Impressively accurate

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Dec 31, 2007 at 17:04

Just wanted to say I think this comment says many accurate things, especially the sentence that makes up the 3rd paragraph, about how corruption at the top becomes an excuse for so many at the bottom to avoid personal responsibility. I might also note a different kind of personal faliure, perhaps harder to face, a failure by large numbers of Arabs to acknowledge that their societies are failing to thrive economically and politically for reasons that are systemic to those societies, and have absolutely nothing to do with Israel.

One could mention the failure of the Muslim World to ever have a Reformation, a reformation in particular based on a demand for respect towards the individual and not the mass conscience. Such a Reformation first occurred in the 16th century in Europe, and, 500 years later, has yet to occur anywhere in the Muslim world.

Or the failure of the Muslim World to ever have an Enlightenment, that is based on a direct confrontation with the power of superstition and the totalitarianism of any religion that refuses to respect Reason. This ability to stand up to and face down Organized Religion with regard to freedom of thought, has never been an organic part of any Muslim society anywhere.

If common sense, not to mention a sense of the West's national security interest, were widespread, comments like Ken Besig's would have already spontaneously appeared, by many authors, on the Opinion pages of major papers all over the world. The fact that they don't keeps us all in a state of existential threat from the Muslim World (even if, by far the most serious and comprehensive threat is to Israel).

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