Why fight it? Because it is important.

[Brad Sallows]

>Have you studied poli sci?

Do you mean, have I any credentials such as a BA?  No.  Or are you merely wondering if I read anything besides TV guide?  If this is just going to be a puffy-chest contest over credentialism, we can end it here.

>One of his primary beefs seems to be "freer this that and the other thing make this but academia doesn't believe it" which is false.

My observation is that a disproportionately large number of poli and soc students and educators tend to lean left, favouring considerable government involvement in the life of citizens beyond the necessary function of safeguarding rights.  Infanteer is a notable exception.  I am at a loss to explain this if they claim to be "scientific".  Either people with greater personal, economic, and political liberty are more prosperous and less inclined to covet what others have, or they are not.  If the former is the case, it would behoove any objective observer to promote the greatest possible individual freedom and maintain constant vigilance over the regulations and agencies created to constrain abuses.

Government doesn't have to be very democratic to be stable - I in fact incline to share the belief of those who aver that unrestrained democracy is ultimately the source of its own demise.  Legitimacy is merely a concept of definition.

I agree there are numerous thinkers who have proposed ideal societies which enshrine individualism.  But, that's not at issue.  It is current orthodox academic views which we are discussing.  If I interview the faculty of the poli and soc departments of any Canadian university, which way do you think I'll find them leaning: communitarianism, or individualism?

>The whole "free people don't pick fights with others" is a pretty idea, but US, French, British, and numerous other foreign policies would suggest otherwise.

I wrote about free and prosperous peoples, not governments.

>Arguing the supremacy of ultra-atomistic, "free" societies is just as absurd as arguing uber-communitarian society's supremacy.

I did not attempt to make that argument.  My argument is simply this: first, the dominant or popular ideas in academia are communitarian which accounts for an observed "left" political bias; second, historical evidence indicates we should lean to the individualism side of the spectrum; finally, if theories conflict with observed reality, claims to scientific objectivity are invalid.  All you need to do to change my mind is to convince me of any one of the following:

1) Communitarian ideas are not the dominant orthodoxy in academia.
2) I am misinterpreting evidence which I believe shows that people who enjoy greater liberties (political, economic, individual) tend to be more prosperous and harder to goad to war.

To claim scientific objectivity means more than to claim to use scientific methods - you actually have to go where the data, evidence, and logical thought processes take you even when it offends your ideological predispositions.  A sound theory explains all observations and has predictive value.  When we rely on intuition and educated guesswork, we call it an "art".

 

[Britney Spears]

Pfft, you old fogeys are all the same. What was it that Churchiill (Winston, not whoever it is you're talking about) said?  If a young man is not a liberal, then he has no heart, if an old man is not a conservative, he has no brain?

Now one of you should come up with a robust theory to explain this phenomenon. God knows I'm too lazy to do it. Otherwise I think we are straying dangerously into dead horse land.

 

[a_majoor]

Check the differing treatment of these two men, one a serious and credentialed scholar, and the other the individual we are talking about. You will see what sort of alternative universe the academic "Left" (to shorthand it) is coming from:

Masters of the Game
The Left on Churchill and Summers.

If you're a liberal who's still moping like a dog whose food bowl has been moved, thanks to all the conservative victories of late, I have some words of encouragement for you: You guys are still way, way smarter than we are about some things.

Consider the current flap about Ward Churchill and the recent one about Harvard President Larry Summers.

Ward Churchill, as you've probably heard, is a tenured professor of "ethnic studies" at the University of Colorado. Until recently he was the chairman of the department. When invited to another school to give a talk, it came out that he had written an essay comparing the civilian victims of 9/11 to "little Eichmanns." This was a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the Holocaust.

Known for making factually unencumbered statements about the evils of America, Churchill recently gave an interview in which he said he wanted the "U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether." He thinks "more 9/11s" are necessary. He holds no Ph.D., and his scholarship â ” for want of a better word â ” is under relentless attack. Before the current kerfuffle, he'd attained whatever prominence he had by pretending he was an American Indian radical. He likes to pose with assault rifles. The Rocky Mountain News did a genealogical search of Churchill's past and found that he's basically a vanilla white guy playing Indian and enriching himself in the process. The American Indian Movement called Churchill a fraud years ago.

OK, flash back to the hysteria over Larry Summers. By now his auto-da-fé is old news. But let's recap. One of the most respected economists in America, president of Harvard University, and the former secretary of the Treasury, Summers was invited to a closed-door, off-the-record academic conference at which everyone was encouraged to think unconventionally. Warning his audience several times that he was going to be deliberately "provocative," he suggested that there might be some innate cognitive differences between men and women.

This is not a controversial hypothesis in macroeconomics, and it is losing its taboo status in psychology, genetics, and neuroscience. Thousands of peer-reviewed academic papers have been written on the differences between men and women when it comes to various cognitive functions. Note that I said "differences." Superiority and inferiority don't play into it, and Summers never said otherwise. Indeed, he ventured this hypothesis, after showing his obeisance to the more politically correct explanations: discrimination, not enough effort to recruit women, etc., etc.

So what was the reaction?

An MIT feminist biologist â ” who moonlights as a feminist activist â ” quickly got the vapors and stormed out of the room for fear of fainting. If she stayed any longer, she explained, she'd vomit. Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe compared Summers to people who cavalierly bandy about the N-word or who thoughtlessly wear swastikas. One hundred members of the Harvard faculty drafted a letter demanding that he apologize. The National Organization for Women demanded that he resign.

The dean of engineering at the University of Washington called his comments "an intellectual tsunami." Since the Asian catastrophe had only just transpired, the tastelessness of the metaphor may not be as apparent now as it was then. Regardless, if his comments were a tsunami, Summers's critics have certainly cashed in on the disaster-relief effort.

Forced to apologize over and over, Summers was then bullied into appointing not one but two new "task forces" on gender equity. Staffed with 22 women and five men, the task forces will no doubt discover that much more work needs to be done and that Summers should apologize more.

In the Summers affair, free speech and academic freedom barely came up, except among a few conservative commentators and one or two academics who were already known for their political incorrectness. Instead, Summers was a pinata to be bashed for material rewards and to send the message that some subjects â ” no matter what the evidence â ” are simply taboo even for serious scholars to discuss in closed-door, off-the-record meetings.

Meanwhile, Ward Churchill, whose scholarship is a joke, whose evidence is tendentious at best, and who called the victims of 9/11 the moral equivalent of a man who sent babies to the gas chambers, is a hero of free speech. He has refused to apologize. Many conservatives are forced to defend free speech and "diversity" in academia while liberals let the NOWers feed on Summers's flesh.

Liberals may despise what Churchill said, but it's a matter of principle now. The normally insightful and fair Mort Kondracke declared on Fox News, "I really think it's useful for universities to have people like this around, to show students and the rest of us just how odious some of the ideas of the far Left are." Would Kondracke punt on a professor who'd endorsed slavery? I somehow doubt it.

Hopefully â ” and, I think, probably â ” someone will find enough academic fraud to fire Churchill for cause. No doubt, we'll hear from many on the left about the "chilling effect" such a move would have on "academic freedom," and many conservatives will clear their throats in embarrassment. You really have to marvel at how the other side has mastered this game.
â ” (c) 2005 Tribune Media Services

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200502111210.asp

 

[Infanteer]

...and you can understand why the US, with regards to it's current assertive foreign policy, isn't kow-towing to the current academic bleating.

It's easy when one has tenure to sit, read a book, a criticize anything - but when you are a senior American administrative official and you are responsible for National Security interests, all you can do is say "FUCK YOU" (to France, Harvard, Berkley, Ward Churchill, or CBS) and do your job the best way you can.

 

[CivU]

"free and prosperous peoples tend not to pick fights with others"

Last time I checked America is the free and prosperous nation...

 

[Brad Sallows]

Last time I checked the US was not quick to enter WWI or WWII, did not have the heart to see Vietnam to a proper finish, didn't really want to be in the Balkans, and at least by approximately 50% didn't or doesn't want to be in Iraq.  As I wrote, don't confuse peoples with governments.

 

[mdh]

As an aside, there is one academic who has exercised enormous influence over the current White House, Leo Strauss, a major figure - if not the major figure -   at the University of Chicago. He is not a "communitarian" philosopher, and that influence has shaped the outlook of several architects of the Iraq War including Paul Wolfowitz.

"Some of the themes Wolfowitz sounded when he talked about foreign policy carried clear overtones of Straussian thinking; his emphasis on stopping tyranny and condemning evil; the notion that dictatorships operate in fundamental different ways from democracies; the believe that liberal democracies can be fooled by a dictator's elaborate deceptions. Wolfowitz applied these ideas first to the Soviet Union and the cold war, and then years later, to Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

From Michael Mann's excellent history of Bush's Whitehouse: The Rise of the Vulcan's: The History of Bush's War Cabinet.

Cheers, mdh  

 

[CivU]

"As I wrote, don't confuse peoples with governments."

In a democracy, is the government not the embodiment of the people?

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

NO,not unless you want an election-type vote on every decision......

...and for Mr. Majoors article on Churchill and Summers,......thats the new reality, unfortunetly. Yesterday I heard a McDonalds commercial on the radio were the guy was givig his wife/girlfriend some smart-ass answers and she says "One more and you get smacked"...............try reversing that and watch.....

 

[Infanteer]

"As I wrote, don't confuse peoples with governments."

In a democracy, is the government not the embodiment of the people?

You obviously fail to understand how a representative democracy works and cannot see what Brad Sallows is getting at.

Maybe I'll phone my uncle in California and ask how his strategic planning for Iraq is coming along, perhaps he's being hampered by decisions on the budget or by having to deal with UN bureaucrats.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

....I get it and ,.............WOW,....I've never taken a course on poli sci......

 

[Infanteer]

Trust me Bruce, there has been more critical discussions here then any Poli Sci course that I ever had.  Maybe we can print you off an Honourary Degree from Army.ca in Political Science....

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

*hears the mischievous laugh of a Bobbitt whirling his mouse around something called "photoshop"?*

 

[mdh]

Having been deeply involved with the political process myself, there is only one scientific principle in politics that has any predictive value : power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Lord Acton wasn't a political scientist, cheers, all, mdh

 

[Glorified Ape]

>Have you studied poli sci?

Do you mean, have I any credentials such as a BA?   No.   Or are you merely wondering if I read anything besides TV guide?   If this is just going to be a puffy-chest contest over credentialism, we can end it here.

Not at all, just curious as to whether you had any actual experience in the field. That being said, when I start telling Infanteer the ins and outs of a section attack....

>One of his primary beefs seems to be "freer this that and the other thing make this but academia doesn't believe it" which is false.

My observation is that a disproportionately large number of poli and soc students and educators tend to lean left, favouring considerable government involvement in the life of citizens beyond the necessary function of safeguarding rights.   Infanteer is a notable exception.   I am at a loss to explain this if they claim to be "scientific".   Either people with greater personal, economic, and political liberty are more prosperous and less inclined to covet what others have, or they are not.   If the former is the case, it would behoove any objective observer to promote the greatest possible individual freedom and maintain constant vigilance over the regulations and agencies created to constrain abuses.

It wouldn't shock me, assuming the stats were available, to find many poli sci and sociology students and faculty are "left leaning". How "left leaning" necessarily translates into "communitarian" is beyond me. If by left leaning you mean communist, then yes - communitarian they are. I'm left leaning, a poli sci student, and I wouldn't say I'm a communitarian. Am I a libertarian? No. Political ideology isn't divided as cleanly as "left = socialist communitarian, right = neo-liberal governmental reductionist". You say "the greatest POSSIBLE individual freedom" - therein lies the debate - what's acceptably functional and "possible". It's a matter of opinion. Moderate regulation by a government isn't inconsistent with the traditional liberal value of the individual, nor is a large degree of government regulation, depending on which areas it's focused in. Heavy government regulation of transportation doesn't hinder individual realisation and expression. Heavy government regulation of speech and religion/thought does. What constitutes "heavy" or "light" is debatable.

To say political science isn't "scientific" because it has left-leaning constituents is absolutely ridiculous. You premise the entire argument on some unsubstantiated "impression" of non-compliance with an unsubstantiated, unproven theory you believe is correct. How scientific is that?

Government doesn't have to be very democratic to be stable - I in fact incline to share the belief of those who aver that unrestrained democracy is ultimately the source of its own demise.   Legitimacy is merely a concept of definition.

Legitimacy is the people's perception that the government has a right to govern them. By electing a government, you achieve legitimacy. You can achieve it otherwise, but in this day and age the easiest method is democratic election since there aren't many who still believe heredity confers right.

You can have stable non-democratic government, yes. The expense of it is quite substantial.

I agree there are numerous thinkers who have proposed ideal societies which enshrine individualism.   But, that's not at issue.   It is current orthodox academic views which we are discussing.   If I interview the faculty of the poli and soc departments of any Canadian university, which way do you think I'll find them leaning: communitarianism, or individualism?

I'd say individual, from my experiences with professors.

>The whole "free people don't pick fights with others" is a pretty idea, but US, French, British, and numerous other foreign policies would suggest otherwise.

I wrote about free and prosperous peoples, not governments.

Well, since we haven't really had free and prosperous peoples WITHOUT a government, can you elaborate with an example? Free peoples in Britain, France, and the US all re-elected governments engaged in "picking fights" in one way or another. Or did you mean we haven't had hordes of free and prosperous people washing violently over other people in some leaderless, inarticulate but autonomous mob. Sounds like the period of western expansion in the US, though I don't think the exact mob you're describing has ever existed.

>Arguing the supremacy of ultra-atomistic, "free" societies is just as absurd as arguing uber-communitarian society's supremacy.

I did not attempt to make that argument.   My argument is simply this: first, the dominant or popular ideas in academia are communitarian which accounts for an observed "left" political bias; second, historical evidence indicates we should lean to the individualism side of the spectrum; finally, if theories conflict with observed reality, claims to scientific objectivity are invalid.  

No, the theory is invalid. Scientific objectivity is only invalidated when clearly false theories are still advanced as true. I haven't seen any of this in the work of poli sci academics. Perhaps you have a specific theory in mind? Vague assertions of personal subscription to "communitarian" ideas by unnamed and unquantified members of the field isn't really sufficient.

All you need to do to change my mind is to convince me of any one of the following:

1) Communitarian ideas are not the dominant orthodoxy in academia.

Lets see, in international relations the dominant ideology (judging from what's taught most) is Realism, which asserts that states (even ones with free and prosperous peoples) act in an atomistic fashion to maximize their own security and that said security is achieved in a zero-sum exchange where gain by one entails loss by another. That's pretty individualistic.

For everything from international relations to electoral dynamics, you have Rational Choice theory which focuses on the individual as a rational decision-maker with quantifiable preferences, subconsciously and consciously rank-ordered which they'll attempt to realise sequentially by said rank. Pretty individual there too.

Neither theory is perfect, nor can either theory be disproven completely. In fact, both are relatively successful in explaining historical events and in predicting future events.

If you mean specific political ideologies, I wouldn't even be able to hazard a guess seeing as how professors don't usually discuss their own political preferences with us.

2) I am misinterpreting evidence which I believe shows that people who enjoy greater liberties (political, economic, individual) tend to be more prosperous and harder to goad to war.

Prosperous, yes. I'm not sure what you mean by "harder to goad to war". Do you mean it's harder for the government to convince the population to go to war? If so, then yes - it is harder since in non-democratic countries the government doesn't have to worry about convincing the people since it doesn't rely on popular support for its legitimacy or power. If you mean that they're more unwilling to go to war, we can't really know for sure since undemocratic countries don't poll their people prior to starting or participating in a war, nor do they during it.

Judging by sheer number of wars and violent acts engaged in, "free peoples" are often more than willing to war and pick fights, they just tend not to do it with each other. Didn't take too much to convince the US population to go into Iraq did it? Or Afghanistan.

To claim scientific objectivity means more than to claim to use scientific methods - you actually have to go where the data, evidence, and logical thought processes take you even when it offends your ideological predispositions.  

Yes, that's scientific objectivity - I know. That fact is why I'm sure there exist many a conflicted personally leftist, professionally Realist professors.

A sound theory explains all observations and has predictive value.   When we rely on intuition and educated guesswork, we call it an "art".

Indeed. Perhaps you could demonstrate where political science relies on intuition and guesswork.

 

[Infanteer]

Not at all, just curious as to whether you had any actual experience in the field. That being said, when I start telling Infanteer the ins and outs of a section attack....

If you think reading books and listening to someone with tenure talk for 50 minutes, 3 days a week constitutes "experience in the field", you are sadly mistaken.   One does not have to go to University to be read books and be considered "experienced" with political thought.

Come off your high-horse.

Neither theory is perfect, nor can either theory be disproven completely. In fact, both are relatively successful in explaining historical events and in predicting future events.

Looking back on my undergraduate experience, I can firmly say that Political Science (or any other Liberal Art) is NOT a "science" what-so-ever for the simple reason that it is predicated on human behaviour, which is erratic, irrational, and relative to a numerous amount of factors.   For the most part, it is subjective analysis of certain aspects of human behaviour, which is probably the most complex "chaotic system" out there.   Even economics, which likes to revert to closed systems, cannot get around the fact that "Supply" and "Demand" are linked to the fact that human beings, for any particular reason that strikes them, may decide one day that they don't want to by Tampex Tampons.

Scientific Laws (Law of Conservation of Mass) are based upon indisputable grounds backed by observable phenomona.

Scientific Theory (The Theory of Evolution, the Big Bang Theory) are again based on observation of phenonmena, but lack the conclusive body of evidence and may insufficiently address the topic to be considered a law.

Politics, economics, sociology, etc, etc is based on human behaviour.   Although there are trends ("power corrupts", "free people prosper"), none of these are verifiable as they are based on subjective evaluations of only a portion of the human experience.

 

[Infanteer]

Additionally.  One does not have to be communitarian to be "left-wing" or "left-of-center", and one can be "right-of-center" and espouse communitarian beliefs - I spent a semester studying the works of John Rawls and the majority of his Communitarian critics were far from "left-wing" (and, subsequently, Rawls' atomism was far from "right-of-center" or Libertarian).

However, considering that this course was the only one in UBC's small Political Theory branch and that Native Studies, Feminist Studies, etc, etc all have established departments at the University with large faculties - Brad Sallows is bang on with his proposition that the mainstream academic dialogue is dominated by communitarian, left-of-center thinkers.

Alone, this is not a troubling factor; different schools get their "time on the mike".  However, what I find alarming is that this dominance seems so out-of-touch with the current situation and how many (if not most) western citizens feel and that this "School of thought" seems downright aggressively opposed to counter-thought by resorting to "PC censorship" through attacks like racist, biggot, misogynist, imperialist, etc, etc.

 

[a_majoor]

This "picked a fight" thing is really starting to get to me. Just like "Cold Fusion", this is a case where the overwhelming preponderence of evidence is simply at odds with what is being described. Yes, in the past, the Democratic nations have invaded or meddled in the affairs of other nations, although the historical context of the Cold War would suggest that most of the cases since 1945 were undertaken as part of a larger geo-political strategy to contain an agressive USSR; which clearly was "picking a fight". During this time, Britan did NOT invade France, West Germany, Japan, Argentina and so on.

(An aside. I do not belive that history is "clean", the 20th century in my view includes several entangled episodes, from the "Fall of the Eagles" (unwinding of the Imperial system, which continued in a small way until the Portugese finally left Africa in the 1970s) to the "Fight against Socialism", which started in 1918 with the allied invasion of Bolshevick Russia, and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Indochina involved both the Eagles [France vs the Viet Mihn], and the fight against the socialists [American involvement from 1960-1975])

Since 1979, the Jihadis (AKA Islamofascists) have been "picking a fight" with Western civilization, from the taking of US diplomats as hostages in Tehran in 1979, to violent terrorism in the 1980's, through to the 1990's when Embassys, Military accomodations and even docked US warships were attacked with seeming impunity (After the USS Cole bombing, a member of the Clinton cabinet reputedly said no action was to be undertaken because it "was not provocative enough"). Emboldened, they undertook the most audacious mission on a bright morning in September of 2001...you may remember pictures of civillians who decided that junping from a 1000' office window was prefferable to being burned alive inside the World Trade Center.

So:Assertation "Democratic nations do pick fights with other nations"
    Factual evidence: "Islamofascist Jihadis, believing the decadent West was unable or unwilling to oppose their plans, carried out increasingly violent attacks on Western and particulary US targets, resulting in war"

Result (in science)  The assertation is demonstrably false, and will no longer be considered
        (in academia) We'll just keep saying it anyway

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Perhaps you could demonstrate where political science relies on intuition and guesswork.

Put it this way: if a luminary in the community announces a prediction of a political outcome, and someone were to ask to see his equations and the data used as initial conditions...would there be any?

 

[Infanteer]

So:Assertation "Democratic nations do pick fights with other nations"
     Factual evidence: "Islamofascist Jihadis, believing the decadent West was unable or unwilling to oppose their plans, carried out increasingly violent attacks on Western and particulary US targets, resulting in war"

Result (in science)   The assertation is demonstrably false, and will no longer be considered
         (in academia) We'll just keep saying it anyway

Arthur, I'm going to disagree with you on some of this.

See, this is where Political Science or any other gage of human activity cannot be a science because this is a subjective value judgement based on human behaviour.

A true scientific "law" is undisputable, regardless of where one stands.   If one measures the mass before and after a chemical reaction, they will get the same result, regardless of whether they do it in Beijing, New York, or Baghdad.   This is why Science can prove "Laws", the evidence is undisputable.

A true scientific "theory" is disputable, but is again based upon hard evidence.   Despite what different arguments against "The Theory of Evolution" may be, it cannot get rid of the fact that in China, the USA, and in Africa, we did fossils of species that have not existed since Man started to record his history.   Since it is a theory, there are very valid disputes about the reason for this, but the evidence is still there and must be considered.

Now, gauging and studying human behaviour can NEVER be this assertive because it is based entirely on an input of subjective values and interpretations.   You say that "Islamofascist Jihadis, believing the decadent West was unable or unwilling to oppose their plans, carried out increasingly violent attacks on Western and particularly US targets, resulting in war" - this may seem like "the truth" or "Law" to us, but to someone sitting in Riyadh, maybe it is "Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, us Arabs have been the whipping boy of the Western powers from Israel to putting Oil companies in the Holy Land - Allah Akbar!".   People can rationalize that, and to them it is an equal "truth" and "Law" to the first statement.

Hell, one could say that things like views towards the Holocaust were based on subjective statement of value.   Most of the population found it as the most vile form of morally reprehensible activity to date, and for good reason.   But many people found mass murder on this scale to be appropriate and required - these were the Nazi's who manned the camps and signed off on the orders to use them.   A good chunk of the Soviet Union didn't seem to mind pulling equally vicious pogroms and the like, murdering countless scores of people.

There is no moral "absolutes" or "laws", hence social "science" is based mostly off of trends and is in the eye of the beholder.

Where does this leave us, wondering adrift in an ocean of "right" and "wrong"?   Well, as far as I see it, human behaviour is underscored by another intangible thing, Will.   What is right and wrong is clearly decided by those who have the Will to make it so.   If Nazi Germany would have been victorious, I'm sure all our shared experience in the HitlerJugend would lead us to conclude that the "Jewish Question" was adequately answered by the "Final Solution" (frightening, but probable - look how Japan got away with its atrocities and basically chooses to ignore them now).   Clearly, this is another testament of Will.

Clearly, there are two "trends" that our Political and Social studies can highlight that would make sense to most of our fellow citizens.

1)   One is that, under the aegis of freedom and prosperity, the Will of the liberal democratic West has been strong enough to overcome Absolutism, Fascism, Communism.   I have strong conviction that it will no doubt crush the equally repressive ideology of virulent Fundamentalism - why?   Because the general trend is that free people prosper and that people with fetters on (whether they be physical or not) desire to be free.

2)   The members of virulent Fundamentalist groups have displayed the trend of becoming increasingly aggressive and violent towards the Western liberal democratic order through increased attacks against both military and civilian targets.   They are attempting to further push assert their Will on us.

Now, most of us have come off the fence and will and choose to back the liberal democratic order - Why?   Because in the liberal democratic atmosphere of freedom and prosperity, we've decided that the individual human being is accorded the greatest amount of dignity that can be afforded.   Whether it be for family, kin-group, community or country, this principle is the same and underscores the reason why I fight.   It justifies and underscores the Western Will to Power.

This is only my subjective interpretation and the Fundamentalist is liable to disagree, believing dignity will be accorded when Submission is carried out through strict adherence to the Koran (just as past opponents relied on adherence to Bolshevism, Mein Kampf, or the Divine Right of Kings - This is not to put the Book of Islam on a similar level to those works, only to point out that Fundamenalist outlook shares to trait of forcing others to look to some written work for their guidence instead of deciding for themselves what is best for them and their family).   This is not a battle of Good and Evil based upon scientific analysis of morality (which can't be done) - it is a Contest of Wills.

I am confident of the fact that in this contest of wills, I am backed by most of the people of both Canada (and the West) who choose to stand on the same moral ground as I do.   While my will is backed by the moral, industrial, and political support of the representatives of Western peoples, the enemy must slink around in caves, possessing no real firm basis for moral support, and relying on underhanded tactics of targeting civilians through terror.   Again, this is why I know that me and my fellows will be victorious.

My view on people who chose not to come off the Fence (not on Iraq or any specific matter, but against the Western Liberal democratic order in general) is that they are moral shills of the highest order.   By sitting on their (mostly tenured) fence, they preach their world view but will never come down off that fence to back up their beliefs in a Contest of Wills.   Even the poor guy sent in by the Mullah or the desperate German youth is on a higher plane then these clowns, because at least they had the courage to put their Will (and thus their moral outlook) to the test.

It doesn't really bother me at all that people who detest the liberal democratic order continue to bleat (which tends to become a little louder as we make our Moral Stand), because I know they are harmless because people like Churchill and Co. have no real moral authority and do not have the courage to back it up.   As such, they will be irrelevant in the long run while I can be assured that my Moral Stand in this latest Test of Wills will ensure that my family and my fellow Canadians will continue to exist under the aegis of the peace and prosperity.

Of course, that's my moral outlook, and you may disagree.   But in doing so, you should question yourself to see if you're sitting on the fence with Ward Churchill.

Infanteer.