Fanaticism - Page:1

I got this in an email earlier today and thought i would share. I have nothing to say about this article because i just have no clue as to what to say. It was written Sunday, April 4th, 2004 and can be found here.

Up Against Fanaticism

By Phil Lucas, Executive Editor, Panama City New Herald

If straight talk of savagery offends you, if you believe in ethnic and

gender diversity but not diversity of thought or if you think there is an

acceptable gray area between good and evil, then turn to the funny pages,

and take the children, too. This piece is not for you.

We published pictures Thursday of burnt American corpses hanging from an

Iraqi bridge behind a mob of grinning Muslims. Some readers didn't like it.

Mothers said it frightened their children. A woman who works with Muslim

physicians thought it might offend or endanger them.

Well, we sure don't want to frighten, offend or endanger anybody, do we?

That's just too much diversity to handle. I mean, somebody might get hurt.

We could fill the newspaper every morning with mobs of fanatical Muslims.

They can't get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France,

Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia,etc.

etc. etc. Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims

are not involved? Today, where there is war, there are fanatical Muslims.

We might quibble about who started what conflicts, but look at the sheer

number of them.

One thing is sure. Muslim killers started the one we are in now when they

slaughtered more than 3,000 people, including fellow Muslims, in New York

City.

Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state and reckless appeaser who

helped get us into this mess, said last week Muslims still resent the

Crusades. Well, Madam Albright, if Westerners were not such a forgiving

people, we might resent them too.

Let's recap the Crusades. Muslims invaded Europe, and when they reached

sufficient numbers, they imposed their intolerant religion upon Westerners

by force. Christian monarchs drove them back and took the battle to their

homeland. The fight lasted a couple of centuries, and we bottled them up for

1,000 years.

Now, a millennium later, Muslims have expanded forth again. Ask France. Ask

England. Ask Manhattan. Two-and-a-half years ago fanatical Muslims laid

siege to us. We woke up to the obvious. Our president announced it would be

a very long war, then took the battle to the Islamic homeland. Sound

familiar?

Let's consider the concept of a "long war." Last time it was 200 years, give

or take. Anybody catch Lord of the Rings? You know, the good part, the part

that wasn't fiction, the part that drew us to the books and movies because

it was the truest part: the titanic struggle between good and evil, between

freedom and enslavement, between the individual and the state, between the

celebration of life and the worshipping of death.

That's the fight we are in, and it never ends. It just has peaks and

valleys.

There may be a silent majority of peaceful Muslims - some live here - but

that did not save 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the million gassed

and butchered in the Middle East, the tens of thousands slain in Eastern

Europe and Asia, the hundreds blown to bits in the West Bank and Spain, or

the four Americans shot, burned and hung like sausage over the Euphrates as

a fanatical minority of Muslims did the joyful dance of death.

Maybe we are so tolerant, we are so bent on "diversity," we are so

nonjudgmental, we are so wrapped up in our six-packs and ballgames that our

brains have drained to our bulbous behinds. Maybe we're so addled on

Ritalin we wouldn't know which end of a gun to hold. Maybe we need a new

drug advertised on TV every three minutes, one that would help us grow a

backbone.

It doesn't take a Darwin to figure out that in this world the smartest, the

fastest, the strongest, and the most committed always win. No exceptions.

Look at your spouse and children. Look at yourself in the mirror. Then look

at the pictures from the paper last Thursday. You better look at them. Those

are the people out to kill you.

Who do you think will win? You? Or them? Think you can take your ball and

go home and they will leave you alone? Read a little history. Start

with last week, last month, last year, and every other year back for half a

century. Then go back a thousand years. Nobody hides from this fight.

Like it or not, that's the way it was and that's the way it is.

But many Americans don't get it. That's why we published those pictures.

If they jarred you off the sofa, if they offended you, if they scared your

children and sent you into a rage at mass murderers or heartless editors,

then I say, it's a start.

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!
-Albert Einstein-

Peanut butter... It fills the cracks of the soul! -Paul Blart-

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