[lit-ideas] Re: Stasi on our Minds

Had you simply said you sided with Roy, Kepel & Fukuyama you would have managed 
to avoid sounding shrill.  There are two opinions about this matter.  Either 
they are a serious threat or they aren't.  There are prominent scholars on both 
sides.  I've been reading both sides.  I've been commenting on what I read.  
The matter is by no means as simplistic as you seem to think.  

But as to the specific matter that you seem to think makes me sound like Lenin: 
 what I am describing is what the terrorists do.  They get in a target society 
and the kill as many people as they can.  They are doing it today -- all over 
the world.  Someone who thinks terrorists do what they do isn't necessarily 
someone who agrees with Lenin.  He may simply be observant.

Islamists are going to go about their business, but how many are there, and 
what sort of damage can they do?  Can we simply ignore them and have them go 
away?  Are they few in number?  Will they engage in easier targets -- say 
European targets rather than U.S. targets.  Can we treat them as a few nutcases 
or as has been estimated by a number of scholars, 1/3 of the 1.5Billion Muslims 
in the world are Islamist and sympathize with the Jihadi cause -- these people 
provide a fund of people to be recruited to Jihadi ends.  We don't know!

So when we don't know do we assume a Dr. Pangloss-Alfred E. Newman persona?  Or 
do we prepare for the worst.  Someplace in my youth, perhaps when I was in the 
Marine Corps, I was taught that you can hope for the best if you like, but you 
always prepared for the worst.  So as I said, I have studied both points of 
view, but believe it is prudent in this case to prepare for the worst.   That 
means to assume that they believe and intend what they claim they believe and 
sworn to carry out.  This isn't a matter of inventing an enemy.  They exist, 
but are they as potent and resolute as they claim, or are they engaging in 
braggadocio and wishful thinking?  Time will tell.

I notice you declare yourself a "fifth-columnist," does that mean you've 
converted to Islamism?  or are you engaged in some other form of subversion 
like Leftism?

Lawrence


------------Original Message------------
From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, May-29-2007 3:30 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Stasi on our Minds


Lawrence quotes Donnersmarck as saying he was influenced "by a passage in which 
Maxim Gorky records Lenin saying that he can’t listen to Beethoven’s 
Appasionata because it makes him want to say sweet, silly things and pat the 
heads of little people, whereas in fact those little heads must be beaten, 
beaten mercilessly, to make the revolution." 
  
Lawrence, I don't know how to say this without sounding snide and mean, but I 
assure you that I have no mean or hard feelings towards you personally, just 
strong disagreements.  You quote Donnersmarck as a way of showing how people 
like Lenin are capable of overcoming their humanistic empathetic impulses in 
the pursuit of an ideology.  Had you stopped there I would have agreed with 
you.   But you continued:

"but inasmuch as the Islamist enemy has vowed our destruction I don’t believe 
this matter can remain academic. The Islamists have declared war on us and are 
engaged in attacks of one kind and another; so it is prudent to protect 
ourselves against their efforts – including (with apologies to Ash) protection 
against Fifth-Columnist-types in our nations. 
"When the spy slips in to do his evil deed, it is best to discover and stop him 
– not protect his human rights and civil liberties – it seems to me."
To me your reaction seems very much like Lenin's.
Mike Geary
Fifth Columnist of Memphis

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