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Gardner: Running over the same old ground
I need a Pink Floyd sound track.
Gardner, Gardner, Gardner:
I keep asking the question and keep being unsatisfied. Regarding your second to last pod on the hypocrasy of the U.S. on political assassination. You're obviously right about the hypocrasy, that doesn't need any further discussion. What I just can't figure out though is why you so meticulously deconstruct the blather of U.S. statists, but simply take at face value the blather of Jihadists. Totally bizarre to me, dude. No, I don't think they want to kill us because they hate us, for whatever reason. But I don't buy for an instant their bull crap about avenging their poor fellow Muslim brothers. Jihadists kill way more of their own Muslim brothers than they do Americans. Maybe if they cared so much about their Muslim brothers they should knock off that. No, Gardner -- and I don't know why you just can't get this -- they are just as fervent statists as any U.S. politican. They just have a different idea of what the state should be: a totalitarian theocracy. The reason that the U.S. is their target of preference is imply that they see its statist ruling class as their main competitor for power. Glamorizing or excusing these people in any way is unworthy of you and a disservice to any of your listeners who may be getting their early introduction to libertarian ideas.
Condemning totalitarian theocrats in no way justifies or excuses the murder of Muslims (or anybody else) by nationalist-mercantilist military assault. It's intellectually possible, ethically right and politically necessary to wish a plague on both their houses.
B.C.ing you (though I'm actually in Thailand)
Cppernicus
Hi, Copernicus!
Your statement is confusing. I don't know where you got the idea that I'm saying Jihadists are anti-state. I've never even gotten close to that line of thought. It's so obvious that most, especially the so-called Islamist leaders, are authoritarian gubment types, it's silly for anyone to even imply anything about it to the contrary! The reason I concentrate on the rationales the Jihadists give for attacking American civilians, and the reason I occasionally have to reiterate those points, is because of what the gubment under which I live keeps telling people are the reasons for Islmac attacks. We hear this stuff all the time, that radical Muslims want to "destroy America", and it is used as a rationale to convince people in the US that their government policy of attacking people in Muslim nations is perfectly acceptable, when it is not. My tax money is being used by the US government to kill people who are innocent victims, in a military conflict that finds its contempory roots in US policy going back fifty years or more. I don't care whether I condemn totalitarian Western theocrats or Eastern theocrats or Western Bureaucrats or Eastern Bureaucrats or whatever. My drive in this subject is to set the record straight regarding why Islamists have been and will continue to attack innocent Americans. I'm not absolving or even addressing their political leaders' authoritarian abuse in Muslim states. I think we can assume that, since these are STATES, there's abuse. My point is to try to shake AMERICANS and OTHER WESTERNERS out of a recusively aggressive, destructive mindset when it comes to thinking that Muslims want to attack Americans because "they hate us". It is incumbent on me to fight the factual fight.
When you state:
"What I just can't figure out though is why you so meticulously deconstruct the blather of U.S. statists, but simply take at face value the blather of Jihadists."
First of all, I don't take the "blather" of Jihadists at face value. It should be obvious in the repeated analyses of thie issue what I do, and have often stated outright. I have stated before in discussing this topic that I don't know whether or not bin Laden believed the points he put out to recruit his Jihadists (the points all having to do with the aggressive policies of the US and its allies). The point is that those he recruited BELIEVED IT, and the US policy gave him that ammunition to recruit. Now, it's possible that Islamists might try to come up with other ideas, but I stress that when you have outside influences attacking your family, there's a natural tendency to want to drive them out, even if your own state isn't so great itself. So while I can't really have much influence on Islamic states to change their policies towards their own people, I can try to explain to people that American gubment intervention in the Middle East is not only taking scratch from me to kill people, but it is inspiringand giving a rationale for blow-back and reflects the hypocrasy of the politicians. I would think that in my history of audios here, one might get the idea that I'm in favor of freedom? So how constructive is it going to be for me to say, "Hey, those guys like Ahmedinejad are bad to their people?" or "Hey, you Arabs, stop crushing political dissent"?
I can't fight that battle. I fight the battle I can influence. And I know that by explaining how US policy inspires this hatred and blow-back, i've changed minds and shown the double-standards of so-called peaceful US politicians. Westerners don't call Iran the land of the free. They call the US that. It is not. I think its important for me to show people the truth about it and tell them why others might not like Americans so much. I'll leave it to others to cover the obviousness of Islamic states.
Let me try again. I just lost my last post due to my crappy Internet connection here in Thailand.
I apprecaite that explanation. What I take from it is that we have different priorities. Which is not to say that we don't agree in the big picture, but we're priotizing differently. You're disturbed by knee jerk anti-muslim attitudes, I'm disturbed by knee-jerk Jihadist hero worship. You'd cite, perhaps Newt G. as an exhibit; I'd cite Noam C. as mine. But you do quote Jihadists as though their propaganda was to be taken at face value. As I said, if they're so upset about the massacre of Muslims, why do they massacre so many Muslims? And anyway, the intellectual roots of Jihadism long predate any U.S. presence in the Middle East. They are totalitarians to the core -- always have been. But I do get what you're saying. I guess I'm looking for more.
It may be that I'm just outgrowing your podcast. I hope that my tendency to only post when I'm annoyed doesn't in any way obscure the fact that your podcast has been a great influence on me and I'm really grateful for it. Howeveer, I guess your priority is still to address people who are where I was a few years ago. Now, I want more nuance and complexity. Perhaps, you feel the need to keep things more straightforward for your newcomers. And, as you say, you feel comfortable with the fight you've defined for yourself. For me -- and maybe this is where one has an advantage of not being a tax cow of the U.S. state -- I'm not prepared to limit myself to that fight. So, maybe I need to look elsewhere.
Still, I wish you all the best in the fight you've chosen. And thank you again for all you've given me. Of course I'll still listen in on occasion, but perhaps I won't be expecting quite so much any more.
Be well.
B.C.ing you
Copernicus
I understand you, C, my man. And I figured you weren't living in the US, where the anti-Muslim rhetoric is poisonous. I also understand your point about not taking the Jihadist rhetoric at face value. But what more can I say than what I already do, when I mention that we don't know whether people like bin Laden actually believe their anti-weest rhetoric?
And your point about the Jihad being longer-standing than the past fifty years is sort-of understood in the point I made above. My point was that the current troubles with contemporary Jihadists attacking the US has everything to do with US policy. In the past, the Jihad was confined to the "Holy Land" as seen by the clerics. Now, the Jihad is being taken to US back yards because of US military and economic involvement since the 1920s (when they established Aramco).
I had to make sure I responded to the breaking story of the Iranian assassination plot being uncovered by the very US government that just engaged in assassination (haven't heard how many others were killed when they took out al Awlaki), and part of that required me to get into what US policy does to enflame hatred of the US.
I concentrate on US or Western policies (UK sometimes or Australia, or EU stuff, of Canadian policies that have turned sour) for a number of reasons. First, I want to show people how the so-called land of the free is not that, and how the so-called "super-powers" and their international money manipulators have screwed up the economy. I try to talk about fundamental economics more than other liberty oriented shows by other producers that might stick mostly to philsophy. I also try to break down certain totemic beliefs Americans have about past "leaders". I suppose I could talk about the Iranian economy or the Arabs' lack of freedom, or the threat of military dictatorship in Egypt, but I just don't feel like that gives us a big bang for our time. It's obvious that those are basket-case states, and it seems clear to me that the religious despots who try to jin up support for their causes might be disingenuous.
It might be worthwhile to go into some history of other, non-west statist troubles. I'd like to do more on the USSR. We'll see. Right now, the US government is pushing hard to get a war started against Iran, and it's important to expose the threats that we can influence. I try to mix education with immediate stories in a way that draws out lessons at the same time that it rings alarm bells about current political moves.
The religious quagmire and the believability of Middle Eastern religious leaders/state leaders is hit upon by neocons a lot, and I have to be careful to not look as if I am buying into their anti-Muslim rhetoric and contributing to their cause of furthering US involvement there. I have to hit back against those who would like to steer Western governments to kill more people in the Middle East. That said, I WILL point out that one can't be cure about the honesty of Islamist leaders, but that doesn't really have a bearing on whether US policies are giving those Islamist leaders fodder to use for reqruitment. That's up to us sods living in the US and the West.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts, dude! Keep studying the stars and fighting for logic, Copernicus!