, wrote an article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal that repeats an idea that quite frankly makes no sense whatsoever: that the prosperity associated with free market economies is somehow a result of westerners being Christian.   

He writes:

One of the most important dissenting voices in China today belongs to Peter Zhao, a Communist Party member and adviser to the Chinese Central Committee.  Mr. Zhao is among a group of Chinese intellectuals who look to the West to find the key to economic success.  Mr. Zhao in particular believes that Christianity and the ethical system based upon its teachings are the reason that Western countries dominate the global economy. (Note 1.)  [emphasis mine] 

Mr. Moll heartily approves of Mr. Zhao’s assertion, but the argument fails utterly.  

The question arises: why would anyone even attempt to make this case, which is absurd on its face?  The answer follows easily: to try to square the obvious benefits of living in the modern western world with one’s Christian faith, which demands quite a different life.

 

The incompatibility of Christianity and capitalism is identical to the incompatibility of faith and reason.  In fact, the former is simply a special case of the latter.  Christianity is a particular application of faith; capitalism, an application of reason.  The two are contradictions.  

This contradiction presents itself to the Christian, and the choices are three: reject the altruism of Christianity in favor of capitalism (i.e. live and flourish); reject the selfish and worldly benefits of capitalism in favor of Christianity (i.e. become a monk); or let the contradiction exist in one’s mind without resolution, pitting altruism side by side with self-interest, compartmentalizing the ramifications, excusing the needs of the flesh, apologizing for the weakness of humanity, finding solace in bromides, rationalizing the profits as being beneficial for the meek, and continually assuring oneself that the automobiles, television sets, and full bellies enjoyed by oneself and by everyone else with access to economic freedom is indeed what a simple Jewish carpenter, who some two millennia ago lectured his followers on the virtues of self-sacrifice and submission to God, would have wished for if he had been lucky enough to live after the Industrial Revolution.

The acceptance of such a manifest contradiction requires a massive and sustained evasion.  The fact that the historical Jesus and his missionaries would have despised and rejected the western world - the United States in particular - must be suppressed if one is to hold Mr. Zhao’s premises.

Mr. Zhao writes, “[F]rom history we see only Christians have a continuous nonstop creative spirit and the spirit for innovation.”[again, emphasis mine]  This must be a selective “history” indeed, ignoring, for instance, the Dark and Middle Ages in Europe, 19th century Russia, and the entire continents of South America and Africa up to the present day.  The logic of Mr. Zhao, such as it is, is that the creators of western prosperity were nominally Christians, and thus the prosperity came about because they were Christians.  

To conclude this is, among other things, to fall prey to the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc; it takes mere correlation as implying causation.  Yes, the creators of capitalism - the Enlightenment thinkers, the English and Dutch traders, the American colonists, the capitalists of the Industrial Revolution, and even many of the entrepreneurs of the last century - were for the most part nominally Christian.  But it does not automatically follow that their Christianity was even a motivating factor, never mind the essential factor of their success.  With this logic, it might equally be concluded that the prosperity of the west is a result of certain men being relatively tall, living in non-equatorial climates, having white skin, being conversant in classic literature, using combs in their hair and forks at the table, eating cooked meat, speaking English, or being fond of music with stringed instruments - all characteristics which, like being nominally Christian, are generally true of westerners.  Needless to say, these attributes cannot logically be said to have contributed to the growth of capitalism without demonstrating why it may be so.  

To show that western prosperity occurred because its advocates were Christians, it is necessary to examine the tenets of Christianity and demonstrate a one-to-one correspondence with the requirements of capitalism.  And, in fact there is a one-to-one correspondence - but it shows the exact opposite of Mr. Zhao’s thesis.  On every point, Christianity is antithetical to capitalism.  Where Christianity requires altruism, capitalism demands self-interest.  What Christianity accepts with blind faith, capitalism confronts with open-eyed reason.  Where Christianity asserts the sovereignty of God, capitalism claims the sovereignty of the individual.  Where Christianity postpones rewards until the grave, capitalism lets men reap what they have earned in life.  Where Christianity demands obedience so that men may be commanded by God, capitalists obey Nature so that She may be commanded by man.  When the Christian bows his head, the entrepreneur raises his.  Christians kneel before God and raise the sword against non-believers; capitalists shake hands cordially.

One could hardly pick a more antagonistic pair of ideals than Christianity and a free market.

If as Mr. Zhao states, the dominance of Christianity with its ethical teachings is the reason for western prosperity, then why was there not a capitalist boom seventeen hundred years ago?  Or a thousand years?  Or five hundred?  Why did Augustine bewail a vale of tears and not trumpet a cornucopia of goods?  Why did Torquemada deal in souls instead of sous?  Why is the gaberdine despised and the frock admired, when the one means profit and the other penance?  Why did Martin Luther, in nailing his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, condemn the fraud of indulgences instead of offering a better product for the money?  Why, instead of accepting cash in through a window as is done at fast food restaurants today, did Protestants choose to toss Catholics out of a window in Prague in 1618?

The fact is that the economic explosion in the west waited for the decline of strict religious thought as it was displaced by the ideas of the Enlightenment.  This transformation accompanied, by no mere coincidence, the urgent need for colonists to survive in a hostile new world, to think, to innovate, to trade.  It accompanied, again by no mere coincidence, the emancipation of ordinary men from kings and popes and feudal lords.  As political freedom rose, religion fell away, leaving its shell.  Individuals discovered that they had the ability to read for themselves not only the Bible, but other things as well.  When Luther and Calvin shook the minds of men in order that each may contemplate his own sinfulness, they inadvertently freed those minds for other, more worldly thoughts.  This could not be taken back.  The Tree of Knowledge had been shaken, and it was apples everywhere; Sir Isaac Newton happened to be watching one of them as it fell, much to the benefit of mankind.  

As the Enlightenment glowed brighter, Christianity dimmed.  There is nothing unfair about this.  Christianity had had its day – more than a thousand years of days, and what historian Daniel Boorstin aptly called the “Great Interruption” of recorded history – and humanity suffered and prayed and sacrificed and accepted worldly misery just as Christian doctrines prescribe.  Now, however, there was a New World.  Superstition was useless; humility, impractical.  A monk perishes where a frontiersman survives.  The sailor has his superstitions, but they are put aside while navigating.  When starvation loomed, fasting was something to be avoided.  Did Jamestown overcome famine and disease because of prayer or because of industry?  Conversely, did Salem hang its women because it was profitable to do so or because Christian fervor demanded it?  

The band of separatists that leaped onto the deck of the Speedwell in August of 1620 and stepped off the deck of the Mayflower in November were likely seeking a heavenly paradise very different than the earthly one they found.  Launched by faith, they nevertheless landed with two feet on the ground.  They tilled the earth and planted when they arrived, and fortunately, the Puritan dourness and piety never really took root as well as did English commerce and good governance.  Piety is something of a weed.  It existed and was even cultivated by habit in some places, but only where it could not choke off commerce.  The churches were built soon enough… but only after the houses were up.

And of these churches: Mr. Zhao writes, “In the U.S., the spires of churches are more numerous than China’s banks and rice shops.” However one may point to the many steeples in America, one may just as easily point to the vermiform appendix in the body.  It is as absurd to claim that the churches account for our riches as it is to claim that the appendix accounts for Homo sapiens.  Perhaps both of these vestigial organs – faith for the masses and appendix for the man – had a purpose in pre-history, but neither is needed or wanted today.  Indeed, if either rises out of dormancy to make itself known and felt now, it is only to inflame and infect and kill.

And this brings me to the purpose of this post.  If religion were merely irrelevant to the ideals of America, I would direct my attention elsewhere.  But it is not.  Religious faith is hostile and antagonistic to the ideals of free men everywhere, and in America today it is Evangelical Christianity that most directly threatens our freedom.  (Yes, even more so than Islamic totalitarianism.)  To claim that western prosperity is a result of Christianity is an outrageous distortion based, at best, on superficial and selective observations.  To recommend that we revive these superstitions in a modern world is unforgivably reckless.

NOTES

1.  Rob Moll, “Want More Growth in China? Have Faith,” Wall Street Journal, 8 Aug 2008, p. W9.  (available online, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121815556386722667.html?mod=taste_primary_hs)

UPDATES

Rev 1: Changed "burn" to "hang" per Comment 1.