Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Dr. Bruce Thornton at Hoover Institution writes lucidly reviewing a volume of essays, collected and published posthumously, by the celebrated John Barrett Kelly. I commented:
So the first goal of a reinsertion, now devoid of conventional assumptions, which are delusional, of American/European (aka Christian) modes of reason and liberality into the ME is to hang/shoot/mew up the mullahs. Every last one of them.
With respect, only details of the dangerous illusions infecting Christian (aka Western) postures towards Islam are not widely understood. That those postures are dangerously infected IS widely understood, even by liars promulgating them. The clear, confident composition of this essay by Dr. Thornton illustrates how widely, easily and accurately the dangerous illusions ARE recognized AND understood. So, what is to be done now — and not just academically — assuming even only a partial lifting of illusions while striving for a full one?
What now, today, constitutes an illusion-free use of American — not to mention European, Indian, Russian and Southeast Asian — diplomatic, financial and military force — the three components of Statecraft — in the Middle East?
That is the question on Americans’ minds and visible American leadership is not addressing much less answering it. At that question, for example, we expect Democrats, as they continue doing, to spout delusional cliches while secretly fostering crones and cronies on all sides of any conflict. But even Republicans have no answer which is not known as either misdirection or cliched delusion. And Independents and Libertarians recoil from statecraft at the service of national defense, aka sovereignty.
I think this is where academics can help today: lay out for public — not just academic — perusal and discussion delusion-free action plans for deploying American statecraft — diplomacy, finance, war-fighting — in the Middle East.
Eleven hours later, again I commented:
I expected far more comments than show, to include an Instalanche. OK, then: settled science: Islam and the West (aka, the Latin and Greek Churches) are incompatible. So let’s get to it, with the briefest, most decisive and long-lasting submission of Islam to the fundamentals of humanity and history.
Two days later a commenter said that best USA course is to withdraw from the ME. The point is not without merit so I commented on it:
Detaching would be reasonable but not responsible. The reasonable and responsible course would be USA/West/Latin and Greek Church cultures defeat hostile Muslim armed forces and occupy countries in which they were defeated for as long as it takes for the locals to raise their families, learn the intrinsic value of individuals and their inalienable rights, build out their schools, economies and militaries, etc. They cannot do that with mullahs and other monsters on their backs.
USA labors come a cropper because they are manipulative rather than clean. Statecraft, fundamentally, is to defeat or detach from but not to manipulate a hostile force. So yes, you are right sensing the reasonableness of detaching. And there is also the matter of responsible-ness. Too much history between the USA/Europe and MENA — since before USA formal founding — for detach, at least at macro scale, to be both reasonable AND responsible.
Labor improbus omnia vincit.
The goal is to restore and expand the wealth of America.
The means are to defeat or detach, but not to manipulate.
Update 1: Scott Johnson: John Kerry’s Absolute Idiocy.
Update 2: Pope Francis’ Encyclical Is About More Than Climate Change.
Update 3: Southern Poverty Communist Law Center put ten American women on its hit list.
Update 4: Richard Fernandez: A Washington elite accustomed to adjusting reality by manipulating the narrative is now up against the limits of pretense.
Update 5: A leftie rag now wants American boots on the ground against ISIS. They must feel the beheading knife getting too close. They are right about that and will never admit that their general frame of reference made it so.
Update 6: Goodnight Vienna
Update 7: Michael J. Totten really does not get Iran, but this of his is worthy of the exercise of criticizing and useful for historical content none-the-less.
Update 8: More insanity: up-arming MENA states knowing they lack ability to use them intelligently or diligently.
Update 9: The Real Deal
Update 10: Reconstituting The Militia
Update 11: Why The American Church Should Go Off The Grid
Update 12: Michael Walsh: So, That Bosnian Thing Sure Worked Out Well For Christendom
Update 13: Michael Walsh: As the Pope Releases Laudato Sii, Get Ready For Another Wave of Anti-Catholicism On The Right
Update 14: Charles Hill On The Iran Deal
Update 15: Mark Moyar: Lurching Without Direction
Update 16: Strategy by cocaine and marijuana, and Prozac
Update 17: Richard Fernandez: That Old Time Religion
Update 18: The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits [spoiler: helps rich, hurts poor]
Update 19: The American posture would be to ally with Russia in Syria, take out both Assad and ISIS, hold Iran at her border and beat her out of Iraq, help al-Abadi quiet and impartial-ize Iraq, invite India to join their alliance, tell other MENA governments to shut up and get out of the world’s face or else and then the three amigos, Russia, USA and India, pivot to face down humanity’s big and serious enemy; China.
Update 20: Institute For The Study Of War: ISIS’s Global Strategy: 2015
Update 21: Dr. Ben Carson and Muslim Islamophobes
Update 22: The actuality of women in the Israeli Defense Force
Update 23: Counter-Terrorism: The Origins Of Islamic Terrorism
Update 24: “Why would I tell you about this?” the imam said. “They’re not terrorists,” he said of the radicals. “They just hate the U.S. government.” Related.
Update 25: Daniel Greenfield: The Left’s Manufactured Muslim Crisis
Update 26: Leadership: The Key To The Baltics (Russia testing and training in Syria and Ukraine)
Update 27: George Handlery addresses the question, What is a nation state?
Update 28: Steven Hayward: I’d say that the problem he described [pride and group-think among academics] is at least an order of magnitude worse in universities today.
I commented:
I must disagree with that assessment. I remember Murray and I was in the universities at the time he published these quotes of his. The problem Murray described is no worse now than it was then, just more widely visible and remarked, because of the web. And the cause of the problem is the pride of scholarship, the hardest of all types of pride to disappear.
The prides of youth, beauty, wealth, gender, accomplishment and prestige fade away on their natural course in time. The pride of scholarship does not. It is like ego, ever young unless deliberately crucified. Its surcease requires actual breakage and that only by a scholar harboring the disease. Thus St. Francis was appalled when some Brothers opened a college in — I think it was ?? — Bologna, who already had their own old and famous one.
Someone composed this paraphrase some years ago:
In days of old,
When knights were bold,
And teachers still loved learning,
They told the truth,
Even if uncouth,
And went on unconcerning.
Update 29: L. Todd Wood: Putin Getting Played By China, Needs A Deal With Trump
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
