Not as any sort of apology, but as a reminder not to believe in any sort of cultural superiority of the West as compared with the bigoted fundamentalists in ISIS, I quote William Easterly, himself quoting Norman Bailey, about the period know in Colombian history as La Violencia [from 1948 to 1956]: Crucifixions and hangings were commonplace, political prisoners were thrown from airplanes in flight, infants were bayoneted, schoolchildren, some as young as eight years old, were raped en masse, unborn infants were removed by crude Caesarian section and replaced by roosters. [The Tyranny of Experts, Part Two, Chapter: The Colombian History of April 9, 1948] That would leave slave trade as the distinguishing mark between Christians in Colombia 60 years ago, and ISIS today. Im not really sure that difference in degree is a difference in kind. The fact is that humans are capable of being abysmally violent as well as divinely generous, and that this capacity does not follow religion, race, or political conviction. Given the wrong circumstances at the wrong time, there is, in all societies, a stratum of humans who will commit any crime imaginable in the name of some supposed good. That doesnt alter my conviction that we have very good reason to bomb the living daylights out of ISIS, in particular we Europeans who have them as next-door neighbours, nor that we have a serious problem with the many people who travel to the Middle East to engage in this sort of atrocities, and with their apologists and cheerleaders back here (one of whom, shamefully, appears to have been appointed a minister in the Swedish government). It only means that those ascribing ISISs behaviour to something specifically Muslim ought to study some history, and then pipe down and face the reality that Christianity or Western culture isnt any guarantee against the same sort of behaviour as that which ISIS displays.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 05:29:04 +0000
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