Moral Clarity

Thursday November 19, 2009 • 5 Comments 

By John Immel (Click Here for MP3 Audio)

Allahu Akbar! Or in the immortal words of Achmed the dead Terrorist: “I Keell You!”

Another Muslim took to violence and began killing. Can you believe it? Certainly you Believers in Pervasive Depravity are not shocked. You are way ahead of all of us. It is the grace of God, after all, that prevents such atrocity from occurring every minute of every day.

That is the moral relativistic logic offered, I believe. But, whatever.

Even a small familiarity with Islam’s history, and fundamental philosophy, should remove any surprise that yet another act of Mystic Despotism occurred on American Soil.

I need to add the word “allegedly” to my comments since Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, survived his killing spree. He is presumed innocent, and as is correct in American Justice, will be confronted in a military court with his accusers and the amassed evidence. However, unless there is a massive “Oops, we got the wrong guy,” by dozens of witnesses and investigating organizations, Maj. Hasan will be convicted of his religion-driven atrocity.

Oh, wait…did I say that out loud? We are not supposed to say that, are we? We are not supposed to say that such actions are driven by specific beliefs.

Beliefs are sacrosanct because they are…beliefs. Anyone can believe whatever they want. No judgment can exist because no standard measure exists. Cultures can define themselves however they choose, and everyone must accept their definitions. Why? Because culture is code for race, and to criticize race is to be unenlightened. Race is the Collectivist Holy of Holies: sacred and unassailable. The ideas that drive a culture are irrelevant. No matter what stands out, no matter what deviates, no matter what bankrupt thoughts, ideas and actions may exist, we must embrace…in the name of Diversity.

Right and wrong are antiquated definitions of morality. The only good is embracing all things multicultural. The only bad are those people who choose to disparage the failures of Diversity. Collective harmony is the definition of enlightenment. Come, let us link arms. Our fraternity, our strength, is in our unity, at all costs.

Full understanding of Muslim history is non-existent in the Western world. This has let the colossal fiction of Islam the “Religion of Peace” stand unchallenged. Indeed many American’s not of Muslim persuasion advocate that specific conventional wisdom.

While there have been pockets of history where Islam is peaceful, this peace is really derived from two exterior sources that have nothing to do with the core of Islamic belief.

One: The realities of capitalism. Sultans and Sheiks decided they were tired of being a paltry cultural Stone Age absurdity. After a few centuries of watching the West prosper in spite of the endless prophesies that Allah would destroy the infidel, Muslim Governmental rulers decided to start fudging their doctrinal purity for the economic benefit of industry and cooperation. They learned the lesson of history that capitalism is infinitely more profitable than conquest and plunder. And it didn’t hurt that oil was found under the Mideast Desert sands.

Two: Cultural Exhaustion. Qur’an purists lay down their scimitars because, like the historic Empires who marauded across continents, they become exhausted from the endless bloodshed, their people worn out; their young men extinct from combat death, and the coffers gutted from war expense. But the thing they never lay down is their zeal. Give them a generation to rebuild the gene pool and they will march again. Give this peaceful group unrestrained access to a nation and they will reduce it to the developmental level of the Stone Age in a matter of years and institute laws so harsh that a Medieval dungeon would look like a trip to Disney.

Okay, so that is a little simplistic. But the above division encapsulates the conflict between the Sunnah and Shi’ah: the underlying motive behind strict or lax interpretations of the Qur’an. But no matter which sect a nation holds dear, the foundations of war are always present, because the foundations of Islam are war. Historically, Islam is peaceful only when it is a cultural minority, but evangelizes by the sword when it reaches a critical mass in a geographical location not under Shriah Law.

Islam is not one more denomination in the faith smorgasbord of human beliefs to be grazed over and politely debated. Islam is the single most violent evangelistic religion surviving in the modern world. War is a philosophical foundation of Islam. The Muslim world view divides everything into two houses: Islam and war. What is not in the house of Islam is to be compelled into the first house by war or destroyed by war.

Look at a global map where wars are being fought, and with stunning consistency, one of the combatants is Muslim. For a Religion of Peace, this is a strange outcome. For a religion of war, this is exactly the correct outcome.

Muhammad was Mystic Despot collectivist. He taught the war of the have-nots against the haves in the 7th century. He preceded Karl Marx’s prophesied class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie by 1400 years…and he almost won. This doctrinal covetousness started the single greatest, fastest, religious military conquest in human history. In less than 150 years from its inception, Islamic Jihad sprouted from the Middle Eastern sands, conquered three continents and made deep inroads into Europe.

Due to an endless effort at revisionist history, the European Defensive wars conducted from the 10th century to the 13th century have been portrayed as white man conquest, imperialism and counter-evangelism by the sword. As a result, the Crusades have become a by-word in modern thought. But beyond the implicit absurdity of historic Europe being the homogonous WASP homophobic slave holding Wall Street villain of the modern age, without the crusades that stereotypical scapegoat could never have existed.

By 1095 Islam had conquered two-thirds of the Middle Eastern and Western world. After 400 years of rampant conquest and the destruction of most ancient cultures reshaped in the name of Islam, Europe finally mounted a war of defense. It took 400 years and endless appeals from the great Christian center Constantinople and the surrounding lands to persuade Europe as a whole to get in the game. Think World War II and the US waiting until 1941 to get involved in resisting the tide of National Socialist aggression. By 1941 Germany occupied all but Great Britain.

Here is how important the Crusades really are:

Without the European effort to take the fight to the invading armies of Islam, the Irish could never have saved civilization by saving the ancient writings of Aristotle et al.

Saint Thomas Aquinas could never have rediscovered Aristotle and the essential philosophical foundation that man can grasp the world around him.

Jewish mercantilism could never have become the seeds of economic growth that became the foundations of capital growth.

Jewish moral foundations of specific justice and proportional justice-AKA lex talionis-would have been erased from the minds of humanity.

The implicit mandate of individual sovereignty contained in the Decalogue would have been drowned in the rivers of Despotic bloodshed.

The Renaissance could never have occurred and given rebirth to the power of human creativity and the greatness that is human cooperative interaction and industry.

Without the thought evolutions from the tyranny embedded in the divine right of kings, to the steps towards freedom of the Magna Carta, to the recognition of individual rights for all people, to the great engine of freedom called the industrial revolution, we would all still live in a world a half a step from the Stone Age.

Without Pope Urban II’s call to the knights of Christendom and their subsequent victory over the destructive tide of Islam, the United States of America could never have existed.

Take a moment and look around you. Notice every item you OWN. The concept of individual ownership as you understand it is uniquely western, with its roots inextricably embedded in the soil of Torah. You would be aghast at the concept that the stuff you OWN being confiscated by the Lord, or the Emperor, or the Tsar, or the Sultan without some form of “due process.” That is because you are an American. That is because you live in a country whose founding documents defined the role of government exactly opposite everything that came before.

Every advantage you enjoy over the pains of human existence has its source in the moral choice of rational self-defense of countless knights in shining armor seeking to protect the weak and innocent against unprovoked violence almost 1000 years ago.

And here is the rub for many of you. Even with the potent summation of history given above, even as you reap the benefits of the historical reality, you squirm at the blunt contrast. A dozen conventional criticisms leap into your mind. Western culture is not pure. We have our own sins for which to account. We have our own atrocities that attest to immorality and despotism. We are all just sinners. Who can really call anyone to account? The bad things happening are just our comeuppance, our karma, our judgment.

You have been indoctrinated to think that the historic tragedy is OUR existence. There is nothing more erroneous in modern philosophical thought. Whatever western sins might be, most of our assumptions drive us toward abandoning bad ideas and striving toward good ideas with all ships rising on the tide. Our GOOD ideas are always about individual liberty, freedom, social cooperation, industry and prosperity. The only parts of our philosophical background currently threatening to reduce us back to the oppression of yesteryear are the humanity-crushing predicates of Dictated Good: Pervasive Depravity and Altruism.

Islam arrives at Dictated Good in a ham-fisted fashion. It pays lip service to free will but really advocates a predestination that is nothing more than divine determinism. If Allah wills your participation in the house of Islam that is a manifestation of his almighty power, if not there is the sword ready to recompense the rebellion.   The individual might be free to choose his beliefs, but he does so at his own peril. His choice to reject Allah as the one true God is done at the price of extortion: convert or die. This gives no space for individual identity by eliminating even the pretense of rational evangelism. There is no intellectual persuasion. To believe rightly is to be faithful, to believe wrongly is to be infidel, to be infidel is to be put to death. This very binary world view gives Islam crystal clear moral vision: an ironclad moral clarity. This thoughtless simplicity has been the driving force of jihad the world over since the 7th century, attracting the very young and uneducated to strap on suicide to terrorize the infidel. This unapologetic world view absolves all action in pursuit of their ultimate end: world domination in the name of Allah.

Conversely, in the West, every manifestation of identity and existence is under assault.

The current trend in our philosophical history impugns any self-defense as self-indulgence. People are denigrated for advocating that individuals have the right to exist unmolested by their neighbors. Promote the right to defend self and be called vigilante, above the law, or gun nut. Demand that the government’s sole responsibility is to protect the individual from encroachments to freedom and be vilified.

America wants to advocate freedom and liberty for all, but because man is depraved he cannot be trusted with freedom. Therefore, the individual must be compelled to good action. These two ideas are utterly, irrevocably at odds.

We are being blown about by the winds of collectivist doctrine. We are the poster child for James, “Double-Minded Man.” We are the proverbial House Divided. The West is suffering philosophical schizophrenia. As a result, we have no moral clarity.

Understand this: the blame America first, last and always mentality is the LOGICAL extension of this division. This is why talking heads and writerly pundits have twisted themselves into yoga positions trying to absolve a Muslim of Islamic doctrine driven actions. There is an endless parade of people trying to be the smartest in the room, desperate to find a rationale that holds the American people and culture responsible for the actions of Maj. Hasan specifically and Islam in general. This is a social pathology so deep and so devastating that unless absolute remedial action takes place now, we cannot survive.

We MUST regain our moral clarity. We MUST regain the moral clarity that it is RIGHT for us to LIVE. The only way the West can survive is to affirm the highest philosophical standard: the sovereign individual has the unmolested right to his life and its substance. Men are endowed by their creator the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is the foundation of American Moral clarity.

Christians hear moral clarity and immediately think sex. Or maybe better said, they hear every sermon on fornication and homosexuality they have ever heard.

They hear John Hagee, and Dave Wilkerson and a slew of other sound a likes pounding the pulpit with ominous portents, reminding one and all that the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah is God’s wrath on deviant sexual practice. We get forceful and sure. God rains fire and brimstone when the critical mass of sexual practice exceeds ten people in a city. If men are buggering men, the forecast is sulfur and rocks.

Want to see a social conservative finally get agitated enough to vote? Tell him a political candidate wants to outlaw sex toys and internet pornography. Suddenly he will be a political connoisseur, informed and vigilant. He won’t be able to explain the man’s fiscal policy or the implicit social engineering in the party platform, but such things are trivial in proportion to turning the American moral tide. Overnight he will become a moral exhibitionist extolling the virtues of a government that penalizes sins of the flesh. “Why, we should have a Sin tax. People shouldn’t be doing such things! It brings the wrath of God after all.” Never once does he realize that the sexual social barometer is measuring the leaf on the very end of the human depravity tree, the very last stop on the willful progression of human disintegration. Those measurements are USELESS.

Much to our Puritanical sexual consternation, the unrelenting irony is that the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with sexual practice. From the specific Genesis account, God’s take on man love isn’t all that specific. What is unmistakable is his take on raping visitors. Bible writers and subsequent Jewish sages understood the moral of the story was hospitality.

Our modern minds hear hospitality and think an abundance of chips and dips at a Christmas party. Hospitality of the Bible kind was the absolute defense of foreigners, strangers, and aliens. Hospitality meant dwelling in peace and safety and prosperity.

Many years after Sodom’s ill-fated hailstorm, God would lead his people out of Egypt and stand them before two mountains representing blessing and curse. This superstitious, polytheistic, uneducated slave nation needed a concrete metaphor to ground their new world view. Of all the things that could have been said, God chose Ten Commands.

In Hebrew the shortness of the sentences, compared to the surrounding text accumulated over the generations of oral and written tradition stand out like literary punches to the mind. A close translation reads like this:

  • I am God
  • No other gods but me
  • Make no carved image
  • My name not in vain
  • The Sabbath is holy
  • Honor father and mother
  • No murder
  • No adultery
  • No steal
  • No false witness
  • No covet

In ten short sentences God forever changed humanity’s world view. The last five commands are the rational and philosophical foundations for individual sovereignty. This sovereignty is the only effective moral predicate for human social cooperation. In sum, all five are foundations for one thing: Men are entitled to the totality of their individual life.

He shall not be killed because his life is not yours to take.

Sex is an absolute reflection of individuality. Therefore, seeking that reflection in another’s face is tantamount to individual violation.

You cannot steal because a man is entitled to the sum of his labors; his property is private.

You shall not bear false witness requires that human cognitive abilities are fully capable of grasping and reflecting the reality he inhabits. There is no private subjective reality to be molded after whims and fantasies, or an ethical excuse to believe whatever in the name of subjectivity. As Aristotle would eventually say: A is A.

You shall not covet is the only command that deals with motive.

Let me give you some proportion. God’s audience is the philosophical equivalent of pre-adolescents. Their cognitive abilities are intact but they are filled with a polytheistic world view that no one in the modern age can grasp. Their world is made up of what they can taste, touch, smell, feel, and see. But everything in their sensory grasp is ruled by a god or goddess.

EVERYTHING!

You have had conversations with your ten-year-old about his endless want of a drink of water after bedtime, the monster under the bed, and the need to pay attention in the parking lot. Indeed your parental duty for about four years is spent trying to teach how his concrete bound (the drink of water), superstitious mind (monster under the bed) needs to be aware of the world around him (the dangerous place of a parking lot).

This is God’s audience: concrete bound, philosophically superstitious children. All of his previous commands are the instructive equivalent of don’t touch; the stove is hot. He gives limited whys and wherefores because his audience doesn’t know enough yet to grasp the rationale.

The tenth command stands apart in scope and implication. In the Tenth command God sets up all further philosophical development. He commands the power to abstract the hardest part of human existence: heart motive. Said another way, God commanded self-awareness. The starting place of self-awareness was the stark line of individual property. So important is individual sovereignty that God commands with this explicit injunction, you shall not even want the unearned.

It matters not that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah never had these commands. Cain knew the moment he killed Abel that covetousness-driven murder was death-worthy. Cain’s implicit understanding resided in human consciousness. We know in our core the injustice of violating individuals.

But cultures can erode this implicit restraint as cultural assumption upon cultural assumption leads man to exchange truth for a lie. Unchecked, man descends down the intentional path that lands in the muck of his own depravity: a condition of sensory addiction so consuming he forgets his place at the head of creation and ruts with the very creatures he was sent to govern. He commits the ultimate moral atrocity by prostrating himself before whatever image he chips out of stone.

The history of the world shouts forth this truth. When man hits this cultural location where he is given over to strong delusion and governed absolutely by his lusts, the pillaging and plundering, destruction and injustice has no limit. When the innocent, the peaceful, the stranger, the alien, the widow and the orphan cannot dwell in safety, it is then that God sends his Prophets to extol: Let justice come like a flood!

With this as backdrop, you can see Sodom and Gomorrah’s vile cultural nature as they sought to rape two men just because they wanted to consume them through sex. You can see the corrupting influence of that culture on Lot as he, without thought to their individuality, offers his virgin daughters to appease the mob. You can begin to fathom why Lot’s wife was turned to salt; the ultimate judgment on emotional solidarity with a mindset that would have gladly used her daughters. With this backdrop, you can see the fundamental error embedded in doctrines that defend covetousness. With this backdrop, you can see the horror of ideologies that advocate plundering the haves for the have-nots. With this backdrop, you can grasp how war waged to satisfy covetousness is antithetical to God’s every revelation. With this backdrop, you can see what really provokes God to rain down fire and brimstone.

I say this with certainty: without the foundational assumption that men have the moral right to themselves and all of their substance, and the moral clarity to defend that end, a culture cannot survive because the individuals within that culture have no right to live.

Because parts of our modern philosophical assumptions advocate freedom and liberty taking a dim view of compulsion and tyranny, Western minds must be talked out of their freedoms: this why Platonist/Augustinian depravity has been married to the Calvin/Kantian philosophical assumptions. On some level this axis of evil is at least a pretense to rational argument.

But that does not detract from the effective outcome of the ideas. These foundational moral assumptions are the breeding ground for these sentiments:

  • The blame American first, last and always crowd.
  • Hollywood movies relentlessly driving into the American psyche a derision of all things United States.
  • The vogue trend on Comedy Central to mock all things American, all things Western, and all things white man.
  • The endless apologizing on the world stage for American existence done by the President of the United States, Barack Obama.
  • The vile denunciations that pour forth from the Jeremiah Wright’s of the world: “God Damn America.”

America, it is gut check time.

Do you want to be that shining light on a hill?

Do you want to be the beacon of hope and liberty for the entire world to see?

Do you want to live?

Do you want to LIVE?

DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?

Or do you want to lie down and die under the ultimate spiritual tyranny?

If you want to live, there is only one choice.

Repent of your endless apologizing and re-acquire the will to live unapologetic in righteous conduct. Reclaim your moral clarity; your right to self and the sum and substance thereof.

Openly reject doctrines that subvert man’s faculties and talk him into laying down his mind for the mindless greater good. Object to the implicit hypocrisy of church leaders who rail against the sins of the flesh but in the next breath advocate the doctrines of covetousness-socialism and communism: walk away from evil preachers who advocate plundering the haves, in behalf of the have-nots. Remove political leaders that are leading America down the path of socialism, collectivism, despotism, and destruction.

America, seize back your sense of self. If you cannot justify your own existence, how can you hope to survive philosophies that openly seek to destroy you?

The real lesson of Fort Hood is the power of moral clarity.



Toga-Induced Christian Tribalism

Friday May 22, 2009 • 16 Comments 

By John Immel

I originally posted this on Texas HB 36: Informed Consent to an Abortion in response to something Canary, resident commentor extraordinaire, said about the concept “First among equals.”

Here is what she said:

BU-WA-HA-HA-HA.

Gee - I thought the Greeks were a bit wiser than that. To tell someone “We are all equal, but I’m first” is really dumb, and that Christian Theology adopted the idea is even dumber. Even a first grader at the end of the lunch line knows just how DUMB that saying really is in literal terms. “If I’m equal, hows come I didn’t get a slice of the sausage pizza like those in the front of the line, and hows come I didn’t get equal time to eat my mystery meat casserole?” Amazing what sort of nonsense we will ingest simply because a leader assumes authority over us and therefore must know everything. Down, Kitty. I’m finished

However, after adding my comments, I got some off line heat about my responde being a post of its own. They raised all sorts of ruckus, telling me the thoughts would get lost. People are always looking out for me.

So…even though I have been saying in my previous articles that I was going to follow a theme for three successive posts, I am going to give in to pressure and render this to the world for blogging consumption.

Enjoy.

*****

Canary’s ever so hysterical satire of “first among equals” notwithstanding…I want to wax brainy for a minute.

Political and social thought has been in flux, well, since humans formed confederations based on genetic codes. We call them tribes. The function of tribalism is nothing more than protection. When individuals realize they do not have the requisite strength to fend off all interlopers against their person, they look for ways to increase that power. The historic challenge was to know who was willing to share mutual best interest: value you and defend you. The easiest distinction is to gravitate to those who look like you do. Tribal-ism is effectively racism: the belief that genetic heritage means philosophical solidarity. That was a wordy way of saying that because you look like me, you will be most likely to value me.

Racism was (and still is) the lowest common denominator of social/political organization. The problem with Tribalism is that it is a bloody, bloody, bloody way to live. History proves that out.

The question becomes in every tribe: Who decides what the individual sacrifice is for the sake of the tribe to participate in the protection?

This is the beginning of political theory.

By the emergence of the Greco/Roman culture, the world had been awash in blood from the ruling power of warlords and mystic despots since time immemorial. The end result was to wrestle with that very fundamental question stated above:  “Who decides the nature of sacrifice?”

The historic power to dictate was called king, despot, ruler, emperor et al.  But this has begged a predicate question: what makes this man qualified to dictate to everyone else? The gods? Genetics?

Does being Emperor make this man a qualitatively better KIND of man?

If so, who can oppose him?

Do the gods oppose him?

If he is not a qualitatively better person, what does that say of all men?

(And here was the radical evolution of thought.) Could it be that all men are equal? If all men are equal, then how can we justify who is in charge?

The Greco/Roman world wrestled with this very question seeking many different political answers. First among Equals was one of those answers:  primus inter pares I think is the Latin.

Christianity hit the world stage dead square in the middle of this ongoing political debate and rode the evolution of thought into the Middle Ages. By the middle of the 2nd century, Christianity had become fully inundated with Greco/Roman preoccupations and concerns. Christianity found itself needing to answer a very similar tribalistic question: Who is authentic and able to participate in our group?

Over time I will expand on this BUNCHES to make my point, but I will offer this fodder now.

Philosophical tribalism is called Sectarianism. Sectarianism is really nothing more than intellectual racism: the assumption that those of like MIND will be most likely to value and validate and protect me.

So, here is the issue. The Greco/Roman world was not stupid as such… they were struggling to understand the proper relationship between the governed and the governing.

They were making an evolution of thought from the utter inequality of people, to considering how can we have all men equal but some exercise governance?

And I will never let you forget that Governance is ALWAYS FORCE.

Historically, Christianity decided that AUTHORITY dictated good and men in authority were  indeed a better KINDS of men. Christianity also decided that genetics mattered in who had authority.  Apostolic Succession is the Catholics’ solution to ”Who is Qualified?” which is really the non-genetic version of Monarch succession via birth, which really has its roots in Tribalism.

Protestants have a problem, however. They can’t claim succession, so they need a justification for “Who is qualified?” And because they started this whole reformation dealeo by saying that everyone can read the book for themselves–scripture alone–they needed to find a political concept that seems to satisfy the very obvious Biblical idea that all men are in fact equal.

Some half clever folks decided to reach back into history and pull out some Latin, with some ties to political theory. “First among Equals” fits the bill.

Political thought and evolution did not stop with the first, second, or third century.  And canonical literature draws no definitive lines around the subject: the writers tending to emulate historic Judaic social/political organization or copying emerging Greco/roman political development. And more insidious, successive generations of Christian leadership just hijacked existing Roman political structure and retrofitted with biblical shamanism to sanctify their actions.

The atrocities committed by the perpetrators of biblical shamanism and subsequent spiritual tyranny have been covered up by modern academic shills who fail to scrutinize the relationshp between the source ideas that produced the historic doctrines. It is easier to sanctify the ideas with the wonder word ”orthodoxy,” and start screaming Heresy the moment anyone points to the slithering, writhing mass of Helenisitc/Plantonist Christian thought as the source of tyranny. This is how they get around having to address the obvious destructive outcomes.

Humanity has made all sorts of social and political improvements in the last few thousand years in spite of the church. That is a hard reality to absorb, but it is obvious to those that look. Christianity has not been an agent of political or social liberty. This reality inspired these quotes by James Madison in Memorial and Remonstrance 1785:

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.

Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

James Madison

Why do Christians ignore the social and political evolutions over the last 1,700 years?   Because no one wants to argue with Latin.

>snicker<

We ignore the evolutions because of a vain commitment to interpretive literalism and misplaced  “Biblical Modeling.”  These intellectual Red Herrings lead to theological cul-de-sacs and are exacerbated by slavish commitments to historic arguments and the endless dance around the “orthodoxy” tree.

But if you start asking the right questions, the Toga-Induced Christian Tribalims starts to lose its power, and eventually one realizes that the source of the spiritual tyranny is deeply embedded in sectarianism.



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