A further comment.

“What’s important is what the jihadis believe and they have stated repeatedly for about a decade that they will continue to murder Americans wherever they have the opportunity because they believe they can destroy the US.”

This is exactly the purpose of terrorism. The purpose of terrorism is not to destroy the US. It isn’t so much to destroy things as much as it is to scare you into thinking that a threat exists. That’s why it’s terrorism. It’s the use of fear as a means of intimidation. To react to this with fear is to give in to the terrorists.

In either case, the answer to the question, “what do you do when they’re at your doorstep” should be have an obvious answer to most people here: self-defense. Yea, if some thug comes on my property threatening me, I’ll defend myself. What more of an answer can you possibly want? In either case, I thought it was made clear already that such a threat does not exist. So what is your concern all about?

Since you seem to be fearful of these people so much, I have to ask what your proposed solution is? What exactly are you getting at? What exactly are you advocating? Without advocating something, it appears at face value just to be your opinion on a particular religion. Without being clear on this, of course I’m going to assume that you’re argueing for the warfare state. The arguement you are making is precisely an arguement I have heard some so-called “christian conservatives” make to support the war on terrorism – “Islam = evil”.

The problem does not lie in any religion itself. It lies is questionable interpretation of religion (I.E. I can misinterpret the bible to imply horrific things too, it wouldn’t mean that this is what most christians believe) and the use of it to further political ends. This is not something unique to the history of only Islam. Jihadists, in my view, are exploiting muslim religion for political ends, because terrorism is all about fear-mongering for political ends. It is a fallacy to argue against the religion itself on these grounds.

edit: no reason

“They hate the Americans and they hate the Western World and all what they can do is to hate, hate, hate and hate and that is why I hate them.”

You are welcome to that view, but do you not see the obvious contradiction? You are complaining that others are hateful, and then acting just like them. I would also counter that your blanket accessment simply isn’t true. From what I can tell, alot of the younger generation in, say, Iran, are in love with American culture. They gobble american pop culture right up, and their governments make silly attempts to ban this. They only get united nationalistically against “the west” when there is political involvement in their affairs, and elites who use this as propaganda.

Who is “they” anyways? What is this “they”?

“Their countries are run by maniacs”

Aren’t all countries run by maniacs? How is this unique to these people? How are “our maniacs” any better then theirs? How is christians hating arabs superior to arabs hating you? How is protectionism in the name of white-christian-nationalism superior to protectionism in the name of arab-muslim-nationalism? These cultural questions are entirely irrelevant to libertarianism and are defacto solved under such conditions.

“Christian Arabs seems to be quite good people.”

Very strange world-view you got there. Arabs are all a bunch of hateful scum, unless they convert to your religion? Then of all sudden they are quite good people?

“The Arabs are anti liberty and anti civilization.”

Calling for people to be forcably locked in their own countries, and restricting private property owners from inviting them onto their property or selling property to them, is anti liberty and anti civilization.

Collective identities can have no uniform traits. This reminds me of “mozart was a red”. Sheesh.

Brainpolice

“You are welcome to that view, but do you not see the obvious contradiction? You are complaining that others are hateful, and then acting just like them.”

I knew when I wrote this that it might seem to be a contradiction, but it is not. If someone goes around hating people for no real reason it is not a contradiction to hate that person or intensely dislike that person for having such feelings against his fellow men. For example, self-defence is not either a “contradiction”. It might also seem to be, but it is not.

“Who is “they” anyways? What is this “they”?”

Those people that hate the U.S. and the Western World, or, alternatively, the fanatics.

“Aren’t all countries run by maniacs?”

No, I do not consider all governments to be a bunch of maniacs. Some politicians are quite good people and some are not. They are, though, misled, deluded and believe in the wrong ideas. There is a difference between Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Muammar al-Qaddafi and ordinary western politicians.

“How is protectionism in the name of white-christian-nationalism superior to protectionism in the name of arab-muslim-nationalism?”

I do not want any protectionism. I want a totally free world.

“Very strange world-view you got there. Arabs are all a bunch of hateful scum, unless they convert to your religion?”

No, Buddhists seem, for example, to be quite nice. Maybe they are even nicer than we are.

“Calling for people to be forcably locked in their own countries, and restricting private property owners from inviting them onto their property or selling property to them, is anti liberty and anti civilization.”

I was referring to that the people in their governments should be, at least, locked in forever.

I want every man on earth to respect each other and that means also, that I dislike people who do not do that. I even hate those who are very disrespectful. I think that such feelings are sound and good.

Björn Lundahl

Brainless:”Since you seem to be fearful of these people so much, I have to ask what your proposed solution is?”

I’m not afraid of these people. Why do you persist in trying to read my mind? Are you under the delusion that you’re some kind of psychic?

As for what to do, I think we’re doing it right now in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. We’re not attacking people with bad ideas; we’re attacking people who use violence to spread those ideas.

Bjorn: “Actually, personally I cannot stand the Arabs.”

That’s perfectly understandable. And it’s not a contradiction as Brainless suggests. Where is the virtue in tolerating evil? Hating evil is a virtue.

However, having lived among Iranians and Arabs and studied them a great deal, I have to defend the majority of Arabs against your view of them. The majority are muslim in name only. Very few “muslims” have read the Koran or attend a mosque. They know very little about their religion. They consider themselves muslim because their parents were. They’re very much like the Jews in Israel, 80% of whom are atheists, but still consider themselves Jews.

The jihadis and their sympathizers are a very small percentage, probably less than 10%. However, considering over a billion muslims in the world, the absolute number is quite large.

Yes, most Arabs will tell a pollster that they hate the US, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely true. I lived in Iran in 1976, before the Shah fell, and every single day, from almost everyone I met I would hear “We Iranians love Americans but hate your government.” I heard similar things from Arabs when I lived in Morocco.

Arabs don’t like our policy toward Israel, but they don’t really know what it is. Since their defeat by Israelis in 1973, their state-owned media has fed them a steady stream of propaganda about how they had defeated the Israelis until the US stepped in and saved Israel. There is no truth in that. The US did not help Israel during the war, but did send them some worn out equipment afterwards. The US was far more pro-Arab at that time.

The Arab state-owned media today keeps hatred of Israel and the US at a fever pitch by publishing disgusting stories filled with lies about both. During the Afghan campaign, Al Ahram, the largest and oldest Egyptian paper reported that the US dropped food supplies to starving Aghans in the middle of mine fields in order to murder civilians, or that the food we delivered was poisoned. In Iraq, Al Ahram accused US troops of using Iraqi children for target practice, of giving poisoned candy and toys with bombs inside to Iraqi children, and that troops used night vision goggles to see through women’s clothing.

In spite of all that, Arabs are clamboring to immigrate to the US.

The average Arab cares mostly about earning a living to provide for his family; they’re very family oriented. Keep in mind that the Arabs have been fighting jihadis for almost a century, and jihadis have killed far more Arabs than the US has killed, and have killed far more Arabs than they have killed Americans.

RogerM

“I have to defend the majority of Arabs against your view of them.”

I can accept the view that most Arabs are okay.

In the beginning of the 70s I went to a few private schools in England. A lot of students from Iran studied in those days in England and the U.S. They came from rich families and the Shah ruled Iran. Even when I was only 14 years old I realized that some of them were quite fanatic and very nationalistic. The Shah was some kind of godlike figure and Iran or Persia was the centre of the universe.

By the way, one of those schools was Greylands College, Bembridge, on the Isle of Wight. I was 16 years old when I attended Greylands College:

http://greylandscollege.com/

I recognize some of these faces (some of them were from Iran):

http://greylandscollege.com/swains%20end%20residents.jpg

I have written in their guestbook:

http://greylandscollege.com/guest_book.htm

In those days very few of them lived in Sweden. During the 80s, though, a lot of them fled the Ayatollah regime in Iran and immigrated to Sweden. Once again I came in contact with Iranians.

As I work for a landlord and as I am in charge of renting out commercial facilities, write contracts and so on, I often come in contact with Iranians and they are really very good. I enjoy meeting them and they are not at all interested in politics. They are quite similar to us and I do not feel much difference in meeting those guys than meeting people from my own country. Usually they have small businesses and they rent pizzerias, garages, storages and shops. They work hard and they pay the rent. They are serious.

Iranians are, of course, not Arabs but their cultures are similar.

Of course many of them are okay.

My view is something like this:

In those countries there are larger breeding grounds of fanatism than in the Western World. That is my view. On the average people are nice but still those breeding grounds exist.

Can you accept that?

Björn Lundahl

Bjorn: “And just watch this French guy when he visits England (it is my favourite)”

Thanks for the link! I love the Pink Panther series.

Have you read, or read about “America Alone” by the Canadian writer Mark Stein? It’s very interesting and unusual because Canadians not only dislike the US, but Americans as well.

“As for what to do, I think we’re doing it right now in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. We’re not attacking people with bad ideas; we’re attacking people who use violence to spread those ideas.”

Ah, so you DO support the warfare state. I was right: you’re using anti-muslim propaganda as reasoning to justify your support for the warfare state. Thankyou for proving my earlier premise. I find it quite sad that you actually believe that the people being hurt by this are only people who use violence. In Iraq, the violence was initiated by the U.S. government. Theirs is a reaction to it. You have things backwards.

What’s going on right now is WARFARE STATISM, and it has a price tag just as large as the welfare state. It now costs around 1 trillion dollars in military spending alone yer year to sustain all this military complex. That’s what Clinton’s entire budget was not long ago! This has nothing to do with liberty and everything to do with your own hatred, and your willingness to support the mass destruction of person and property to appease your phony fears about people who wear funny hats.

“Where is the virtue in tolerating evil?”

That’s not what you’re doing by supporting the warfare state. You’re promoting evil. I don’t know how much more simple this can be: murder = evil. When it’s committed by a state against people with funny hats, it still is evil. Where is the virtue in PROMOTING EVIL IN THE NAME OF FIGHTING IT? No, this is an oxymoron and a banal attempt to justify empirialism.

“The idea of the Western World or the symbol of the Western World is liberty.”

This has truth to it. However, it is false to act like western culture has an exclusive monopoly on liberty. Give me a break. Look around yourself.

” fact, so long as they leave us alone, let them destroy themselves in a society without the freedoms we enjoy. However, if they start to encroach and take away our freedoms, DEFEND DEFEND DEFEND.”

Unfortunately, to put forth our current foreign policy as defense is as disingenuous as a robber telling you that he benefits you by boosting the economy by spending your money.

Okay, I’m done and moving on. Thanks for the debate.

Brainless: “You’ve converted me to anarcho-capitalism by opening my eyes to how hypocritical and inconsistant many minarchists are. Odd how it takes a minarchist to convert me.”

You’re so dishonest. You’re just like the socialists who call into conservative radio talk shows and claim to have been conservative until some event forced you to face the truth. I could tell from your first post you are an anarchist. Nobody converted you.

As for conservative talk shows, interestingly that was addressed in this article. Most conservatives seem to get their ideology from cartoonish pundits in the media and politicians rather then reading the works of people such as Locke or Mises. Both the cold war and 9/11 functioned as boons for the right to become statist.

The only “conservative” in the government that I can think of that is truly worthy of praise is Ron Paul – because he is a libertarian (with slight paleo-con leanings). True conservatives should be rallying around Ron Paul. From what I’ve seen, alot of them (in the media especially) blow him him off as a “leftist” and “isolationist”. One guy on a talk show tried to compare him to Ted Kennedy!

Hogwash, I say! Ron Paul is the last hope for the American right.

“Culturally, the idea of individual liberty is probably stronger in the U.S., Canada and also in Great Britain than in the rest of the Western World.”

I agree with this. I also agree with the view that, culturally, asians are the most collectivistic due to their high levels of homogeniety. However, I believe that when you show people liberty, in time they will become more individualistic. It is polylogistic, is it not, to think that such things are necessarily inherent to the collective and unaddressable?

I also think that there is a certain danger in becoming culturally-one-sided. There is a certain point where cultural or national pride turns into ignorance. It’s not as if there is no preceding history of the world and suddenly “western civilization” fell down on us from the sky as superior, and suddenly “non-western civilization” suddenly fell down on us from the sky as “inferior”.

“Being a libertarian, those cultural differences between nations are probably less important and it feels therefore a little odd to focus on them”

Sure. But I concur with Walter Block that cultural questions are irrelevant to libertarianism itself. Cultural conditions are optimal so long as it is all within a voluntary context. So long as things are consistant with the non-aggression axoim, cultural questions are irrelevant. It’s also important to keep in mind that such cultural differences are in many ways the result of eons of political conditioning.

Keep the battle of ideas in mind. Why should we “give up” on the battle of ideas? Why should we conclude that noone in culture X is capable of adopting better ideas? Shouldn’t the libertarian enthusiastically support educating such people to these better ideas? I find that much more compelling then concluding that culture X will never move towards liberty and therefore we must disengage interaction with them completely.

Agreed.

“What I meant was that as I am a libertarian and therefore regards us all as individuals it feels a little odd for me to focus on our cultural differences as this is a collective identity. By the way, that we are individuals are biological facts, collectives are not.”

Yes. You seem to be saying the same thing I am. Collectives should be thought of as no more than a figure of speech, not an existing thing. That’s precisely what I was getting at: the problem of getting involved in questions of collective identity. I think getting libertarianism involved in cultural questions poses a risk of becoming polylogistic and generating collective-identity conflict. Whereas part of the point of the original article here is to avoid adopting a group conflict-model.

Björn,

I heard your anti-arab speech. Very nice.

Let me ask you some questions…

1) Are you aware of the atrocities commited in the so called western world during the 20th century ? For instance, two world wars and a left-wing revolution in Russia wich liquidated some 30 millions ? Do you know that the american and british governments were allies of the brutal murderer Stalin ?

2) Now, what do you make of it ?

and

3) Why do you single out the ‘arabs’ as evil but don’t pay attention to the massive crimes against innocent westerners commited by criminal westerners ? Is that fair or even rational ?

This questions are addressed to mr. RogerM as well, but I’m sure he’ll pretend they don’t exist – and go on saying that ‘libertarianism’ equals the terror bombing of the middle east.

Björn,

Let me clarify that I’m not suggesting enforced ‘multiculturalism’ is a good thing. Of course it is not. You are free to dislike whoever you wish. You’re only asked not to trespass on their property…

But the crucial point for me is that this characterization of ‘arabs’ as people guided by an evil ideology is very hypocritical.

Consider western nationalism…it’s the very same thing as a ‘jihad’. As a matter of fact, western governments, operating on the principle of nationalism, have engaged in total wars of devastating consequences. And they did that only sixty years ago.
What you perhaps have not realized yet, is that stressing the fact, as RogerM does, that some arabs are fanatics is a perfect device to hide and divert attention from the same fanatical attitudes in the western world.
Try for instance smoking in a place were smoking has been banned by the state. If you insist on your right to self-ownership you’ll be fined – if you don’t pay, you’ll be jailed by the police and killed if you resist. In my opinion such a fanatical and totalitarian actions on the part of the western states are identical to the way the the muslim world is run.
Yes, it is true that the West is more free and civilized in some ways. And in some other ways is just as barbaric as if we were in the stone age.
I don’t understand your comment on Stalin. My point is that the West, wich is supposedly the home to capitalism, in reality was and is very friendly to the commies. That’s another reason to be very cautios before praising ‘our’ culture and political systems…

The murderer is sentenced guilty before the nature of life

You enter the kingdom of life and believe that you stand above its rules and its very foundation. What right gives you the right to abandon my rules? If you do not like this dimension you can pass away from it any time you want. No one is forcing you to stay.

With the help of reason, consciousness and intelligence, you can observe that your fellow men strive to sustain their lives. They do what their nature calls them to do, namely to live. You are a threat against that! You are a threat against this dimension! This dimension would not exist if it couldn’t cope with what is threatening it. You wouldn’t have lived if murdering has been allowed, and despite of this fact, you place yourself above the very cause of your own life. How can you place yourself above the very cause of your existence!?

No organism or life can exist if it is not accommodated to what life demands, and that is partly to eliminate the very things that can cause that life ceases. It is the self-preservation that is the very cause for me to throw out the murderer from my kingdom. You never learn! You are parasites of life! You are saying that you did not choose life because you didn’t create yourself, but no one has, for all men are participants of an eternal process and this fact does not declare your irresponsibility.

The process in nature that created me, demands that I follow its rules or else the process would never had created me and would never had risen, for it would be doomed to die from the very beginning. It is created in such a way that it avoids death, which is the reason for me having self-preservation, for death I else would not have avoided. My nature is thus such that the murderer’s actions shall be rejected and punished until such destructive threats ceases to exist.

My lawbook is the existence’s law, life’s law, our kingdom’s law, this dimension’s law or my nature’s law, because I am the nature, a part of cosmos and I must play by its rules for nothing else exists for me.

With a good conscience I will now consider if you also shall be thrown out from my dimension and return to the unconsciousness. If I judge to not throw you out, I will do it with a bad conscience since I have the insight about this dimension’s utmost playing rules which I then will have denied.

Björn Lundahl

Bjorn:”The process in nature that created me, demands that I follow its rules or else the process would never had created me and would never had risen, for it would be doomed to die from the very beginning.”

Interesting posts on murder and theft. But did you really intend to give “the process” human characteristics? The process “demands” and “creates”. That sounds very much like a personality. Can forces of nature demand and create? My understanding of atheism is that only physical forces, like gravity, exist. Mankind is a result of random chance, not intention.

A parody of the Desiderata goes “the universe is laughing at you behind your back.” The point of the parody was that people assume that life has meaning and purpose when the universe knows differently. In reality, the universe would have to be a person to laugh. It’s not. It’s rocks and forces of physics, in the atheist view. Mankind is an accident; the universe isn’t proud that man appeared and it won’t care if he disappears. No one is out there to care. Man cares only because he has deluded himself into thinking he is more than what he is.

Bjorn: “You enter the kingdom of life and believe that you stand above its rules and its very foundation. What right gives you the right to abandon my rules?”

Who is speaking here? I realize that you’re writing poetically and never intended anyone to be speaking in reality. It’s like the poets who give human characteristics to inanimate objects, like trees. But when discussing real life, we have to abandon the poetry and realize that, in the atheist view, no one exists inside the material universe, or outside it, to say those things.

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