Many thanks to Tigerhawk for this citation:
Cassandra, writing in her own house, stiffens all our spines and considers the prospects for Western civilization.
I wish I had written this remarkable essay – definitely read the whole thing. A sample:
Western society’s great weakness is that we, whether through over-sensitivity, a desire to be “fair”, or sheer complacency, turn a blind eye as vocal and disaffected minorities practice intolerance (ostensibly the one unpardonable sin of Western society) towards the most able among us, forgetting that from religion (our Judeo-Christian heritage, to be exact) came the very freedoms we enjoy today. This results, at times, in a virtual tyranny of the minority that is the very opposite of democracy. We allow a vocal minority to actively subvert the segment of our society that chooses and makes up our government and determines the course this nation takes.
It is hard to imagine behavior more antithetical to western values or more likely to result, ultimately, in the death of the freedoms we hold dear and the destruction of western society. I call this phenomenon, Dummitude.
The advocates of Dummitude are everywhere: in our public schools, in Congress, on the Internet. Their goal is to gain through constant carping and criticism what they cannot at the ballot box. Ostensibly preaching openness, choice, and tolerance, they aim to impose a cramping conformity of thought and uniformity of ideology. “Tolerance”, “inclusiveness”, and moral purity are their weapons; these concepts are ironically used to enforce ends diametrically opposed to the means.
. . .
But for the advocates of Dummitude, the baby is always thrown out with the bathwater. If we can’t have all our freedoms, life (apparently) is no longer worth living. The random thought that an evening of rousing phone conversation with Abu Musab al Zarqawi (sans NSA wiretaps) is of little value to a smoking corpse never quite seems to enter the mind of the moral absolutist.
Likewise, in the the bizarre value system of the Dummitudinous, Abu Ghuraib and rumors of hidden CIA detention camps outweigh millions of Arab purple fingers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis buried in mass graves. The democratic stirrings in Lebanon and Egypt do not signify. No rational cost/benefit analysis informs their moral calculus: America cannot make a single mistake or all the good we have done is wiped out.
In an even more tenuous argument, the war itself was justified but since the administration failed to foresee every contingency that ensued, “poor management†has now caused those who formerly supported it to withdraw their support.
. . .
But you see, the debate isn’t about what’s sensible or practical. It’s about having a war with zero mistakes. Zero casualties. A perfect war where no one is ever sad, the sun shines every day, and all our soldiers are above-average. That kind of war doesn’t exist. But you see Hillary really cares about our troops, unlike George Bush.
FYI, Cassandra writes regularly for Tigerhawk blog.
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