The future must not be left in the care of fools who'd say such things

The last time islamists ruptured their funny bone over cartoons, President Obama said:

"The future must not belong to those that slander the prophet of Islam."

Yearghhh!!!

The future must not be left in the care of fools who'd say such things, or else it will be bloodied beyond belief by those beasts the fools set loose upon us all.

But I wonder, how aware are you of how many fools are saying the very same thing?

Look at these seemingly unrelated issues,

• President Obama appeasing those who are offended by cartoons,
• Islamic terrorists slaughtering people for publishing cartoons,
• Catholic league president Bill Donohue: Those Cartoonists Had It Coming,
• Ferguson protesters raising a banner in the Missouri Senate Gallery saying "Pledge allegiance to black people",
• Black Panthers in Dallas saying kill the pigs,
• "Howard Dean: To Call the Charlie Hebdo Killers “Muslim Terrorists” Is Just Wrong"
• Ron Paul: French Foreign Policy Fueled Paris Terror Attack
• Sharia patrols telling British citizens how they must behave in their own land "where's my freedom in your going unclothed!" (or for that matter, "A hungry man is not free!" - same thought).

If you think that one of these things doesn't go with the others, well that's the thought that just doesn't belong - you're being distracted by the shiny attention getters, instead of looking for the principle that unites them - and can defend you from them.

I blog on about this stuff ad nauseum, I'm gonna take the day off and give you a chance, so you tell me... what is the One in these Many foolishness's?

Let me give you a hint, if you think it has to do with race, or religion, or politics, you're being distracted by the shiny attention getters. And those shiny attention getters can make the fundamental issues appear to be different, but that's only because you're looking at them, instead of looking into them.

And that just will not do- those aren't the 'skills for the 21st century!'... or for any other time either.

Do these examples have wildly varying conscious motivations? Absolutely. Are they relevant?

No, not really.

Don't allow yourself to be distracted by inconsequential particulars, look through the surface to the principles which are driving them.

If you do not want the future to belong to fools, we'd better fill it with people who choose to think, and who choose to make sure that how they think valid, or in other words, those who fill our future will need to choose whether to make Progress, or Regress.

What do you think it will be? One more hint: It has to do with what they aren't concerned with.

The future hinges upon the choices you make today.

9/11: Never again... or for ever more? Dave McArthur's bloody truth

There were two calls in to Dana Loesch's radio show on the afternoon of September 10th, which bracketed the issues we are still facing this September 11th, 2014, and which are the same issues that we have been studiously attempting to turn away from ever since September 11th, 2001.

The first call came in from someone identifying himself as an Army Ranger, in response to President Obama's earlier calls to contain and manage ISIS; he asked in frustration:

"How do you defeat an idea?"

Which is a question that our govt and intellectual leaders have unfortunately given very little consideration to (certainly less than they've given to the more Politically Correct ideas of how our culture can go about accommodating all ideas).

The second call came in from a popular local bakery owner here in St. Louis, Dave McArthur, who pointed out that central to our waging WWII was our publicly, explicitly, identifying America's enemies to the American people. To that end propaganda posters filled our cities to remind us of the ugly business we were engaged in, reminded us of the brutal realities that such a war entailed and reminded us of the very real reasons why we were at war with Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Propaganda can of course be, and usually is, misused, but that was actually one of its few legitimate purposes it has, and it spurred Americans on the home-front on to victory; to a victory which was understood to be necessary, and a victory which would require us to devastate our enemies in Japan, and Germany to the point that they totally, unqualifiably, surrendered.

IOW we had a strategy which meant that "We win, they lose".

Why did victory require the devastating defeat and unqualified surrender of our enemies? Because, as with our world today, WWII was not about issues that could be negotiated, it was not about simple border or trade disputes, but about the violent and expansive imposition of absolutist political schemes in order to dominate some or all of the world.

WWII was not fought for things, but for ideas, ideas of liberty or tyranny. And as long as we desired to remain free, there was no possibility open for bargaining with such enemies of liberty, only their total defeat and surrender (It's also worth noting that after winning WWII, in fewer years than we've expended since 09/11/2001 to today, we had not only imposed a government and a constitution upon both Axis powers, but they had become, and have remained, actual allies of ours ever since; something the Paul Bremer-Bush admin kinder gentler coalition would never achieve in Iraq).

What Dave McArthur said about defeating the islamists of ISIS - and all the rest of those who wish to impose islamic rule upon the world - that it requires total war, is something that is horribly, painfully and exactly true.

There is no alternative - other than "We lose. They win", that is.

How do you defeat an idea?
The first caller asked exactly the right question:

"How do you defeat an idea?"

And the answer is, if it is an idea that people are not open to discussing, an idea that will not tolerate reasonable alternatives, an idea that requires your death or your submission, then the answer to that question is a very simple one:

You cannot defeat an idea.