How do you tell the good Christians from the bad Christians, Richard?
Surely you know that bad Christians exist. I suggest you use the same
method you would apply to Christians.
Ed
On Nov 2, 2008, at 3:29 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
R C Macaulay wrote:
These people have their religious mandate to kill us. You try
separating the good muslims from the bad ones because I can't see
the difference.
Not a problem! Not long ago, by historical standards, most Japanese
people had it in for us, and were determined to kill Americans. It
was more or less a religious thing -- Emperor worship, in their
case. I knew a good many of them, although they are mostly dead by
now. They fell into two groups, easily recognizable:
1. People who were formerly committed to killing Americans, but who
no longer felt that way. This was the vast majority.
2. People who still have it in for us, and/or the Russians, Chinese,
Koreans, and anyone else they went to war with in the 1930s and 40s.
They are mostly tattooed gangsters (yakuza) who drive around in
large trucks playing military music at high volume, to cause trouble
and bother the neighborhood. You can't miss 'em. In 1990, one of
them shot the mayor of Nagasaki, because he said the Emperor was not
god and was partly responsible for the war.
I never have had any difficulty telling peaceful Japanese people
from war-mongerers, and I am sure I would have no difficulty
identifying Muslims who want to kill us.
Such people exist in every country, and every society, including our
own. But the numbers are usually small. There are many in the Muslim
societies at present because these societies are undergoing a
crisis. There is a civil war going on in Saudi Arabia, and in
Afghanistan. It is a fight between modernity (science, rationality
and technology) and a fanatical version of religion. Those wars
spilled over into the U.S. in the 9/11 attack. Fundamentally, they
have little to do with us. We just happen to be in the line of fire,
you might say.
There were many brutal fanatics in Japan in the 1930s because they
were undergoing a similar crisis, and in the U.S. in the 1860s for
the same reason. Such crises never last long. Either the society
recovers and acts civilized again, or it goes too far and destroys
itself. Pre-war Japanese society destroyed itself in 1941 at Pearl
Harbor, and the Confederacy died at Gettysburg in 1863. Sooner or
later, Saudi Arabia will either recover or destroy itself. It cannot
go on in a war with modernity for decades. When it recovers, the
threat to us will recede. That will happen a lot sooner if we stop
using oil and bankrupt them.
I think the notion that we are in a second cold war that will last
for decades is absurd, and without foundation.
- Jed
