The left here seems enamored of and self-impressed with the efficacy and supremacy of their own emotions and emotional displays, as though raw feelings and pitiful act-outs will justify and ensure their very worth, righteousness, and victory over us.

But I've always maintained that they haven't seen anything yet.
J. Peden | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 10:01 am | #

Excellent, again!!
Guilt vs Shame
When was the last time you heard any politician say they were proud to be American? It's always, 'yes, we've made mistakes..."
How many times have you heard the left say the terrorists are angry because of our 'foreign policies'?
Or 'we're creating more terrorists by being in Iraq'?
The 'enemy' knows us. OBL said we would come to Afganistan but would not sustain a battle and lose the war because we do not want to die for our ideals. OBL said we would be sent home to our defeat. America would destroy itself. We ARE entering a period of 'constant revolution'.
xqqme | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 10:31 am | #

I understand that your professional interest is the understanding of psychological motivations. I understand that your goal is to work to covert dysfunctional motivations to functional ones. Your own analysis has repeatedly concluded that the Islamics are not about to be "cured" no matter what we do. Why then continue with the analysis?

When a dog, who is a known repeated attacker and biter, enters your property barking, snarling, and starting to attack, do you analyze why or simply kill the dog. Any person who wants to live and remain uninjured would kill the dog. Why is it any different for the barking, snarling, attacking Islamics? Why not learn from their actions and words that they mean us harm and simply eliminate THEM as we would any rabid dog? They worship death so lets give it to them wholesale.

If not now, when?
A. Rational Human | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 11:09 am | #

We turn the other cheek first, ARH.

Always.


The part of that action that is always misunderstood is that a man only has two cheeks.

The second slap will be their last.


.
The Machine | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 11:35 am | #

Doc, that is an absolutely wonderful esposition of where we are and what is likely to happen. It is terribly important to be as simple and clear as you have been.
If I may, VDH mistakes the Western Civ 10% for the irrational and therefore the barbaric. It is the most rational. This is the response of instinct to instinct. Without that, no one and no culture is permitted to pass on it's genes. This is not negotiable by faux rationalizations. Ironical, it is virtually the only reality the Islamist understand or respond to.
james wilson | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 11:48 am | #

DIDN'T THEY GET THE MEMO?

It's odd that Postmodernism could have arisen in the same academic environment as Quantum Mechanics.

As science gets closer to the Truth, philosophy flees ever further away. While modern science is showing that materialism and the notion that "G-d is dead" are themselves quite dead, philosophers are still dining on a mulligen stew of the carcases of long dead ideologies.

Here you will find a delightful audio lecture by Professor Keith Ward who clearly shows how modern physics is forced to acknowledge the demise of the very materialism which post modernist philosophers can't bear to part with.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.a...108& EventId=271

Actually, I think they got the memo but when the read it they looked at the messanger and said, "Who else knows about this?" And, since few did, and it wasn't going to affect their paychecks in the forseeable future, why change?

Where there is no accountability, there is no improvement.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 11:53 am | #

Thanks for your clarification of how they define "victory." It explains why, when the first Gulf War was terminated without a clear defeat of Saddam, he said "Then we've won."
ytba | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 12:27 pm | #

The Islamist have already won, the islamist won in 1979 when they over ran the American embassy and America did nothing.
Islam won when Kieth Hakim Ellison was elected by the state of Minnesota.
Our Politicians look at Islam and see raw power over the masses and Bubba that's what the demos and repubs want for them selves.
Power of life and death on their political adversaries and the very people that the politicians claim to represent.
Power the leadership can proclaim as Allah's will.
Power that can be used to enforce their view of the world, stop global warming or deal with abortion all by the barrel of a gun or IED.
The question for each of us now is, SUBMIT TO ISLAM, PAY THE TAX OR DIE.
My bet is most Americans will submit become Moslems or pay the tax. Americans love life and easy living too much to die.
Barry | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 12:28 pm | #

I knew Islam was winning when the Marines built a Mosque at Quantico Marine base.
Barry | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 12:30 pm | #

ARE THE POSTMODERN LEFTISTS ALSO SHAME BASED?

It would seem so. Remember Kerry, as he is criticizing Bush's Nat., Guard service, saying "How dare they criticize my service," even though it wasn't Bush but those who served with him (including most of his commanders) who did while Bush (I think, foolishly) defended Kerry.

And it's the same with the others. Klinton can say what he wants about others, but when someone asks him about his own activities he explodes in a rage.

So, I am guessing that since they, like the Islamists who live in a Twilight Zone where everyone creates his/her own fragile reality regardless of what goes on around them, probably share some of the same "shame based" behavior.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 12:35 pm | #

DEFEATIST BARRY, TAKE NOTE

"But what the Iranian theocrats, like the al-Qaedists, never fully fathom is that if the American people conclude that their freedom and existence are at stake, they are capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 7th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad." -- Victor Davis Hanson

The dire consequences of not understanding the motivations and behaviors of a shame culture are paralleled by the shame culture's inability to understand the motivations and behaviors of the democratic and freedom-loving Western mind.

But don't you know, no culture can claim to be better than another culture, so we really can't criticize the Iranians one bit! Everyone is as good or bad as everyone else! Criminals are in prison but it isn't their fault, it's that of society....

Any other answer and you're a BIGOT! And there's no worse crime than that! Better to shoot three dozen people a hundred times than be a bigot! Because that shooter is just a victim, too, whereas a bigot is automatically a criminal!
Solomon2 | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 4:11 pm | #

VDH said: "And military history shows that the irrational ten percent of the Western mind is a lot scarier in the end than anything Islamic fanaticism has to offer." Yeah, and wait until they get a load of what kind of leverage technology has to offer.
Unscripted Thoughts | Email | Homepage | 04.30.07 - 10:10 pm | #

"democratic and freedom-loving" What? Democratic, freedom loving? The whole story of the 20th century has been a rebellion, an attempted repudiation and abandonment, in every way possible, in every direction concievable, of democracy and freedom. Only the bravery of some Americans and some Englishmen kept the world from falling to tyrrany I don't know how many times this past hundred years.
Aaron | Email | Homepage | 05.01.07 - 8:10 am | #

http://www.spiritualprogressives...hp? page=peacead

An Ethical Way to End the War in Iraq.
xqqme | Email | Homepage | 05.01.07 - 2:16 pm | #

Xqqme,

I'm sorry, but I don't see anything spiritual, ethical, or progressive about putting on a blond wig and pink stiletto boots while fellating bin Laden.
R S | Email | Homepage | 05.01.07 - 2:34 pm | #

The battle of Verdun was over before the US even entered the war! It is of course true that US forces fought near Verdun later in the war, but those actions are not, nor have they ever been, considered part of the "Battle of Verdun."

As for Dresden, Feb 13th to 15th 1945: first raid 1,000 RAF Lancasters, second raid 530 RAF Lancasters, third raid 300 USAAF B-17s, fourth raid 200 USAAF B-17's.

First week of March 1945: first raid 400 USAAF B-17's. April 1945: 575 USAAF B-17's.

Total: @1,500 RAF bombers, @1,500 USAF bombers.

However, given that what people are referring to when they talk about the horror of Dresden are the three days or so in February 1945, 1,500 RAF bombers v.s 500 USAAF bombers

"the American people conclude that their freedom and existence are at stake, they are capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 7th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. The barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden and Hiroshima prove that well enough."

Verdun and Dresden prove no such thing and I have never heard anyone refer to Dresden or Verdun as "American battles."

There are much better, "purer" examples to use to make the point...like Guadalcanal, Bastogne, Iwo Jima...
Simon-Peter Vickers-Buckley | Email | Homepage | 05.03.07 - 1:34 am | #

Simon-Peter,

I think the point is not to make exact American points, but to show what Western Man is capable of.

The fire bombing of Japanese cities is probably the best American example - with Hiroshima and Nagasaki the exclamation point.

The generals bombing Japan were worried. They were running out of cities to destroy. As I recall they figured that by Nov. or Dec. of '45 there would be no major targets worth bombing.

Heck, the atom bomb guys were worried. The production rate was only about 3 a month. Not enough to sustain a bombing campaign.

Consider the state of mind required to think like that.

These islamo nut jobs do not want to continue tickling the dragon. We will get all industrial on them.
M. Simon | Email | Homepage | 05.04.07 - 6:06 am | #

Fair point...conflating western civ and the US?

For my next trick, the British Infantry at Bull Run showed how resiliant they can be if led by decent officers...er, I meant Waterloo, but whose counting?

I'm kidding, really. I think you are right though...I would hate to be them if they do something really stupid in the US...

I just don't know why we don't apply the soviet method: kill their families if we can't get them.Oh yes, it won't work, they're insane.
Simon-Peter Vickers-Buckley | Email | Homepage | 05.04.07 - 4:47 pm | #

I meant who's.
Simon-Peter Vickers-Buckley | Email | Homepage | 05.04.07 - 4:48 pm | #

I wonder what our critical mass is. When the video of Daniel Pearl was released, I swallowed hard and told my husband, "They've sown the wind... they'd better be ready to reap the whirlwind." But - nothing. Nothing of any great significance.

What are we? Are we good or evil? Are we (this scares me) the parent or spouse who is patient, patient, patient, right up until the moment when s/he explodes in rage and doesn't "just" slap or hit but punch and bludgeon? Or - because we're a society and a philosophy and not one person - once we've reached critical mass and exploded and devastated our target, do we quickly return to patient, patient, patient? The example of Japan would argue for the latter, and I very sincerely hope that's the correct scenario, much as I see the struggle between Enlightenment liberalism and Islamism as an existential one. I don't want Islam itself to pass from the earth, and I don't want that much blood on Western hands either.

Yikes.
Jamie | Email | Homepage | 05.04.07 - 6:59 pm | #

It seems to me that the Left has regressed back to the Tribalist/Shame level, even when they're not in denial.
Larry | Email | Homepage | 05.07.07 - 12:37 pm | #