It’s Only Controversial If America’s Involved
Another Koran controversy. That it somehow involves the U.S. and its military should go without saying. How would it possibly be controversial otherwise?
All across the Muslim world at the hands of their own, Mosques are desecrated with fire and bullets. Muslim individuals are butchered in all manner of barbaric ways. And Koran’s? Well, you’ll find pay phone yellow pages in red light districts that are treated with more reverence. But none of that raises the merest whiff of ire from Islamists or the Left.
Now though, with the involvement of the United States, the usual suspects threaten once more to trample one another in their stampede to proclaim themselves sensitive to yet another Western outrage.
That Islamic Fascists engage in such behavior is wholly understandable, if no less repugnant. After all, an ideology that desires nothing less than the complete subjugation of the entire world, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, before a Caliphate lead Theocracy, is hardly going to blush at employing hypocrisy of even the most whorish kind.
But what of the Left? What is it that they get by legitimizing the manufactured outrage of those who would quite happily see them dead or enslaved?
Is it simple opportunism? A belief that by delegitimizing Conservative identification of the Islamist threat, they will direct power back to themselves at the ballot box? That may be a part of it. But if it is, then it stands purely as an ancillary benefit of a driving psychosis that demands reality be distorted in the most self-serving way imaginable.
Of course, this a sin to which those on the Conservative side of the political spectrum are not immune. Indeed we all fall prey at times to painting ourselves in an overly flattering light. Even if deep down we suspect we may have acted a bit of a twerp. But the psychologically mature individual draws the line at fabricating a reality that stands dangerously opposed to the world at large, and those individuals within it who wish them ill.
Down through history, civilization after civilization has fallen before aggressors whose hearts beat with rapacious greed for the treasure of land, lives and gold.
Always, such lusts have been painted less base through the use of injustices, whether exaggerated or wholly concocted.
And always, of those who were faced with this aggression, a certain number could be relied upon to employ the same moral and intellectual self-aggrandizement that is the province of the Left today.
In the minds of such people, the threat, if indeed there was such a threat at all, was an entirely manageable and oft times, wholly understandable one.
For such people, appeasement, was not seen as a fundamental capitulation that would only embolden an enemy. Rather, such an act was the exclusive privilege of the civilized man. For only he could extend his hand in benevolent condescension to the savages unable to control themselves.
In this fatal conceit, the question was never asked: Do those whose aggression I patronize and indulge, view me as I view myself, or do they see me as weak, and easy prey?
It is a question which is still not asked by the Left today when it comes to their dealings with Islamic Fascism.
The fundamental difference now of course is, the stakes are so much higher. Technological advancements have given mankind much that is of benefit, but also, they enable just one man to personally inflict truly nightmarish levels of death and destruction.
A forgiving heart might be tempted to ascribe simple ignorance to the Left’s penchant for minimizing or excusing behavior wholly antithetical of the individual freedom necessary for the existence of Western democracy.
Certainly it is impossible to imagine any of today’s Liberal talking heads facing a situation in which they were forced to deal personally, even physically, with another who wished them unjust harm.
Could not this inexperience then explain their ignorance as to the ramifications of their actions?
No. It could not.
There are examples such as Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, two American hikers imprisoned in Iran for two years on trumped up espionage charges. Who upon their release proceeded to trash America, whilst talking with forgiving moral equivalency of the regime that had just demonstrated to them forcibly that the freedoms they were raised in are by no means a universal human condition.
But really, are such needed? A child confronted by a bully in the playground understands in that moment when violence is immediately before them, that to condescend or legitimize such, is to ensure being beaten bloody. And that the only thing likely to stay the bully’s hand, is a fear of the consequences they will face. Especially if those consequences are sure to be even bloodier in turn.
The idea then that an adult would not recognize these dynamics is purely preposterous. What drives this patently suicidal behavior of the Left then, is not ignorance. But rather, a very conscious decision that self-veneration trumps all. Even when it comes to dealing with those who would take not only our freedom from us, but our very lives.
Remember that the next time you hear such an individual talk with abhorrence of your right to bear arms.
Vaughan Starr is a freelance writer. Professional inquiries may be directed to mrvstarr@gmail.com