#1: I have to disagree a bit with VDH here. The cause of our ills is not a low birth rate, the good life or even socialism. The cause of our ills is that our society here at home is that through our media and culture, we have adopted the same mindset as our enemies. Blame.
The new culture of blame is the problem that we face. For the Islamist culture it has always been that way - the cause of all their problems is the Jews. The Palestinians are so steeped in this culture that they rejected their own state of peaceful prosepertity to a state of anarchy.
Creating a government, like fighting a war is difficult and messy and it's never perfect. Nothing is ever perfect. Instead of looking to real causes they cling to "root causes". For them, the root cause is the Jews.
Don't have as much as your neighbor? The Jews are to blame. Stub your toe? Somehow, it is the fault of that sneaky Jew. No need for you to fix that floor board once a day if it is the Jew who needs to do it for you.
Previously in Western society we did not fall prey to this malady. If there was a problem, you identified it, addressed it as best you could and fixed it as best as it could be fixed. Each person was responsible for doing his part. You saw a problem, it was up to you to help fix it. Charity was the extra you did yourself to help those who could not help themselves. Whiners were told to shut up and get to work.
But not anymore. Now the liberals especially, but our culture in general is about blame. Get in an "accident"? No such thing as an unfortunate accident anymore. Lawyers are dispatched to assign blame. Even if no one involved had acted with malice or intent or the accident could not have been helped - blame must be assigned and the person blamed punished. It's no longer enough to pay the doctors fees or help out the person harmed. Blame must be assigned and someone must pay.
We have now lost what was once an integral part of our culture - the idea that the individual must reach within himself to forgive his enemies - to love and help his neighbor. That it was up to each individual to do this himself. This has been for centuries, a cornerstone of our culture.
For the liberals and our culture at large- they are no longer about ideas, they are entirely about blame. The Evangelicals, Republicans, The Government™, George Bush and Jews who don't blame themselves are the new Satans reponsible for all ills. These groups are somehow responsible for every homeless person, every death around the world - anything and everything that goes wrong in the world can be blamed on them, even the weather.
I think that the reason that our freedoms and lifestyle are so deeply threatend by Muslim culture and risk returning to the Dark Ages is because now our culture has discarded the ideals that were responsible for making the dark ages to go away. Instead of appreciating the work of those who roll up their sleeves and work hard to make an imperfect world better - we simply chastise them for the fact that they didn't make it perfect. Blame - it's what ails us all.
Posted by: anon|| 2006-11-09 11:33 ||Comments Top||
Sadly true.
