William, shame on you !

About: William F. Buckley One Flag Too High

source: William F Buckley

Two challenges are posed. The first is relatively manageable: Lower the flag on American universalism -- not to half mast, but not as toplofty as it has been flying since the end of the Second World War. The second is tougher. Why is Islam burning bright? What on earth do they have that we don't get from Christ our King? If what they want is a religious war, are we disposed to fight it?

To answer your absurd question ... NO ! The first Americans came to this country to escape religious persecution. We have engraved the principal of religious tolerance in the first amendment of our constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". So now do you expect Americans to reject the principal of religious tolerance and go on some kind of holy war against Islam abroad ... why, because it is "burning bright"? No, William, that is not what we are as Americans. You should be ashamed of your self. Go stand in the corner!

To be fair to Buckley he did offer an alternative: "Lower the flag on American universalism". Are there any quotes in this man's writings that indicate whether he was serious about that as the preferred alternative? Personally i have never been a fan of American universalism, so i have no problems with that alternative ... after all this is not primarily an American problem ... me thinks that its perception as such is an error. Perhaps someone who has a stronger stomach for Buckley's brand of Conservatism could find actual quotes in his writings that would answer my question. Or Buckley could come here and defend his own honor. We'll stay up late tonight watching for that

Comments

Seth says

M 2006-07-16 09:25:52 3944

In your recent display of ignorance (ad hominem here for sure) you missed the entire point of WFB's article. HE IS NOT ADVOCATING a religious war!

Well i did read the entire article very carefully. Please explain how my interpertation is at odds with his words. He posed a question. I answered his specific question. And btw i didn't say he was advocating a religious war.

Seth says

M 2006-07-16 11:13:26 3944

Iran has ALREADY STARTED one! What are you going to do - CAPITULATE ?

Well i would not fight that fire with more fire. That just makes a confligration. The enemy are not those who believe in Islam. The enemy is the fight itself. Throw water on the fire. Vigorously encourage those elements which promote tolerance between peoples of the region. Put as much energy and money behind that campaign as you would have us put into bombs and bullets. If even the Islamo-facists see that there is a better way, will they not take it? Can Hezbollah recruit terrorists in a environment of cooperation and peace? Take the fight against the fight seriously. There are people in Israel and in Palestine who are doing this now. Get behind that ... make it work.

Mark de LA says
BTW, I did not say go to a holy war with Islam or Iran as a matter of fact. Now who is putting a straw man up in the place of words that I actually said ??

Seth says

M 2006-07-16 09:48:46 3944

Actually, posing a question advocates nothing! Unless, of course the mere thought that one of the answers is forbidden, PC or otherwise - perhaps the state can kill you if they detect it!
He IMHO is describing the impossibility of solving a Middle East War with people having the religious insanity of the Islamo-Fascists.

The answer to his depressing question is We aren't ! It is depressing because history, so far, has only taught that wars in that part of the world have not worked & are endless!

Perhaps that is what you would have liked him to say, but that is not what he said. Personally i don't think it is possible to solve the Middle East war with Islamo-Facists. These people are not going to cooperate. They need to be isolated from those people who will cooperate. We need some anti ideals that make the ideals they espouse look weak and crumbel in the minds of the peoples living in the Middle East. If that is what Buckley was saying that he certainly has a wierd way of saying it by using words like "Christ our King" and "The faith of Islam is in fighting trim" and then chronicalling what "Islamists are taking over". The fact is that American styled democracy is not working in the Middle East ... so what is Buckley doing ... he is trying to switch it to religious ideals. But that will just throw more grease on the fire. The ideal that cuts through to the heart of the problem is tolerance. But that does not get into a muslim's mind comming from Christ our King. Buckley should know that and he probably does. No, i have interperted William's message correctly.

Seth says

M 2006-07-16 10:38:17 3944

Sorry, Dude - the use of the phrase "Christ Our King" seems to have sent your mind out into orbit! WFB is a Catholic - no doubt! The Islamists are still retrograde & living in the past with the Crusades on their mind. They bate & goad the non-Islamist world with their insane pronouncements. I think that WFB is saying enough of that crap you are trying to provoke a religious war. Indeed from that quarter all the time they are calling for Holy Wars. I say that the juice of that poison is the sweetest & may need a rude awakening for the Islamists.

Yep that is exactly the kind of rehtoric that WFB has instigated with his piece. Then you add "They started it first" ... so now America is to go on a holy war against Islam. Think my friend what your words mean. Note also that one of the best ways to make something stronger is to reify it by fighting it. No, this is not the solution. The end of your path lies in madness and ruin. We need reason and tolerance, not more religious one-up-mans-ship. In fact what we need is to entirely separate the situation from religion. Err ... like for example the principal our founding fathers burned into our constitition with the first ammendment. Escalate that ammendment to a World Consensus. Let there be no holy wars. On either side.

Mark de LA says
I think that a total isolation of Iran & Syria would be a rude awakening - there are others.

Mark de LA says

But , Islamo-fascists are insane! They are beyond reason. They think a suicide will take them to heaven as long as they take a few Jews or Americans with them. Who are you kidding? Have you noticed many peaceful members of the Islamic faith speaking out against the extremists in this country? How do you expect it take hold in the Middle East, then ? Throwing metaphors at the fire will not make it burn out!

Seth says

M 2006-07-16 11:43:30 3944

Have you noticed many peaceful members of the Islamic faith speaking out against the extremists in this country?

Actually i have. Sorry it will take some research to find them. What we need if for the real Ayatollahs to stand up!

Mark de LA says

seth 2006-07-16 11:57:42 3944

M 2006-07-16 11:43:30 3944

Have you noticed many peaceful members of the Islamic faith speaking out against the extremists in this country?

Actually i have. Sorry it will take some research to find them. What we need if for the real Ayatollahs to stand up!

Yep, I have seen one or 2 - which makes them an extreme minority.

Mark de LA says
Asking a question does NOT advocate a position. The first ammendment also advocates free speech. Shame on YOU for your shallow understanding of this editorial.

Seth says

M 2006-07-16 13:37:26 3944

Asking a question does NOT advocate a position. The first ammendment also advocates free speech.

Yep, certainly he did not advocate such a radical position; nor btw, did i say he did. He is far too sophisticated a ploitical thinker to say anything quite so PC. Rather he uses socratic dialogue. People, will supply their own answer from that side of their personalities. This is the way these memes are started ... this is the way the water is tested. Apparently, based on what you have said on this item, he has found a fertile mind in whch to grow his weeds. Watch for this kind of thinking to crop up other places.

Mark de LA says
You have to be a bit more intelligent than a knee-jerk liberal in order to grok WFB's Conservatism. He is a man that thinks before he writes & says things in new ways with the flair of Shakespeare in his words.

You are the very first person I have ever read that has attacked him as viciously as you have done.

Mark de LA says

This is the way these memes are started ... this is the way the water is tested. Apparently, based on what you have said on this item, he has found a fertile mind in whch to grow his weeds. Watch for this kind of thinking to crop up other places.

Pure paranoia. I now have to not only be concerned with what he is saying, but what things might arise in the minds of people who read it. Nice try!

Mark de LA says
Humility was never one of your strong suits

Seth says

M 2006-07-16 16:23:59 3944

It is interesting that WFB refers to himself as a libertarian according to Wikipedia. Note that he has written ~ 46 books over the decades. When you have written at least half that many then I might begin to take your criticism of WFB seriously; or maybe when you get listed in the Wikipedia.

Sorry M you are just spewing. I think for myself. Just because a person has written books and has an entry in Wikipedia does not mean that there voice is any more valid to me than my own. True, Buckley has been around a long time and has a respected voice in conservitive politics. True, his writing is sophisticated. I even enjoy reading him. His ideas are far more engaging than an Ann Coulter who also has written books and has a Wikipedia entry. But in the end after everybody else has had their say, we each of us are left alone to choose what to believe ... your elitist protestations not withstanding.

Seth says
Here we hear it again. Me thinks that Buckley's article would have been clearer and more to the point if he had qualified his catagories more carefully.

source: Douglas Davis, National Post: The opening salvo of a new war
The heady days of sterile Arab League rhetoric are coming to a close. The ritual denunciations of the Zionist entity are muted; the extravagant expressions of pan-Arab solidarity are barely whispered. A new reality is in the air. Hezbollah's attack last week represents the opening salvo in Iran's war against the West -- and anyone else who stands in its way.

The war is not between US and Islam. The war is between democracy and fundamentalist Islamic states like Iran. Me thinks and hopes that this "new war" is a cold one ... no shooting allowed. But then who listens to me.

Seth says

One might ponder what the objectives of fighting this "religious war" would be ? How will we know when we have won? Is it when puritan Islamic thought is eliminated as a political force in the world ? If that be the objective, and if we are talking of a war of ideals and not of bullets, then sign me up for the battle. But, me thinks, that is not the war one introduces by talking of "lowering the flage of American universalism" and comparing Islam with what one "gets from Christ our King". So i don't think that Buckley's war is the same as the solution scoped in my fatwa.

Mark de LA says

seth 2006-08-02 11:13:26 3944

One might ponder what the objectives of fighting this "religious war" would be ? How will we know when we have won? Is it when puritan Islamic thought is eliminated as a political force in the world ? If that be the objective, and if we are talking of a war of ideals and not of bullets, then sign me up for the battle. But, me thinks, that is not the war one introduces by talking of "lowering the flag of American universalism" and comparing Islam with what one "gets from Christ our King". So i don't think that Buckley's war is the same as the solution scoped in my fatwa.

WFB my just be trying to straighten the spine of some Christians. It seems to be open season every day on Christians. And yet, the media & others are scared shitless to criticize Islamists because they sneak around with suicide vests & bombs; committing murder indiscriminately in a war on everyone who is not an Islamist!

Seth says

M 2006-08-03 09:38:41 3944

Here is some more that may or may not clarify. WFB's column from yesterday.

Thanks for the pointer, even thoug i have been monitoring the site i missed this. How did you get notified of it?

In this piece i think we see clearly the distinction between my adgenda, [see: tag fatwa], and Buckley's.

source: WFB's column from yesterday.
It has been a matter of huge reluctance even to think of, let alone refer to, a great religious-moral collision approaching, setting Islam against the Judaeo-Christian world.

I see this clash as not between "Islam against the Judaeo-Christian world" but as a clash between moderate and puritanical Islam. There is a big difference. Imho, the one leads to a military standoff and the other to peace. We see clearly Buckley's militant adgenda in his first paragraph: "meanwhile it makes sense to maintain your fleet in good condition". Contrast that with Blair's words: "But we then have to empower Moderate, Mainstream Islam to defeat Reactionary Islam". Me thinks Buckley's own religious beliefs are clouding his objectivity.

Mark de LA says

Apparently you still think that the collision is between good Muslims & bad Muslims rather than Muslims against non-Muslims. I think WFB thinks the latter. So far the bad Muslims seem to get all the press and seem to be winning in Iran & Syria & Lebanon. I wonder when your good Muslims are going to start winning so that the perception that there is a war against non-Muslims is refuted soundly!

Seth says

M 2006-08-03 11:01:09 3944

So far the bad Muslims seem to get all the press and seem to be winning in Iran & Syria & Lebanon. I wonder when your good Muslims are going to start winning so that the perception that there is a war against non-Muslims is refuted soundly!

Me too! I wonder what form this wil take and how we will become aware of it. Muslim moderates are like the silent majority ... they don't make a lot of noise. We need to see more books like The Great Theft and more fatwa expressing the true Islam.

Seth says
We should revisit this space and ask a different question: If we don't want a religious war, are we disposed to stop toppleing their regimes?

Seth says

M 2006-09-01 11:48:11 3944

[typical WWII appeasement arguments snipped, i am sure you can find them repeated other places]

You ask yet the wrong question. The question you ask should be: "When is the World going to WAKE UP & get rid of these madmen before they start another War!"

Which mad men would those be, Ahmadinejad and Nasarella, ... or Bush and Cheney?

And now on a more serious note: how many times must the US intervene to change regimes which it chooses to malign, and then find itself in a aesemetrical battel from which it must retreat, before it learns that is not a successful stratagy to ensure the security of its own nation? I cound two glaring examples: HoChiMin and Sadam.

Mark de LA says
When is the anti-war, appeasment left going to repent? Bush & Cheney are not the threats. Iran & North Korea are. Saddam is now awaiting trial on genocide as he should be. I think Ho Chi Men is dead. I think you have one script and that is "America & Bush is wrong"! - that is pretty much a dead end script.

Seth says
I realize now that Buckley asked a legitimate question: "If what they want is a religious war, are we disposed to fight it?" ... and i do believe that he was honestly asking the question and with no implied answer. His option to "Lower the flag on American universalism" seems to me to be reasonable ... though i doubt that he would personally have choose that option. What disturbs me still about Buckely's op-ed is that it just encourages this kind of bs we see below:

source: The US should make war on Islam ; Eidelberg

What we say in the world has its effect, especially if you are as respected as WFB.

William, shame on you !

About: William F. Buckley One Flag Too High

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