Diana West: Culture Check 2011

Diana West.net

What happens when Everyguy Icon Bill O’Reilly pushes the calamitous absurdity that Pastor Terry Jones “has blood on his hands,” and Hezbollah puts a $2.4 million bounty on Jones’ head?

We don’t know.

We do know the epic scale of invective hurled at Jones the world over has helped turn  this American citizen who has broken no law but Islam’s into a moving target. But it has also objectified a human being. When Jones is gratuitously disparaged as a “kook,” a “nut,” an “insane Christian” (as O’Reilly said), and much, much worse for his (perfectly logical) symbolic act of putting on trial  and burning a copy of a book that codifies conquest and enslavement, supremacism and bigotry, Jones is making a statement. Just as Fitna made a statement. Just as the Pope’s Regensberg Address made a statement. Just as the publication — and particularly the re-publication — of the Danish Motoons made a statement. These statements vary but none of them violate legal, peaceful means of expression. None of them caused the murder and mayhem many Muslims engaged in in illegal and violent and Islamically sanctioned reaction. Geert Wilders is no more responsible for the murders of two Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan following the release of Fitna than the Pope is responsible for the murder of an elderly nun in Somalia following his Regensberg Address than Pastor Jones is responsible for the murders of UN personnel and others in Afghanistan following his Koran-burning act — heretofore unnoticed, by the way, until Hamid Karzai publicly denounced it and called for Jones’ arrest.  (It would be most interesting to know the hidden chain of events that drew Karzai into this.)

But just as the nature of the Islamic world is revealed by its reaction to these peaceful if robust critiques, so, too, is the nature of the Western world revealed. It is an ugly thing. Like Pavlovic  robots, our dhimmified, mentally besieged peoples rush to protect Islam, to ward off “disrespect” of its chief symbol — its “holy” book —  like primitives engaging in a communal fetish. In so doing, they desert our un-Islamic, indeed, anti-Islamic freedoms, leaving them unguarded and devalued. In the case of Jones, a rural preacher with a big mustache, they isolate and dehumanize a man at the margins of the public square they dominate. Our elites, our leaders, society at large have thus marked Jones for discard with the 21st-century equivalent of a scarlet letter “A” (apostasy  against sharia). Such objectified contempt, as history shows us, is a perilous state of being

But note: Just as society objectifies Jones the living, breathing human being, society endows the book, the thing, the object he burned in protest with a spirit, rights, even a sensitive nature that demands the utmost consideration and respect of all.

Culture Check 2011: Jones the Man is spurned and objectified. The Koran the Thing is elevated, anthropomorpized, made … incarnate.

We are way into the danger zone.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

2 Replies to “Diana West: Culture Check 2011”

  1. Hey Mr. O’Reilly, here is some logical and rational thought for you to ponder.

    You are missing so much of the obvious that I am afraid for your sanity.

    Like most dhimmis (look that one up), you have capitulated to Islamic thought without knowing that you have done so.

    By saying the pastor has “blood on his hands” you are in effect, making the pastor utterly responsible for the violence and killing that Muslims all over the world have done since he burned that hate-filled book last week.

    And you are also saying that the people who actually did the rioting and killing are merely “responding” to the pastor’s symbolic criticism of Islam.

    By telling the world that the Pastor is responsible for the riots and murders, you are accepting that the Muslim response to the book burning is an acceptable one.

    Not so, you ignorant human being!

    Pastor Jones burned something that does not bleed, that does not have feelings and most certainly should not have the same rights as people. He burned a book, and did not behead UN workers or destroy property.

    That is one hell of a difference between what the pastor did and what Muslims are doing all over the world.

    I wish that every freedom-loving and responsible person on this planet would find a copy of the koran and burn it. Make that millions and millions of korans and broadcast each and every event on YouTube for the world to see.

    Then we’ll truly see what Islam is made of.

    If its showtime they want, lets make it so!

  2. Jones did nothing wrong, but the people who are condemning him for his actions are doing a lot wrong, civilizations die from suicide and their actions are signs of civilizational suicide. The left has spent so much time and effort in pushing the idea of no acts of self defense that way too many people are applying that idea to all actions by non governmental people.

    This over “civilized” reaction is one of the reasons I think we are in the opening decades of a Dark Age, I predict that in a couple of decades all Armies will routinely be doing things that are now crimes. And that no one will think twice about their actions.