Richard Fernandez, Belmont Club‘s own Wretchard, was my podcast guest last Friday. Siggy co-hosted, and it was a most interesting podcast, as you would expect any conversation with them to be.
During our conversation, Richard raised a point on terrorism in South East Asia,
Terrorism in South East Asia is a little less deeply rooted in the culture of the area except insofar as it’s rooted in the old traditions of piracy and banditry.”
The conversation then led to the subject of failed societies. Siggy posts,
In fact, the terrorists aims are deliberately misrepresented- and that is in their interest and the interest of the those who appropriate those causes to serve their own ideologies. The terrorists and their supporters don’t want to see western values (i.e., democratic principles) and successes brought into the Muslim world because western values and successes are antithetical to the ideologies of terrorist and their supporters. Terror flourishes when societies fail. Introduce values that embrace individual freedoms and the freedoms that allow an individual to succeed, and support for terror vanishes.
The petri dish of terror is failure.
If the terrorists and their supporters and apologists really wanted to better the lives of hundreds of millions of oppressed people, they would use America western freedoms as models for success. Instead, terrorists and their supporters seek to destroy the freedoms that have authored success. They deliberately want to keep failed leaders and failed ideologies in place.
Are European societies surrendering themselves to failed ideologies? Today Richard has a post, The Nine Billionth Name of God, on the Dutch Catholic bishop who espouses the absurd notion that “people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding”. Richard says,
And that in a way, perfectly describes what has transpired in the post-everything world of Europe. The names of God did not matter to the jaded intellectuals until the last. Allah is the nine billionth name of God. And now the stars, without the slightest fuss, are going out.
By failing to understand that what we call God does matter, Bishop Tiny Muskens (that is his real name) has handed the enemies of Western values – to use Siggy’s words – the petri dish of terror.
What to do against terror? In the podcast, Richard said,
One of the best things we can do is simply stand up…because it creates a nucleus around which a resistance is in place.
We didn’t discuss the Dutch bishop on Friday’s podcast, but listen to why it is important to understand how failed societies beget terror here.
Update
Great minds think alike: As I was posting this, Siggy was pondering Evil, On Borrowed Time
Update 2
Professor Bainbridge:
Words matter. To a person of faith, no word matters more than the name of God.
Jeff Kouba of Truth v. The Machine calls it Another Surrender of Breda
More at Memeorandum.
