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2007-07-14 Fifth Column

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Posted by McZoid 2007-07-14 04:13|| || Front Page|| [9 views ] Top

#1 This fool would do us all a GREAT favor if she would renounce her U.S. citizenship and move elsewhere. She doesn't like the U.S. as it is--fine, that's her right. The sooner she's gone to someplace she does like, the happier everyone will be. What a dolt!

Posted by Mac 2007-07-14 09:04|| 2007-07-14 09:04|| Front Page Top

#2 This article contains the essence of what is wrong with the rest of the world.

They insist on treating America as though it is some economic and cultural monolith out to oppress them. They will not, or more likely cannot, conceive of a country where the success (and failure) is a coincidental confluence of millions of INDIVIDUAL decisions.

Their paradigm is based on an omnipotent central government that controls everything. One which, therefore, provides a single bogeyman.

They don't know how to intellectualize the fact that Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Ken Olson, Stephen Spielberg, etc. are not part of nor controlled by (or control) the government.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2007-07-14 09:23|| 2007-07-14 09:23|| Front Page Top

#3 Nothing succeeds like success in arousing envy.
John W. Campbell

Posted by gromgoru 2007-07-14 10:42|| 2007-07-14 10:42|| Front Page Top

#4 I do not even buy the argument that America is hated. While there was a wide ranging dismay at what was perceived to be American radicalization after 9/11 and a rush to war with Iraq, the extent and nature of this temporary dissatisfaction was amplified and distorted by the lens of leftwing mainstream media outfits throughout the world.

Today Germany and France have administrations which are far more conciliatory to America and beside the usual suspects like Iran, Syria, Russia and North Korea we have good high level relations with most nations.

On the micro level, subsequent events in a great many places have demonstrated that the global war against the forces of Islamic extremism is absolutely necessary. It is also now more obvious to most that these forces are not a reaction to America per se, so that diffuses the tendency to associate this country with the centrality of the struggle. And the blood and treasure which this country have expended to attempt to build a functioning democracy in Iraq have also not been overlooked by average citizens in the Arab world.

U.S. humanitarian intervention after the Indonesian tsunami and in a variety of lesser emergencies has helped to reframe America's image, as does the export of new medicines and other products which we have developed. And one more thing should never be forgotten - people still seek to immigrate here in droves, so they clearly recognize and desire the freedom and opportunity which America offers.

Posted by Grumenk Philalzabod0723 2007-07-14 10:53|| 2007-07-14 10:53|| Front Page Top

#5 America is undoubtedly the most hated country in the world for governments and elites. America represents an indefatigable threat to their arbitrary privilege and power. But to the individuals of the world, America is the promise of escape from tyrannies that vary only in degree. When individuals stop risking death to escape from tyranny to America, I'll start to worry about America. Till then, FOAD.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-07-14 11:27|| 2007-07-14 11:27|| Front Page Top

#6 Where to start in this globalist tranzi diatribe.

Existentially, he says, "the US has simply made it too hard for other people to exist. In economic terms, this is a stark reality for the majority of the world's populationthe US has structured the global economy to perpetually enrich itself and reduce non-Western societies to abject poverty."

Those lines should set off some major alarms. They epitomize the Zero Sum Equation so beloved by victim mentality losers. People who are used to authoritarian or socialistic government simply cannot grasp the concept of generating wealth. To such unproductive types, inheritance, grants or patronage are the only recognized channels of capital flow. The notion of entrepreneurial achievement contradicts the accepted norms of government decree or elitist control. It is far more convenient to simply blame their own ills upon an alien methodology than question the validity of whatever repressive system currently enslaves them.

Too many people have figured out that their very existence, as states and as individuals, continues only at our pleasure.

Warmer, he's getting warmer.

America has essentially taken on the role of global God. "America is seen as the prime cause of everything. Nothing seems to move without America's consent; nothing can be solved without America's involvement."

Even warmer!

To Americans, "freedom" means, more than anything, the freedom to choose the future that you desire, and enjoy every opportunity to pursue it. Our Founders recognized that this "pursuit of happiness" was a fundamental good, and an essential quality of a healthy democracy. The suggestion that we've effectively foreclosed that option to the citizens of most of the other countries on earth seems incredible on its face.

Bingo! Anyone else spot the wee problem here? What really rankles the author, as will be seen later, is that America's sheer existence constitutes a standing reprimand to all of the repressive backwater hellholes that rely upon subjugation and opression as tools of state. Our national narrative defines freedom solely because so few other countries enable true liberty. Only the Zero Sum Equation permits inversion of this fact. Indeed, it is incredible that anyone could possibly presume that America disables the democratic process elsewhere.

In reality, the author is quite correct. Much of "their very existence, as states and as individuals, continues only at our pleasure". This is because America possesses the rightful moral authority to eradicate despotism and tyranny wherever we damn well please.

America insists on wielding semantic power to control the very definitions of words like democracy, justice, freedom, human rights, fundamentalism, a free press, terrorism, and so on. In doing this, it deprives other nations of the right to envision and develop their own indigenous versions of these concepts for themselves.

A mere glance at how the vast majority of other nations pervert and distort such ideas as "democracy, justice, freedom, human rights, fundamentalism, a free press, terrorism" is all that's needed to see where this is leading.

They're only allowed to use these words as we define them. And, as a result, the very discourse of human rights, both here and abroad, has become very pinched and narrow.

They only seem "pinched and narrow" because we are so intolerant of those who would broaden their own definition of these important terms to include whatever ideological filth they want to piggyback onto such vital concepts.

Hokay, folks. Ready for the howler? Here it comes.

We find it hard to accept that Muslim nations might develop their own forms of religious democracy that include the imams as a fourth branch of government -- and yet such democracies have existed in the Muslim world for 1500 years.

BANG! There it is. Moral equivalency rears its ugly little head. The author seeks to legitimize the most hideous forms of social injustice, apartheid and repression. He condemns capitalism and other American ideals in an attempt to match them with such genuine depravity as theocracy and totalitarianism. There is no way to elevate such ideological filth as he seeks to defend so his only alternative is to tear down that which constantly belittles the moral decrepitude of his preferred governmental models.

We've developed a view of justice that privileges property and capital; in other parts of the world, justice may be defined in ways that privilege other values, such [as] the health of the community or its common holdings

A powerful stench of socialism begins to rise from this shit.

the fact that we now build Soviet-style gulags and torture people in them

What, no comparisons with Hitler? Slacker!

Another Muslim apologist employs moral relativism so he can avoid the obvious humiliation of having to admit that the Muslim world is an archaic Neandertal assemblage of the very worst tribalism and totalitarian bullshit alive on the face of this earth.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-07-14 11:40|| 2007-07-14 11:40|| Front Page Top

#7 America has essentially taken on the role of global God. "America is seen as the prime cause of everything. Nothing seems to move without America's consent; nothing can be solved without America's involvement."

Very close, but no cigar. I have noticed this myself.

When my relatives have a stroke of good luck, they say "Thank God!" (I mean, beyond the ritual expression that even I use). But when they have bad luck, they never curse God. That would never even occur to them. If they have misfortune, well, that's how life goes; but good fortune (particularly, salvation from some tragedy) is the result of the direct action of God.

In some countries, I suppose, they curse Satan, but I never see that here.

The US has become not God, but anti-God: we are never to thank for salvation, but we are behind every tragedy. We are the Great Satan, if you will. If, as in the tsunami, we are actually the rescuers -- well, that's due to the hand of God. And when the rescue doesn't occur fast enough to suit some people, then that's the fault of the Great Satan again. This absolves people from having to accept responsibility for their own decisions, or to confront those who are really to blame for their misery.

I'm afraid I didn't read very far into her post before I concluded she was a fool. For example, she seems to believe that there was some golden time when we "meddled" in other people's affairs, but even when we made mistakes, they knew that our intentions were good, and respected us anyway. Apparently that evaporated sometime in the 1990s.

Such profound historical ignorance cannot be taken as a serious argument.

I urge everyone to read this account from an American woman who arrived to teach journalism in Kyrgyzstan just before 9/11. Short version: everyone thought the US meddled too much in everyone's affairs, and everyone thought the US should rescue them from their troubles. She wrote a book, too, which I haven't read.

Posted by Angie Schultz 2007-07-14 14:07|| 2007-07-14 14:07|| Front Page Top

#8 Whether the common people hate or love America and Americans, the elites certainly make use of it. Mr. Wife has been working round the world for his employer for two decades, and he says he's never heard such animus as in the past few years. It has cost the company materially as well as making things more awkward for himself, he explained to me. The elites find a certain short-term profitability in America-baiting, and no real cost downside, I suspect.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-14 14:58|| 2007-07-14 14:58|| Front Page Top

#9 ...cosmological imperialism

Sardar just doesn't understand how difficult it is doing God's work.

Posted by JohnQC 2007-07-14 15:08|| 2007-07-14 15:08|| Front Page Top

#10 Sardar is one of the key players in the Left/Muslim alliance. I have one of his books called, "Barbaric Others: A Manifesto of Western Racism."

The notion of "political correctitude" is a leftist creation, that came directly from Sardar/Talal Asad/Edward Said psychobabble against "representation of the other." Here is how Sardar corrects Christopher Columbus: "Through his enduring claim to the status of discoverer is the very Otherness of the peoples he made known to Europe, his discovery eventually reduced itself to a conscious work of creative invention through which Indians were fabricated anew out of a historic set of medieval European ideas. Faced with real people whose manners and mores were beyond his experience, he set about charting their similarities and differences, employing the anthropology of medieval Christiandom and its convention of the monstrous races, and using Europe as the base and norm for comparison. From the storehouse of the ideologies, imageries and expectations of medieval conventions employed in describing Arawak and Taino, Columbus invented people other that the Arawak and Taino he encountered."

Just a reminder: Muslims obliterated more native cultures than any other force in history. We don't need lectures from those natural born killers.

Posted by McZoid 2007-07-14 15:40|| 2007-07-14 15:40|| Front Page Top

#11 Angie, your article is behind a subscriber barrier.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-14 15:41|| 2007-07-14 15:41|| Front Page Top

#12 If America is such an imperialist, why has immigration become such a problem for the U.S.? Must be something here for foreign born people. The next time there is an earthquake, tsunami or famine look to someone else for help. Puedo-intellectual leftish drivel and drool.

Posted by JohnQC 2007-07-14 15:58|| 2007-07-14 15:58|| Front Page Top

#13 Like the Milwall Football Club supporters chant: "Everyone hates us and we don't care". Penis envy if you ask me.

Posted by Jack is Back!">Jack is Back! 2007-07-14 17:21|| 2007-07-14 17:21|| Front Page Top

#14 Angie, your article is behind a subscriber barrier.

Hmm! This one says "free". Does that work? Here's a blog with a good excerpt. But here's my favorite part:

"America got what it deserved because it always meddles in everyone else's business," exclaimed a senior named Rada...

"What 'meddling' are you talking about?" I asked.

They all shouted at once: Vietnam, Bosnia, Serbia, Haiti, Somalia, Iraq...

I interrupted the litany: "If Uzbekistan invaded Kyrgyzstan to annex the Kyrgyz part of the Fergana Valley, what would you want the United States to do?"...

"You must defend us," they said.

"But we can't," I responded. "That would be meddling."

"Oh, no, it would be different if the Uzbeks invaded. You wouldn't be meddling. You would be defending us."

Posted by Angie Schultz 2007-07-14 17:28|| 2007-07-14 17:28|| Front Page Top

#15 That last is mine.

Posted by no mo uro 2007-07-14 18:38|| 2007-07-14 18:38|| Front Page Top

#16 We find it hard to accept that Muslim nations might develop their own forms of religious democracy that include the imams as a fourth branch of government -- and yet such democracies have existed in the Muslim world for 1500 years.

Dang, Zen (#6), and all I was gonna say about this one lame-o sentence was that she's given Islam about 200 extra years of existence. Founded in the late 600's, at most it's around 1340 or so years old. But, I'm just picking nits on a huge, stinking pile left by an Indian Elephant, so who am I to pick nits?

Posted by BA 2007-07-14 20:29|| 2007-07-14 20:29|| Front Page Top

#17 Leftists always have the longest freaking screeds. On and on and on.

Posted by Brett 2007-07-14 20:42|| 2007-07-14 20:42|| Front Page Top

#18 That one worked, Angie. Thanks! A good article. Like antisemitism, anti-Americanism is a substitute for those incapable of higher philosophy.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-07-14 23:15|| 2007-07-14 23:15|| Front Page Top

23:27 RD
23:26 trailing wife
23:22 House demoC*raps
23:21 Barbara Skolaut
23:17 trailing wife
23:15 trailing wife
23:14 Anonymoose
22:54 CrazyFool
22:43 anymouse
22:09 Angereger Jones7671
21:59 Mullah Lodabullah
21:52 Monty
21:52 JDB
21:51 wxjames
21:47 Iblis
21:39 Frank G
21:27 macofromoc
21:25 Leigh
21:07 FOTSGreg
21:04 Darrell
21:00 BA
20:55 Zenster
20:52 Nimble Spemble
20:44 BA