Deep Thought That Seemed Deeper at the Time I Thought It

If there were stoner comedies in the fiftes, they'd be Guys and Dolls.

Oh yeah

From the same post:

I think Obama’s response is interesting for two reasons. First, it demonstrates better than anything in the last nine years why we are losing the war against totalitarian Islam.

I was going to say something snarky here, but then I realized, I had no idea what the hell he's talking about. Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that Totalitarian Islam is an entity of sufficient coherence to be capable of having war waged against it. Grant also, all evidence to the contrary, that we are in fact at war with it. What grounds are there for claiming that we're losing? What does that even mean?

I might argue that, well, the Not-Ground Zero Not-Mosque controversy is playing right into our enemies hands, and that the wholesale abandonment of civil liberties we've seen over the last ten years make Our Side a whole lot less worthy of defense, but I'm one of those un-American liberal defeatist types. Myrhaf is a Conservative, a Real American Patriot, a True Son of Liberty, and he thinks that these are both positive developments.

After that, I got nothing. Al-Quaeda is still unpopular pretty much everywhere, and haven't pulled off anything noteworthy in years. The Taliban have less influence, even now, than they did ten years ago. Iran is still an international pariah with limited resources. And all this after seven and a half years in Iraq where we did everything in our power to turn the ideals of Western Democracy into a sad joke.

But if the world at large is much the same, there is one thing that changed over the last decade. Ten years ago, the Middle East barely existed, and bin Laden was a mere figment of domestic politics: an excuse for one of President Clinton's typically ineffective maneuvers to distract America from what really mattered, which was his penis. Then 9/11 happened, and the American Right had to confront the fact that there was a big scary world out there.

That's why Real Americans like Myrhaf think totalitarian Islam is winning. If it was losing, they wouldn't have to think about it.

Objectivists are dumb: Part 1 of a potentially very long series

Exhibit A:

The left has gathered itself, picked itself up and brushed itself off about the Ground Zero Mosque issue. For months it seemed that only opponents of the mosque were saying anything about it. It was not an issue on the left until their man in the White House spoke up about it. Now the left is fighting back.

This is of course complete and utter bullshit.

Yes, you guessed it. Josh Marshall explains it for you:

The institutional Republican party has fully (though with some notable and honorable exceptions) hoisted its sail to xenophobia and religious hatred. And as Halperin notes, at least for motivating their own voters, it’s simply good politics. This is not something anybody happened into.

Well, there you go. Those creeps on the right are appealing to xenophobia and religious hatred because that works with the stupid American people. Marshall’s argument is classic leftist thought: forget any subtleties of the issue, just cut to what is important — how the immoral GOP manipulates the American masses with their lies.

There ARE no subtleties. The builders have the right to build, according to all relevant laws and over two hundred years of American legal tradition. "They're hurting my feelings" isn't an argument, neither is "Muslims scare me". But this is all that the anti-"Mosque" people have seen fit to grace us with. "Xenophobia" and "religious hatred" are ugly words. But when the shoe fits...

Obama’s speech on Friday at the iftar dinner with Muslim ambassadors was steeped in multiculturalism:

In my inaugural address I said that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and every culture, drawn from every end of this Earth. And that diversity can bring difficult debates. This is not unique to our time. Past eras have seen controversies about the construction of synagogues or Catholic churches. But time and again, the American people have demonstrated that we can work through these issues, and stay true to our core values, and emerge stronger for it. So it must be — and will be — today.

In a free nation that protects individual rights, none of this is very important. The controversies between various religions are barely noticed because every individual is equal before the law.

But when a nation throws out individual rights and embraces collectivism — the only thing Obama understands — then groups are of primary importance, for governance becomes a matter of pressure group warfare. A controversy such as the Ground Zero Mosque turns into this group against that group.

In other words, First Amendment is a bad thing because it's sometimes necessary. Therefore, the best way to support individualism is to treat Muslims as an undifferentiated mass. Got it.

Obama’s biggest evasion is that the issue is not first about religion, but politics and war. Islam, in addition to being a religion, is a political ideology — a totalitarian ideology that is waging war as it attempts to conquer the world.

Even granting this characterization of Islam, how is this an argument against treating Islam specially. Pat Robertson isn't promoting a totalitarian political ideology? Catholics really do take direction from a foreign power: should we really allow them to build more churches?

The Ground Zero Mosque would be a symbol of Islam’s victory in a battle in its war for world domination.

And this is a bad bad terrible thing worth trashing two hundred years of American political tradition, how, exactly? If Osama bin Laden sees this as a victory, then bully for him. I remain unclear as to what obligates me to agree with him.

Religion and multiculturalism are used to obscure the essential issue and weaken America in its fight against this totalitarian enemy.

I actually agree with this. Where I differ is in the identity of the totalitarian enemy. International Islam may or may not try to take away my freedoms in the future. Myrhaf and the shameless demagogues he's trying to justify are doing it right now.

The second interesting thing about Obama’s response is that it does oppose the 68% majority of Americans who want the mosque built somewhere else. The majority of Americans are right. Still. They understand that this is about war, not religious rights, and they are still willing to stand up for our national self-defense. They have not entirely let go of their individualist sense of life that Ayn Rand wrote about almost 40 years ago. This is the only good news here, and the American sense of life, tattered and torn as it may be, remains our only hope.

I still don't understand what's so individualistic about 68% of the population pressuring the government to void a private transaction in direct contradiction to its principles as explicitly stated in its founding documents, but no doubt a Real American will explain it to me.

If the American sense of life is so insecure that it becomes indistinguishable from mob psychology at the first hint of trouble, then perhaps it isn't worth very much.