Radical Tolerance

[Warrior-Mentor]

Foundations of Radical Tolerance
and Cultural Inertia
by D. L. Adams
Stop Islamization of America

As this difficult year comes to a close there is reason for positivity. There are now serving politicians in our country who are aware of Islam and the dangers that it poses to our freedoms and national survival; and there are now candidates running for national office who understand the challenges that we face from an ideology that is fundamentally opposed to ours.

We have been successful in raising awareness about political Islam its purposes and doctrine across the country and beyond. Even more important perhaps is the difficulty that we experience in discussing issues like this one.

We experience resistance to our discussions about Islamic doctrine and what it means for Americans and America because the United States and the West in general is in the midst of a crisis of meaning.

In addition to the horrors that we experienced on 9/11 and subsequently most recently at Fort Hood is the growing understanding across our society that we no longer have a shared concept of what it means to be American and what “America” itself means.

If there was no crisis of meaning in the United States there would be no controversy about the doctrine of Islam; there would be no confusion about what is the “true” Islam or what is the “false” Islam, the hijacked version of the … hijackers. If there were no crisis of meaning there would be unfettered and open discussion of Islamic doctrine, ideology, and history across the society.

The doctrine of Islam is clear about non-believers (Allah and Mohammed hate the unbeliever, the kafir), and it is clear about what the future of the world is supposed to be (the future is supposed to be entirely Islamic). The doctrine is clear about the House of War (dar al Harb), and the House of Islam (dar al Islam). The followers of Islam who kill non-believers and shout Islamic religious phrases as they kill give a clear message to all who care to listen to it. The followers of Islam involved overtly in jihad do not hide their purposes though they fool the multiculturalists and the ignorant with taqiyya about Islam as the “religion of peace”.

The doctrine of Islam is clear- it is the obligation of all followers of Islam to be involved in jihad, fighting in Allah’s cause. Allah’s Cause is the elimination of every religion or culture that is not Islamic, ruled under Allah’s law, “Sharia”.

The clarity of the message of the jihadists and the doctrine of Islam which explains why jihadists do what they do and commit the atrocities that they commit is difficult to defend, though it is defended nevertheless. It is defended and explained away by post-modernists and multiculturalists because if it is accepted as being what it is and if it is accepted that it is oppositional to American concepts of freedom and tolerance, then those who do not live a life of meaning have a foundational crisis of purpose and understanding; their deeply felt concepts of how the world functions will collapse.

The resistance to accept the reality of and then understand the truth of the doctrine of Islam is essentially a self-referential protective response on the part of a widely ignorant and post-modern culture deeply enamored with so-called post-historical ideas and Utopian concepts of radical tolerance.

Many in our culture believe that we in the United States are immune from historical forces; that we are safe in “fortress America” from all the horrors of the world that always happen “over there”. Even 9/11 could not shatter this Pollyanna silliness. The failure of 9/11 to awaken the mass of our people to the great threat of political Islam is a significant failure that cannot be defended, but it must be explained.

By way of explanation, Americans are a forward-looking people; we are tolerant, accepting and friendly. These are the foundations of our open society and why so many throughout our history have fled their own troubled homelands where the forces of history in all their ugliness wrecked their havoc. The place to evade the forces of history has always been the United States. This is why America has been the shining beacon of freedom and safety for generations.

What happens after a stunning and world shifting event like 9/11 occurs in the haven of openness and tolerance? What happens to the city on the hill—will the lights blink on and off then come back on bright as ever? Or will the lights shimmer and dim, because the people cannot accept the truth of this new world, which in fact is extraordinarily old (app 1400 years), into which they have been thrust?

The fundamental concepts of a stable and pleasant life for most are built upon the idea that everyone shares in the same desire for pleasantness and stability. Many in our country believe that a want of niceness on our part rather than simply our existence is the reason why so many across the world dislike the United States and our freedoms. This is a common idea across the land and a singular reason why discussing the doctrine of Islam and what it means is often met with rancor and fear. Many Americans do not want to know about the doctrine of Islam because it means that their concepts of stability and the nature of humanity are shattered.

The idea that an ideology can be so opposed to the existence of Americans as a group or nation is not unprecedented, we have been in civilizational war before. We fought WW2 because we saw the civilizations of Europe at risk of destruction and we knew that if they fell, the United States would be next and their essential concepts of freedom and the dignity of men were our own.

Since 1945 we as a society have forgotten that kindness and openness and a desire for mutual association is not enough to ensure peace and security here at home. There are forces at work that deny the right for others to live with their own beliefs and their own governments; this is called totalitarianism.

As this difficult year comes to a close we have much to be thankful for, but profound challenges remain. We are in an ideological war for which most are not prepared; in fact, many are unaware that such a conflict exists.

There is no denying the essential anti-freedom, intolerant political meaning and purpose of the doctrine of Islam, though it is denied anyway; this denial is the corner stone of our national suicide.

We are a forward-looking people; our grasp of history and of other cultures is neither extensive nor deep across the wider culture. Our current “culture war” has been described as a conflict between Republicans and Democrats; liberals and conservatives; capitalists and socialists but these are over-simplifications and miss the core point. The core of our current difficulties is a conflict over meaning and how to respond to challenges from those who do not share our concepts of meaning.

Throughout history societies have been required to defend themselves from threats both internal and external; this is why the Founders placed “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” in all civil and military oaths of office. We now must respond to a domestic and foreign threat that is ideologically driven.

Because we are in a crisis of meaning–as shown by our lack of societal awareness and acceptance of the threat even these few years since 9/11 and only weeks since Fort Hood (a smaller version of the same crime driven by the same forces that were behind 9/11)—we cannot respond effectively or at all.

In previous generations it was clearly understood by all what it meant to be an American, and what the concept of “America” was about. Rarely do the people have a shared understanding of these concepts now. What we see is a hodgepodge of competing ideas with the essential unifying concepts of “Americanism” forgotten or misunderstood.

The foundational concept of our country is built upon our Constitution which provides for just governance through representation and guaranteed freedoms for the people. The idea that a government is given its legitimacy from the people (rather than the government to the people) is unprecedented and merits appreciation, understanding, and defense.

[Warrior-Mentor]

Our culture is distracted and fragmented due to competing concepts of meaning. In the last 30 or 40 years we have seen the rise of an irrational and radical ultra-tolerance whereby any and all ideologies are accepted because they are different.

There is no value judgments placed upon these ideologies, even if they oppose our own because to do so would be to display intolerance; we are sacrificing our nation on the altar of a mistaken and ignorant misunderstanding of the functioning of humanity.

Radical tolerance upon which multiculturalism and post-modernism rest is the idea that there is no truth which can be known, that all “truths” are relative and a matter of opinion.

This bizarre anti- self-legitimization is linked inextricably with the denial of history and the belief that we are somehow immune from the horrors of history’s cycles if we are but “nice” (tolerant) enough. The abandonment of immigration controls is evidence of this abandonment of essential truths; for how can we prevent the entry of someone to our country simply because there is a difference of opinion between them and the prevailing understanding of “good” in our culture let alone the laws of the land? Post-modernists would likely say that such controls would demonstrate a lack of “kindness” and “tolerance” on our part. This idea of radical baseless tolerance is one of the consequences of post-modernism.

The rejection of all previous concepts of truth and the rejection of the idea that truth itself can be known is what post-modernists are about. We see a total lack of moral and ethical foundation across the culture because the culture is widely accepting of post-modernism. For such anti-intellectuals there is no reason to limit immigration, no reason to condemn ideologies that are hate-based, intolerant and violent and opposed to our existence because we are no longer able to say with confidence that our “way” is good and worthy of defense and another ought to be opposed or condemned.

The mistake so rife among post-modernists is that the process of democracy, voting, polling, debate, etc. is mistaken for democracy itself. The post-modernist is the voter who voted for the NSDAP (Nazi party) in 1933 and said, “Look! Democracy at work!” This is a deep moral confusion because post-modernists are amoral.

Morality and ethics are built upon surety. Doubt in the ability to learn, to know, to judge—and, in fact that “judging” itself is immoral—is the essence of amorality.

As we doubt ourselves and pretend that we live in a world outside historical forces and embrace the ridiculous notion that, only with more and more tolerance and openness, those who wish to destroy us will be turned to friends completely forgets the lessons of history and of milennia of human and civilizational development. Post-modernists are ignorant Utopians whose ideas have no foundations in history but instead have a powerful and attractive message to a confused populace overwhelmed with data overload and their own growing doubts about meaning as essential and previously unassailable institutions across the culture are de-constructed.

It is not now known when the idea that certitude could be essentially wrong (or worse) and gained favor in our culture. This happened most assuredly over only several generations; the Civil War generation through the aftermath of WW2 into the Cold War had no such confusions as to the value of their society or country. We have somehow lost the firm belief that the United States and our Constitution are exceptional and worthy of defense. This loss of purpose and identification must be accepted, challenged and overturned. We must soon return to the core concepts of what America is, and what it means to be American.

The post-modern message is attractive because it exists outside of the horrors of history which include world war and holocaust and the “evil that men do”. The essence of post-modernism is a radical totality of acceptance of differences and an abandonment of weighing differences to come to a conclusion as to relative values. For post-modernists relative value is Truth, because there is no essential truth anymore.

The believability of post-modernist thought itself is at stake when the doctrine of Islam is discussed and events such as Fort Hood and 9/11 are placed in an Islamic doctrinal context. The failure of post-modernism in these and so many other cases is the founded in the refusal to place people and events in a rational and legitimate context; Utopian fantasies are no way to explain the world.

If it is true that there is a doctrinal basis for 9/11 and Fort Hood (there clearly is), then universal radical tolerance is impossible—for how can radical tolerance positively affect ideologically driven foes whose purpose is the destruction of the very concept of radical tolerance itself and those who support such concepts?

Post-modernists are unknowing self-haters. They are self-haters because they will not dare to make a negative judgment about an ideology that despises them and what they understand life to be about.

We are in an existential conflict understood now by many more than understood only a year ago. Post-modernism is a Utopian dream built upon ignorance and wishful thinking only; there is little that can be said in its defense. If the world functioned in the way that post-modernists and multiculturalists believe that it does there would not have been 9/11 or Fort Hood and the doctrine of Islam would be something other than what it is.

Post-modernism is a denial of truth and the ability of humans even to know “truth”. In the world of post-modernist relativism everything is true and everything is equivalent. This is an extreme radicalism that we must oppose so that rationality built upon knowledge and understanding can again arise across the country and the West.

To those who believe there is truth and untruth and accept this historically valid concept of the dichotomies of life which are “truth/untruth” and “good/evil”, the way forward is both challenging and difficult. It is a comfort in a sense to know that history and raw experience is on the side of knowledge and rationality; post-modernism and multiculturalism are irrational.

The denial of history, of the good and bad of humanity and the horrors of our experiences (9/11, Fort Hood, etc.), cannot long be sustained by those Utopians who prefer the world to be something other than what it is.

Those who know Islamic doctrine and understand that jihadists commit atrocities because the doctrine of Islam commands them to do so cannot live in a post-modern/multicultural world because such a world is a Utopian fantasy.

If we accept the world for what it is (and not the illusion of how we would wish it to be) and if we compare ourselves, our government, and our Constitution with those of other lands present and past, we can come to a conclusion based upon knowledge that what we have and who we are all worthy of defense.

If we accept the world for what it is and not for how we would wish it to be, we can divine the truth and accept that the clarity that comes with acceptance of reality is illuminating. We are not dreamers but realists. We have the audacity to learn the doctrine of our enemies, to discuss it, and to extrapolate from it so that we can understand events of the world in which we all live.

The post-modernist and multiculturalist concepts of us and the world (and our place in it) will fall away as the idea that truth can be known and understood again comes into fashion.

We are rationalists and students of reality; we are not dreamers living in a fantasy because we reject reality because it is impossibly unpleasant. We accept that we cannot change the world by inviting those who would destroy us into our fantasies of universal radical tolerance and ignorance.

We build our opposition to conditions today and to ideologies of hatred and violence on knowledge and acceptance of reality. We accept the understanding that others have of themselves and of how they relate to us; we have friends, allies, and enemies.

The essential truth of humanity and history has not changed; we would prefer a happier world but accept the world for what it is. This is our audacity; the audacity to speak the truth and challenge falsehoods and lies. We mourn our lost innocents and make them a promise that we will make things better so that their tribulations, sacrifices and pain are not in vain.

We are all learning, and sharing our knowledge. This is the foundation of the future. A new year is approaching and we welcome it with great hope.

SOURCE:
http://sioanetwork.com/?p=594

[Sigaba]

Whenever I encounter a writer who conflates postmodernism and relativism, I have serious doubts about that person's understanding of either. Not the least because saying "truth is relative" is a far cry from saying that "truth is a construct." The former suggests that truth, because of its complexity, is in the eye of the beholder. The latter insists that truth does not exist.

These doubts become more pronounced when one remembers that the concept of truth as being "relative" to the observer (and therefore unknowable) is a central tenet of modernity as represented by Freud's discovery of the unconscious, Einstein's work in theoretical physics, and Malinowski's and Boas's work in cultural anthropology. This group is not quite a rogue's gallery of postmodernist theorists.

Moreover, the contemporaneous fragmentation of culture to which D.L. Adams refers is, in fact, also a by product of modernity, as a number of social historians of modern Germany have argued in great detail.

Additionally, the interpretations of national socialism offered in Adams's piece are sustainable only if one has not studied Nazism seriously. While Nazism was a rejection of liberalism as a viable response to modernity, it was not a post-modern movement in the way the editorial implies. (An irony here is that after spending so much time railing against postmodernism, the editorial takes a postmodern approach to fascism in an ill advised attempt to equate it with the contemporary American left.)

Calling post-modernism a "Utopian dream" flies in the face of the intense debates between Marxist academics and postmodernists that have been taking place in the Ivory Tower for the better part of three decades. For the same reason that many Marxists frown upon psychology (because its central premise is that all consciousness is false), they understand that postmodernist theories undermine fatally the construct of any sustainable 'meta-narrative' especially those centering around materialism.

Finally, the juxtaposition of the notion of "cycles of history" with American Exceptionalism is, bluntly, interesting. The articulation of the latter, attributed to John Winthrop's "A Modell of Christian Charity" (1630), available here, sought to establish in America a "citty upon a hill"

The eies of all people are uppon us. Soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our God in this worke wee haue undertaken, and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. Wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of God, and all professors for God's sake. Wee shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into curses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whither wee are a goeing.

This is to say that Winthrop saw New England operating outside of the cycles of European history which, at that time, were beset by the rising tides of absolutism and dynastic imperial rivalries. The belief that American exceptionalism places the U.S. outside of the 'cycles of history' informed America's approach to foreign affairs and to war into the twentieth century and the election of Dwight Eisenhower as president.

Just my caffeinated $0.02.