Razib Khan has a post up responding to something Ezra Klein posted regarding the Paris incident. First here’s the Ezra Klein piece. This is the bit that got Razib exorcised:
These murders can’t be explained by a close read of an editorial product, and they needn’t be condemned on free speech grounds. They can only be explained by the madness of the perpetrators, who did something horrible and evil that almost no human beings anywhere ever do, and the condemnation doesn’t need to be any more complex than saying unprovoked mass slaughter is wrong.
This is a tragedy. It is a crime. It is not a statement, or a controversy.
Razib first wonders if Klein had some sort of aneurism while writing that bit. Maybe he is unfamiliar with Klein’s work, but that piece was probably one of the better ones from the Vox project. I have no idea what sort of traffic the site gets, but no one ever mentions it, unless it is to mock Ezra Klein. Even the mockery has faded, for the most part. Anyway, Razib goes on to make an excellent point:
This co-mingling of religious and communal identity is not an aberration, but the human norm over most of history. In much of the world it still is the norm. Dishonoring the gods of barbarians and unbelievers has long been a matter of course. Churches were built over temples and mosques over churches for a reason. To show the power of one communal identity and the eclipse of another. Gods and people were interchangeable in the psyche. When the Assyrians sacked Babylon they dragged away the statue of the god Marduk in chains. But individuals dishonoring the gods of their own people was always a matter of serious concern, violating public order, and potentially undermining social harmony (often, innovation in religious practice prefigured rebellion). It doesn’t take much to imagine that there might be functional reason for societies to establish taboos of what is inviolate and sacred, and sanction those who trespass.
It is incorrectly assumed that religions must have an invisible man in the sky component. Dividing theology from ideology by the presence or absence of the super natural is convenient, but leads to the false assumption that ideologies are devoid of magical thinking. That’s not the case.
The most obvious example is PETA, the cult that claims to be the guardians of non-human mammal rights. The adherents of that cult imagine all sorts of things about animals that are laughably untrue. They also proselytize about the killing of animals, while running abattoirs all over the country.
Ezra Klein is a conventional liberal and of middling intelligence. He is not a blockhead, but he has a narrow mindedness that suggests a lack of curiosity about the world. He’s also overstocked with religiosity. It’s why his posts often sound like the journal entries of a rabbinical student or the private musings of a novice monk. He is forever wrestling with his faith.
Luckily for him, the prevailing religion of modern America is cultural Marxism so he has found a comfortable place to cast himself as a post-modern Tertullian. He has organized his life around proselytizing over the Internet. As a novice he worked his way up to a major media organ, but that was not enough. He went off to build his own Mosque called Vox where he can pray and train others to believe like him. It’s not a coincidence that cultural Marxism has many of the same structures as Islam.
Of course, Ezra really does not believe the things he preaches in the sense that he knows them to be true. I know two plus two is four for all known values of two. There’s no need for me to argue it or prove it. The reason for proselytizing is to convince yourself by convincing others. Misery loves company and so do the believers. Vox in explanatory journalism in the same sense that Shia is explanatory Islam.
One fascinating thing about the Paris attack is watching how the Left reacts to it. At some level, it seems they get that they are at war with a complimentary religion. As Razib points out, every religion has its taboos. Much of what modern liberalism preaches is taboo in Islam. What is sacred in Islam is considered barbaric by liberals.
The trouble is the Left can’t bring itself to condemn Islam. That’s simply against the core of their faith. Islam does not suffer from such a defect. They get that they are a religion at war with another religion. Hilariously, even when Islam makes that point, liberals are forced to call them liars and inauthentic Muslims.
Added to the crazy stew is the fact that western liberals have a technological edge and are killing Muslims wholesale. Muslims have to settle for retail killing, like the Paris attack. The simple solution is to expel all Muslims for Western lands, but again, they bump into their own dogma prohibiting such things. The result is a surge in Muslim immigrants, hell bent on killing the decadent West.
This will not end well.
“…oscillated from asymptote to asymptote.” Brilliant
The democratic mind rejects, too terrifying to consider, the observation that people are fundamentally different at the level of their DNA. Muslims are not the sole inbreeders in the middle east. It has been seen that Christian Arab populations in Europe are also behaving badly.
Islam my be a suitable religion for an inbred and insular people who are bred to be ruled at the level of the clan, and like it. It is no kindness to drop them into the cauldron of an epoch civilization in decay. T E Lawrence wrote of Arabs–This people was black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes. They inhabited superlatives by choice. Sometimes inconsistents seemed to posses them at once in joint sway; but they never compromised: they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity. With cool head and tranquil judgement, imperturbably unconscious of the fight, they oscillated from asymptote to asymptote.
How many anecdotals does it take to make up a “disturbing trend”?
If “campus rape” can magically turn into “1in5” can the same “math” be cited elsewhere?
Unrealized privilege of the majority, or something?
Math is hard.
Even the Moslems who wouldn’t commit violence on the infidels themselves, are quite happy to see it taken care of by the strict adherents. I have always said that Islam is incompatible with Western Civilization. Unfortunately we can’t let them be when they are busy plotting the West’s demise. We will have the luxury of letting them be, in their various barbaric pest holes, when they are prevented from further immigrating to any Western nation, and we issue an ultimatum to those already here: assimilate or get the hell out. The West is at a cross-roads here, it’s time the Leftists woke up to that.
Zman: I think it was Lawrence (he of Arabia) who said the problem with the Arab mind is it sees no grey (gray) so all issues are either black or white. With no tolerance factor built in, they will by their nature either be all for one thing or absolutely set against it. Negotiation and compromise have achieved a lot in the west, but it is alien to the tribes.
Seems a lottery which type turns up in the west wanting to be housed, fed and soothed.
I would disagree here somewhat: Muslims have been killing Muslims for centuries, and they still do. However quite why the west chose to get involved in their continual wars is a mystery to me: it just gave the endlessly warring tribes another target.
I am not sure all muslims are hell bent on killing the west as you say. The smart among them understand that the “the state you hate” provides the better living opportunities. No one wants to go back to the lands of fly-infested camel’s rears. Trouble is that even if there is only 1 per cent of the adherents who get ‘radicalised’ and want to kill for fun and glory, that still adds up to a lot of people itching to get their hands on a Kalashnikov.
That’s probably more people than the west would admit, and as the left — who strive to run nations and influence policies — cannot admit anything but the mindless parrot-like repetition of their ‘core beliefs’ then we aren’t going to get very far.
No, it isn’t going to end well and it’s hard to see how it will end. You always hope each muslim atrocity will finally galvanise our ‘leaders’ into seeing things as they are, but each one merely seems to boost flower sales and generate hashtag solidarity.
UKer,
I don’t disagree. It is vastly more complicated than I let on, but brevity is the soul of a blog. I think the general outlines are thus:
1) Islam is incompatible with the West. I don’t just mean our current modes of governance, which is sure the case. There’s a reason Islam never caught on with the West, despite ample opportunities. It scratches no itch that exists amongst the natives of Europe. Islam evolved where it did for the people where it did.
2) Arabs, like people everywhere, vary in their degree of religiosity. There are plenty of secular Muslims who are not terribly interested in Islam, political or otherwise.
3) Trying to convert Muslim countries to Westernism, Cultural Marxism and the like is inviting trouble we don’t need. Similarly, inviting Muslims into western lands is inviting trouble for no good reason. The policy of the west should be isolation of Islam in the 50 some odd countries it dominates. Leave them be.