Muslim threat to our way of life

[Riddler]

A Spanish teacher at Smithfield-Selma Senior High School resigned this week after handing out an assignment that some students and parents said teaches hate.

Khalid Chahhou, who was in his first year of teaching in Johnston County, gave students a worksheet in which they were to translate words and find them within a word-search puzzle.

Some students started uncovering strange words in the process.

"There were words like 'kill,' then I saw it said 'destroy America,'" Eric Herrera said.

As they read on, students found the puzzle contained a paragraph that contained the following phrases:

*"Sharon killed a lot of innocent people," a possible reference to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

*"Palestine is not a terrorist group."

*"Allah help destroy this body of evil making humanity miserable."

[EJinCT]

[Riddler]

Higher Indoctrination

From the author of The Professors: the 100 Most Dangerous Academics in America, a chilling look at the ways in which indoctrination has replaced education in our nation's college classroom.

David Horowitz, author of the Academic Bill of Rights, has established himself as an outspoken advocate for restoring intellectual diversity to American higher education. Now, In his disturbing new book he shows how serious the problem is. Horowitz unveils the intellectual corruption of our universities by faculty activists who have turned their classrooms into platforms for radical political causes. He shows how tenured radicals with little regard for professional standards or the pluralistic foundations of American society have created an ideological curriculum that subverts the purposes of a democratic education. As one early reader of this work commented, "Indoctrination U. is so alarming that parents of college students who read it may well start a class action suit to get their money back."

"A valuable contribution from one of America's foremost defenders of free speech and free thought."
~Robert L. Pollock,
Wall Street Journal Editorial Board

"Everyone who cares about a genuinely liberal education—regardless of political perspective—will be grateful for David Horowitz's tireless, relentless, and above all, well considered efforts to rescue it from the intellectual trivialization and monotony of radical politics. Nobody else has done so much or been so effective."
~ John Ellis,
Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Santa Cruz and President of the California Association of Scholars



Do some reading yourselves, sheep.

[EJinCT]

You're right - BabalugASS has the right to be an ignorant bigot I suppose.
...and I don't have much time for those.

As much as I might disagree, I do believe in free speech.

Besides; I've had more than my share of ignorant moments in my life as well. During those times, nobody could convince me otherwise; I had to learn the hard way.

[Riddler]

so, the lot of you are just like those 3 little monkeys
see no
hear no
speak no

LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA.........I can't hear you.

Head in sand= jackass mentality

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

You're right - BabalugASS has the right to be an ignorant bigot I suppose.
...and I don't have much time for those.

As much as I might disagree, I do believe in free speech.

Besides; I've had more than my share of ignorant moments in my life as well. During those times, nobody could convince me otherwise; I had to learn the hard way.

Yes, free speech is necessary.

Ignorant moments are a commonality among people.  Depending on where one puts their attention, one could dig up ignorant behavior that may seem to belong to any particular group and use that information to make a case against that group.  All this is a perfect reason to stay away from grouping as a labeling device.  This tactic is just a another diversion.

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

so, the lot of you are just like those 3 little monkeys
see no
hear no
speak no

LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA.........I can't hear you.

Head in sand= jackass mentality

Of which three little monkeys do you speak?
The father, son and the holy ghost?
The brahma, vishnu, shiva?
The holy trinity?
The yin and yang and the connecting of the two?
The knower, the process of knowing and the known?
-or-
If it is those three little monkeys,
Hear no evil
See no evil
Speak no evil,
and you feel as if the lot of us are resisting your words, what does that make you?

[Riddler]

Nice pic BabalugASS - its very befitting - you really are a clown. 

Jealous...

I really wish I was edgy like you...the "thought criminal"
You're too cool for school, renegade

[Riddler]

James Kurth's Strategy For Defeating Radical Islam

If I ever teach a class, I'm going to do it the way that Swarthmore Professor James Kurth does. He outlines every class on the chalkboard beforehand, and then goes through each section in-depth. He is a dynamic lecturer - indeed only former UVA Dean Bob Scott stacks up to him among professors I've had - who isn't afraid to yell to get his point across. And he loves to get students arguing and yelling at each other to bring out the different arguments at stake. In other words, he did the 2 most important things a professor can do: he actually taught us stuff, and he made it interesting. And perhaps most impressively, he's the only professor I've ever had that actually used Bakke's famed student diversity to actually further serious educational objectives, as opposed to just being a Supreme Court derived pretense to engage in racial preferences. My favorite example was when he had a friend of mine explain what her life was like in war torn Sierra Leone hiding out in her home as roving bands of maniacs massacred her town.

His political views are also interesting. He's the only Swarthmore professor I'm aware of who's ever voted Republican. But the current administration has completely alienated him because he's an isolationist. On the other hand, Kurth is well aware of the serious threat the radical Islam, terrorism and the nuclear bomb pose. He just disagrees with the Administration's notion that democracy is the solution to this mess - in Kurth's view democracy is just an utterly new and bizarre construction that has no foundation in local reality.

Instead, Kurth's solution is basically the same as French Cardinal Richelieu's was in the 30 Years War in the early 17th century. Richelieu presciently knew that the largest strategic imperative of France was to keep Germany weak and disunited, so he instigated and propogated a bloody, internecine, and ultimately worthless civil war amongst the various German principalities and neighboring companies. The result was that Germany remained weak and disunited until Bismark, and France reigned supreme as the pre-eminent continential European power for two more centuries than it would have otherwise.

Likewise, Kurth views the Islamic world as a foe that cannot be tamed or solved through constructive means. Ideally we'd like the Islamic world to rid itself of terrorism, nuclear weapons, and Medieval religious convictions, and instead devote itself to liberal ideals and getting rich. But hard as we try, this isn't going to happen. Instead, our best bet is to make sure that America isn't a target of this craziness. And Kurth argues that our best means towards this end is to basically do what the Richelieu did to Germany and Britain did all over the world to establish its empire - exploit intra-Islamic tensions and rivalries to make sure that they fight each other, and not us. The most obvious tension is the Shiite / Sunni rivalry, which only goes back about 1300 years.

The easiest application of this concept is Iraq. As Kurth notes, the Sunnis are erupting because they're worried about losing their long-held strangehold over Iraq, and that the other ethnic groups that they'd long persecuted will massacre them. In Kurth's view, there's not a heck of a lot we can do about this, so why not withdraw our American forces from Iraq, and let the groups battle it out? America will stop being the target of this insanity, and the Muslim world will turn on itself. The same goes with the Iranian bomb. When (not if) Iran gets nuclear weapons, our goal should be to ensure that these weapons are most likely directed at neighboring Sunni Pakistan, rather than us. Encouraring this Sunni/Shiite rivalry may help accomplish this end. Either which way, Kurth wants America to get the hell out of the entire region. Given 3 new nuclear states, insane religious beliefs, and preposterous, arrogant, and belligerant regional beliefs in re-establishing an Islamic caliphate over the Muslim world, America's best bet is to say our goodbyes, and just try to make sure this craziness doesn't engulf us.

I'm torn on the Kurth solution. On the one hand, I agree with Kurth that attempting to impose democracy throughout the Middle East isn't going to work, though we disagree on why. For Kurth democracy is a Western social construction, while I think democracy is a universal impulse, but its dependent on a universal set of pre-conditions. Democracy only works once you have a plurocratic, wealthy society, and oil will prevent the necessary proliferation of different power centers throughout Islamic society that empirically has proven to be a necessary pre-requisate towards successful republican governance. On the other hand, Kurth has a long history of underestimating America's ability to accomplish the impossible. For example, I was taking a Kurth class during the semester that encompossed 9/11 and the successful Afghan campaign. Throughout the semester Kurth lectured and handed out articles on how hopeless past Afghan campaigns by the British and Soviets had been, and how doomed and haughty the American military effort was. A month later, the Taliban was routed. A similar thing apparently happened in 1999. Kurth was furious at how hopeless the Kosovo campaign was, and he was lobbying his ex-students in Congress to put a stop to it. Then suddenly, the Serbs withdrew.

But to say that Kurth has been wrong before does not necessarily mean he is wrong this time. I agree with him that Bush's democratic ambitions are hopeless. On the other hand, I don't think a hands-off approach by America will lead to a desirable end outcome. Given the mobility of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, our increasing inability to determine their source, and the possibility of terrorist networks, I don't think the world's most powerful nation - indeed an empire, to use Kurth's terminology - can just withdraw from the world, and hope that clever machinations can ensure that the world's crazies will use destructive new weapons against each other, rather than us. We should certainly try to not make ourselves a target, but it's also important that we try to help create an international framework that in the long run promotes liberal values. An application of this principle is that we don't just pull out of Iraq - we only leave when we have created stability. And we don't just say "nothing we can do about it" regarding Iranian nuclear ambitions - we try and use every carrot and stick in the book to prevent a crazy regime from acquiring nuclear capability.

One last thing I want to touch on. After 9/11 Kurth tore up the syllabus for the Defense Policy class, and one of the articles he handed out convicingly argued that the nation state was doomed. There will always be crazy people driven my maniachal religious conviction, and nuclear and other terrifying weapons will soon be owned by everyone in the planet. The nation-state is a fairly new creation - basically it's only existed since the Treaty of Westphalia - and its main purpose is to protect its citizens. Given the nexus of religious lunatics and terrible weapons, the nation state will eventually prove unable to protect its citizens, and the nation state will break down in favor of loose conglomerations, not necessarily bounded by land or borders.

This sounds like a crazy notion at first, but the more I've thought about it, the more plausible it sounds. 9/11 resulted in the U.S. fundamentally altering our foreign policy, detaining all sorts of terror suspects interminably, and changed our balance between protecting our civil liberties and protecting ourselves. Now we can argue all day about whether these policy shifts were a good idea or not, but there's no question they are the direct result of 9/11. Imagine what would happen with a more severe terrorist attack, or a set of attacks. It is not at all implausible that we would fundamentally change our form of government and social organization if the nation state proves ineffectual at preventing mass attacks.

In my mind, U.S. foreign policy's main goal should be avoiding this apocolytic prospect, much as Marty McFly and Doc Brown's main goal in Back to the Future II was avoiding Biff's 1985. Kurth thinks the best way to avoid this possibility is to withdraw from the world, and try to distract the crazies into battling each other rather than us. Bush thinks that the best way to avoid this future is to democritize the Islamic world so that the crazies either become sane, or are marginalized. Both solutions in my mind are idealistic and torn from reality. I think that elements of each solution should be used, but neither seems likely to prove a panacea.

So what's the point of this massive, rambling post? For one, Kurth is a really interesting fellow and an amazing professor. Second, democritizing the Islamic world is a long-term goal at best, and a counterproductive sham at worst. Third, Kurth offers some good ideas to solving the big problem of preventing undeterrable WMD attacks on America, but he also offers some bad ideas. But all his ideas are interesting and worth contemplating though. Fourth, the question of preventing mass casualties due to crazies using undeterrable weapons is the greatest dilemma facing our foreign policy today. There aren't any ideal and comprehensive solutions to this dilemma other than worldwide disarmament, which incidentally is the solution that most futuristic societies come up with in science fiction novels. In the short-term our best bet is to try to stop the proliferation of WMD, fight terrorist networks, try to reduce the likelyhood that crazies will want to strike out against America, and try to get foreign societies to fight crazies themselves rather than helping them. None of these solutions is easy; none is comprehensive; and several of them are internally contradictory. Nevertheless it's our best best.

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

James Kurth's Strategy For Defeating Radical Islam

If I ever teach a class, I'm going to do it the way that Swarthmore Professor James Kurth does. He outlines every class on the chalkboard beforehand, and then goes through each section in-depth. He is a dynamic lecturer - indeed only former UVA Dean Bob Scott stacks up to him among professors I've had - who isn't afraid to yell to get his point across. And he loves to get students arguing and yelling at each other to bring out the different arguments at stake. In other words, he did the 2 most important things a professor can do: he actually taught us stuff, and he made it interesting. And perhaps most impressively, he's the only professor I've ever had that actually used Bakke's famed student diversity to actually further serious educational objectives, as opposed to just being a Supreme Court derived pretense to engage in racial preferences. My favorite example was when he had a friend of mine explain what her life was like in war torn Sierra Leone hiding out in her home as roving bands of maniacs massacred her town.

His political views are also interesting. He's the only Swarthmore professor I'm aware of who's ever voted Republican. But the current administration has completely alienated him because he's an isolationist. On the other hand, Kurth is well aware of the serious threat the radical Islam, terrorism and the nuclear bomb pose. He just disagrees with the Administration's notion that democracy is the solution to this mess - in Kurth's view democracy is just an utterly new and bizarre construction that has no foundation in local reality.

Instead, Kurth's solution is basically the same as French Cardinal Richelieu's was in the 30 Years War in the early 17th century. Richelieu presciently knew that the largest strategic imperative of France was to keep Germany weak and disunited, so he instigated and propogated a bloody, internecine, and ultimately worthless civil war amongst the various German principalities and neighboring companies. The result was that Germany remained weak and disunited until Bismark, and France reigned supreme as the pre-eminent continential European power for two more centuries than it would have otherwise.

Likewise, Kurth views the Islamic world as a foe that cannot be tamed or solved through constructive means. Ideally we'd like the Islamic world to rid itself of terrorism, nuclear weapons, and Medieval religious convictions, and instead devote itself to liberal ideals and getting rich. But hard as we try, this isn't going to happen. Instead, our best bet is to make sure that America isn't a target of this craziness. And Kurth argues that our best means towards this end is to basically do what the Richelieu did to Germany and Britain did all over the world to establish its empire - exploit intra-Islamic tensions and rivalries to make sure that they fight each other, and not us. The most obvious tension is the Shiite / Sunni rivalry, which only goes back about 1300 years.

The easiest application of this concept is Iraq. As Kurth notes, the Sunnis are erupting because they're worried about losing their long-held strangehold over Iraq, and that the other ethnic groups that they'd long persecuted will massacre them. In Kurth's view, there's not a heck of a lot we can do about this, so why not withdraw our American forces from Iraq, and let the groups battle it out? America will stop being the target of this insanity, and the Muslim world will turn on itself. The same goes with the Iranian bomb. When (not if) Iran gets nuclear weapons, our goal should be to ensure that these weapons are most likely directed at neighboring Sunni Pakistan, rather than us. Encouraring this Sunni/Shiite rivalry may help accomplish this end. Either which way, Kurth wants America to get the hell out of the entire region. Given 3 new nuclear states, insane religious beliefs, and preposterous, arrogant, and belligerant regional beliefs in re-establishing an Islamic caliphate over the Muslim world, America's best bet is to say our goodbyes, and just try to make sure this craziness doesn't engulf us.

I'm torn on the Kurth solution. On the one hand, I agree with Kurth that attempting to impose democracy throughout the Middle East isn't going to work, though we disagree on why. For Kurth democracy is a Western social construction, while I think democracy is a universal impulse, but its dependent on a universal set of pre-conditions. Democracy only works once you have a plurocratic, wealthy society, and oil will prevent the necessary proliferation of different power centers throughout Islamic society that empirically has proven to be a necessary pre-requisate towards successful republican governance. On the other hand, Kurth has a long history of underestimating America's ability to accomplish the impossible. For example, I was taking a Kurth class during the semester that encompossed 9/11 and the successful Afghan campaign. Throughout the semester Kurth lectured and handed out articles on how hopeless past Afghan campaigns by the British and Soviets had been, and how doomed and haughty the American military effort was. A month later, the Taliban was routed. A similar thing apparently happened in 1999. Kurth was furious at how hopeless the Kosovo campaign was, and he was lobbying his ex-students in Congress to put a stop to it. Then suddenly, the Serbs withdrew.

But to say that Kurth has been wrong before does not necessarily mean he is wrong this time. I agree with him that Bush's democratic ambitions are hopeless. On the other hand, I don't think a hands-off approach by America will lead to a desirable end outcome. Given the mobility of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, our increasing inability to determine their source, and the possibility of terrorist networks, I don't think the world's most powerful nation - indeed an empire, to use Kurth's terminology - can just withdraw from the world, and hope that clever machinations can ensure that the world's crazies will use destructive new weapons against each other, rather than us. We should certainly try to not make ourselves a target, but it's also important that we try to help create an international framework that in the long run promotes liberal values. An application of this principle is that we don't just pull out of Iraq - we only leave when we have created stability. And we don't just say "nothing we can do about it" regarding Iranian nuclear ambitions - we try and use every carrot and stick in the book to prevent a crazy regime from acquiring nuclear capability.

One last thing I want to touch on. After 9/11 Kurth tore up the syllabus for the Defense Policy class, and one of the articles he handed out convicingly argued that the nation state was doomed. There will always be crazy people driven my maniachal religious conviction, and nuclear and other terrifying weapons will soon be owned by everyone in the planet. The nation-state is a fairly new creation - basically it's only existed since the Treaty of Westphalia - and its main purpose is to protect its citizens. Given the nexus of religious lunatics and terrible weapons, the nation state will eventually prove unable to protect its citizens, and the nation state will break down in favor of loose conglomerations, not necessarily bounded by land or borders.

This sounds like a crazy notion at first, but the more I've thought about it, the more plausible it sounds. 9/11 resulted in the U.S. fundamentally altering our foreign policy, detaining all sorts of terror suspects interminably, and changed our balance between protecting our civil liberties and protecting ourselves. Now we can argue all day about whether these policy shifts were a good idea or not, but there's no question they are the direct result of 9/11. Imagine what would happen with a more severe terrorist attack, or a set of attacks. It is not at all implausible that we would fundamentally change our form of government and social organization if the nation state proves ineffectual at preventing mass attacks.

In my mind, U.S. foreign policy's main goal should be avoiding this apocolytic prospect, much as Marty McFly and Doc Brown's main goal in Back to the Future II was avoiding Biff's 1985. Kurth thinks the best way to avoid this possibility is to withdraw from the world, and try to distract the crazies into battling each other rather than us. Bush thinks that the best way to avoid this future is to democritize the Islamic world so that the crazies either become sane, or are marginalized. Both solutions in my mind are idealistic and torn from reality. I think that elements of each solution should be used, but neither seems likely to prove a panacea.

So what's the point of this massive, rambling post? For one, Kurth is a really interesting fellow and an amazing professor. Second, democritizing the Islamic world is a long-term goal at best, and a counterproductive sham at worst. Third, Kurth offers some good ideas to solving the big problem of preventing undeterrable WMD attacks on America, but he also offers some bad ideas. But all his ideas are interesting and worth contemplating though. Fourth, the question of preventing mass casualties due to crazies using undeterrable weapons is the greatest dilemma facing our foreign policy today. There aren't any ideal and comprehensive solutions to this dilemma other than worldwide disarmament, which incidentally is the solution that most futuristic societies come up with in science fiction novels. In the short-term our best bet is to try to stop the proliferation of WMD, fight terrorist networks, try to reduce the likelyhood that crazies will want to strike out against America, and try to get foreign societies to fight crazies themselves rather than helping them. None of these solutions is easy; none is comprehensive; and several of them are internally contradictory. Nevertheless it's our best best.

Radical(as mentioned in the title to your cut and paste), the key word.
This would leave the majority of muslims out of being a threat to our way of life.

Are you a teacher?

[Riddler]

It's the minority we need to be concerned with, fuzzy
As I said b4, they speak far louder & bloodier than their 'peaceful' brethren.

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

It's the minority we need to be concerned with, fuzzy
As I said b4, they speak far louder & bloodier than their 'peaceful' brethren.

Yes, you do.

[toowm]

http://newhampshireunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=377.0

[Riddler]

Nice pic BabalugASS - its very befitting - you really are a clown. 

Jealous...

I really wish I was edgy like you...the "thought criminal"
You're too cool for school, renegade

Ha ha - no one is trying to be "edgey", clown.
Its from 1984 - a book you would probably benifit from reading.

Thanks orwell, read it 20+ yrs ago

[Riddler]

James Kurth's Strategy For Defeating Radical Islam

in Kurth's view democracy is just an utterly new and bizarre construction that has no foundation in local reality.

Why are you here clown?
Doesn't seem like you have a reason to be if this is the sort of nonsense you promote.
All your ridiculous articles and comments prove is that your ignorant and clueless and very much not for freedom and liberty.
So bye bye, no one wants to participate in your "two minutes of hate". Say hi to Big Brother for me.

edgy
One entry found.

edgy 
   


Main Entry: edgy 
Pronunciation: \?e-j?\
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): edg·i·er; edg·i·est
Date: 1775
1: having an edge : sharp
2 a: being on edge : tense, irritable b: characterized by tension <edgy negotiations>
3: having a bold, provocative, or unconventional quality <an edgy film>
— edg·i·ly  \?e-j?-l?\ adverb
— edg·i·ness  \?e-j?-n?s\ noun


Might wanna leave out that xtra 'E' there, big boy.

Also 'bane', I expect you are speaking for the entire board? This is 'your' place, exclusively?