"re-evaluate their culture of hate"

Does not that nifty Hyperzionistical "culture of hate" remind thee of Neocomrade H. L. Carr,

Mr. Bones, "Emperor of the Empire of Hate"?

Ammá ba‘da, "but seriously,"

A call from Obama for Muslims to re-evaluate their culture of hate against Jews, Israel and America would not be welcomed by its listeners. However it would be not only an act of intellectual honesty but a step toward the honest dialogue that is desperately needed.

I suppose that is the flip side of the recordin’ made by some GOP genius of the 1950's who thought the Palestine Puzzle™ would go away if only natives and Zionists would "just agree to live together like good Christians."

That will have been cornfed Ohio and Iowa Christians, naturally; nothing to do with exotic Maronites or Greek schismatics or Monophysites who unintelligibly demand to be relabeled ‘miaphysites’.

The philosopher will seize this opportunity to think of Professor Kant of Koenigsberg. She will guess, as I conjecture, that Kant would regard perpetual re-evaluation of one's own culture as the sort of thing that is, or ought to be, categorically imperative. Possibly the very sort of thing that separates ‘us’ from Primitive Endarkenment. And from all the neo-endarkeners.

I take it that the fact that ‘we’ do not much enjoy doing self-re-examinations is a plus inside the system. If the Kantian enjoyed self-re-examination, her motives would probably be impure eo ipso. At any rate, it would be difficult for self-re-examination to pin down what its own motives actually are. When it is quite clear that self-re-examiners did go not into that line of business to make bucks or to have fun or to rule the world, it follows (doesn't it?) that they must be doing it only because they think it the right thing to do.

Inside what remains of Western Sieve, that sort of old-fashioned Prod gush is still not uncommon, though no doubt there exist post-whateverists eager to show that poor Professor Kant had a mind full of invincible ignorances and self-servicing provincial druthers. Those of us who cherish the traditional gush would, of course, respond that at least our hero got as far as disapproving of whims and ignorances and parochialism and selfocentric advantage-grabbin' even if never managed to detoxify himself completely. Diagnosis is not the same thing as cure, but nevertheless there is something to be said (is there not?) for having an inaccurate acount of the disease rather than an inaccurate one, or no account at all?

From this seemingly obsolescent standpoint, the trouble with the above quotation is pretty much that identified by the amateur narrow-bore philosopher of Century XVIII who noted that "Most quarrels about religion are as if two gentlemen were to fight a duel over a lady whom neither of them care for." (I quote from memory.)

Like the natives and Zionists of the 1950's, the current crop either never evolved as far as Kantianism or have evolved past it so far that it is now around the bend behind them. Either way, it is out of sight. With the above quotee, it is not altogether out of mind, though: he still expects to score some agitprop points for his team by recommending the self-re-examination product strictly for export. [1] (On those terms, however, perhaps it is not the exact same product?)

The performance puts me in mind of the cigarette manufacturers making up in sales to lesser breeds without what they have lost at home thanks to Surgeons General of the Evil Fedguv. But that analogy will not ultimately answer, because it is not (as I estimate) the case that Kantianism was ever as widely accepted in these parts as recreational nicotine. But God knows best.

Happy days.


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[1] Discussion of Islám and neo-Islám by the likes of me certainly deserves relegation to a footnote. Que sçay-je de celà? Still, one must do what one can . . . .

With natives, as opposed to Hyperzionists, there were never any very plausible empirical grounds to accuse them of Kantianism. Naturally the Philosopher is free to take the line that Muslims and neo-Muslims, like everybody else, ought to be guilty, that failure to Kantianise is impairs the intellectual honour of the human race. And so on, and so forth! it would be a pleasure to let that tap run until the tub of rhetoric overflows, yet no amount of elegant Prod gush is likely to make any impression on weekly standardisers and common terrorisers who find the above quotation edifyin’. It is mere waste of breath to try to persuade grown-ups that they may not be very good at telling right from wrong. (And I am not so sure about children either.)

Certainly it is a waste of breath with Muslim and neo-Muslim grown-ups. It is not perfectly accurate to distinguish them from Hyperzionists as having never been through the Western Sieve at all, instead of havin’ been winnowed out by it. At a very high educational (and socio-economic) level, the natives of the neo-Levant have heard of Kantianism. They never, so far as I know, rejected it in some great opus refutatorium such as might have been aimed at the Prussian professor himself, but reject it they did. The late M. Hourani wrote a work called Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939; his title dates the rejection plausibly, even though practical ‘liberalism’ incorporates a good deal more than theoretical Kantianism.

When it comes to the reasons for the rejection, I assume they will have been chiefly historical rather than philosophical. Muslims have always had to live with ‘us’ darkening their door at least remotely, and after 1789 often with ‘us’ right on the front porch armed to the teeth and, for the moment, inexpugnable. They never much liked ‘us’ to begin with, so the chances that they would accept a New Liberal West™ that had definitively broken with crusading and Endarkenment were never high. ‘We’ still looked very same old same-old to them, and anybody with even the slightest residual sniffles of Koenigsberg flu should be able to see why they might think so -- as well as why they were in substantial part mistaken so to think.

It does not help that to this day ‘westoxification’ is a very upper-class disease amongst the natives. The way the assassins of the late General as-Sadát reviled him would be a good place to start looking into that side of il gran rifuto. To what extent religionism sensu stricto comes into it is not immediately obvious. My own guess is that, in the absence of theoretical Kantianism and practical ‘liberalism’, neo-Levantine natives lack any vocabulary with which to discuss justice and injustice that is not faith-tainted. *Grossly* faith-tainted, that is, not slightly tinged with Islám or neo-Islám as Kantianism remains coloured by specifically Christian Christojudæanity of the brand that has called itself ‘reformed’ or evangelisch.

Quâ Kantian, I see that this position is likely to annoy a great many interested parties: (1) The militant extremist neocomrades with their jihád careerists prefer to take the natives’ religionizing seriously ("Seventy-two virgins apiece forever! Yippeee!") and dismiss what I take to be a message about justice than about the quality of anybody’s Islám. Or anybody's shirk and kufr either

But (2) the message-senders are required by their medium of expression to get angry too, for what is to be said of this wretched dhimmí who wants to demote Islám (than which there is no whicher!) to the status of a side issue and even has the gall to coin a vicious slur like "neo-Muslim" on the model of "neoconservative"?

I may (or may not) be on roughly the same wavelength with the President of the United States, for what that is worth. Unfortunately at the critical and philosophical level Mr. Obama's sort of credentials are not worth much. Not worth anything at all, really.

Oh, well.