The Truth About Radical Christians
Some of the comments on YouTube concerning this spoof were from people who did not know it was a spoof, or who nodded and agreed that “USA does have a real problem with christian identity groups and superpatriot groups committing terrorism.”
The point of the jest here is that the Left cannot tell the difference between Christianity and radical Islam.
Sadly enough, many not on the Left also cannot tell the difference, and proudly and resolutely maintain that we cannot take any steps against radical Islam, legal or military, which would not also apply equally to Christians.
If we shut down religious school that teach radical terrorism, we have to shut down schools run by Jesuits–we are not legally or morally allowed to make a distinction between friends and enemies.
Allow me to propose the idea that laws and institutions are developed and engineered to specific purposes, and meant to counter specific types of threats. Any threat that does not fall neatly into one of the categories thus engineered is invisible. When that happens, our laws and institutions cannot see and react to such threats. It is as if our brains have not been habituated to react properly; and so we react improperly, or not at all.
The First Amendment in the US Constitution was meant to combat the threat of the establishment of religion; it was a way to end the horrors unleashed by the Reformation and the Counterreformation, and the wars of that era.
The Academic freedom of the Universities of Christendom was meant to allow scholarly inquiry into any fields, without fear of reprisals from royal courts or local barons.
The armed forces were designed to combat nation-states fielding professional armies of uniformed and identified soldiers.
The police were designed to keep order within the borders of a state.
The Geneva Conventions were designed to protect civilians by ensuring both sides in a conflict would adhere to certain limits, including the identification of soldiers by uniforms.
Now, suppose your enemy is not a nation-state, but a decentralized movement of irregulars and amateurs, recruited through churches and through schools, having international links, operating across borders, and fighting my means of (and only by means of) sending un-uniformed agents into crowded places of no military value whatsoever, and setting off human bombs. In other words, what if you are fighting an enemy that commits war crimes and nothing but? What do you do?
If you are more afraid of the establishment of religion, or the repression of religion by your own government, than you are of the enemy, you use the First Amendment to resist any interference with the churches recruiting and organizing the enemy.
If you are more afraid of the loss of academic freedom than you are of the enemy, you allow the enemy schools to continue without hindrance.
If you believe that armies cannot engage non-state actors, such as Barbary pirates, you do not employ the army. If you do employ the army, you do not declare war.
If you believe that every enemy action is an isolated incident with no common cause, common thread, or common pattern, you turn the matter over to the police, who cannot pursue any leads into other nations (particularly nations friendly to the enemy, and giving them tacit or overt aid). If you are more afraid of police brutality than you are of the enemy, you give captured enemies lawyers, civilian trials, and read them Miranda Rights.
In America, if you are on the Right and are more afraid of Obama than you are of the enemy, you resist giving the government any power to investigate or shut down enemy schools and churches for fear that this power will be used immediately against you. You assume (perhaps correctly) the laws and institutions cannot or will not be able to tell the difference between Christians and radical Jihadists.
If you are on the Left, you are more afraid of Bush and the CIA and the military-industrial complex than you are of the enemy. Your whole life has been devoted to stopping one and only one problem: racism, which you see as the paramount source of everything bad in life. You assume (because you have no other category for anything in your brain) that Islam is a race rather than a religion, and that all opposition to Jihad is actually motivated by racism. You will not allow the airlines to follow the security procedures of, for example, El Al, because you are afraid the government will use it to promote institutionalized racism. You are more afraid of racists than you are of the enemy.
Also, if you are on the Far Left, you automatically side with the underdog, the poor, the oppressed, the proletarians, and automatically assume Capitalism is to blame. You have no other category for anything in your brain but the Class Struggle of the Poor against the Exploiters. The idea that the Rich Jews might be the innocent party here, and the Jihadists nothing more than Nazis totalitarian deathmonkeys with Crescents instead of Swastikas does not cannot occur to you — there is no such thing as a Holy War, a Jihad, there is only the Class Struggle, and there is only one enemy, the Capitalist. By this categorization, the Jihadists are automatically poor (even if they are rich) and automatically the side to cheer.
The Jihadists have found a perfect combination of factors meant to paralyze and petrify the laws and institutions of the postchristian, postmilitary, postrational West.
In the age of Unreason, the West cannot make a distinction between friendly Christians and totalitarian Jihadists, and the factions in the West fear and loathe each other more than the fear the enemy.
The enemy will continue to blow up planes and skyscrapers, and we will continue to react by sending human shields overseas to defend potential enemy bomb targets, assigning lawyers to their POW’s, releasing them from Gitmo (thanks, Mr. Bush! That one happened on your watch) so that they can try and try again, et cetera.
Under these rules, categorical limitations, laws, institutions and traditions, the West cannot possibly prevail in this struggle. We must either adjust and adapt to the reality as it is, or grant the Jihadists the hegemony they seek.
You cannot fight an enemy that your laws and institutions renders invisible and nameless to you. You cannot fight an enemy that you fear and hate less than your fear and hate your own leadership.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
