Lawrence: I oppose the Cordoba Mosque, but those who accuse me of intolerance have it exactly backward. I oppose the Cordoba Mosque because Islamism is intolerant, violently so, and they are running roughshod over Muslims who don't agree with them. And they represent a danger to any Liberal Democratic nation that tolerates them. MOI: On the old Johnny Carr show, Buddy Hacket who is Jewish, told a joke about Jews. Johnny asked Buddy why it was OK for Jewish people to use the world "Jew", but Gentiles felt uncomfortable using it. Buddy replied: "Because Jews don't think it's a dirty word." I had something like that in mind when I decided to use the world "Islamist" in my last post. Islam is not a dirty word, someone who professes Islamism is an Islamist. Of late the word has come to be used in common parlance to mean a radical, militaristic and politicized form of Islamism. But I hate to see a good word dragged through the mud of bigotry and prejudice. So I chose to clean it up a bit. What Lawrence and many others call Islamism, I would call naked, virulent fascism. State supported intolerance. I am largely ignorant of Islamic beliefs. I am sure that Lawrence will be offended -- though that is not my intention -- when I say that I suspect he knows very little about Islam as well. How many Islamists (there I go again -- 'believers in Islam', I should say) does Lawrence know personally and discuss these issues with? I could be wrong, but I suspect that I probably know about as many believers in Islam as he does. I tip my hat to Lawrence in his dogged reading of Qutb and others, but those souls are Nazi, fascist fucks, they do not represent the billion Muslims in the world -- they in fact seem more in tune with Western Christianity, circa AD 900 -- 1800. Lawrence: Do you want me to feel good about the building of Mosques? Then let these Mosque builders establish "statements of faith" like the Protestant Churches have. Let these statements repudiate Islamism and its violent teachings. Let it repudiate the killing of infidels. Let it permit the peaceful transition of Muslims to other religions; just as those other religions permit the transition of their members to Islam. Neither side may like it, but that's okay as long as they don't do anything violent to prevent it. MOI: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but are you saying that the Muslim religion should be required to receive state sanction in the US before it can be allowed to build Mosques? Welcome to China and the Falun Gong. Lawrence: "So, no, Robert, I don't think it's a big deal whether I call the Cordoba Mosque Islamist or Islamic or some other term less offensive to the Islamists. A pox upon the Islamists and upon the "traditional" Muslims who tolerate them." MOI: And a pox upon all who would disagree with you in standing up for the very meaning of America -- the Constitutional rights. Lawrence: I am speaking in this note to Liberals and not Leftists. Leftists would like to see the overthrow of Liberal Democracy and they aren't too squeamish about whether the means turn out to be violent. MOI: I would describe myself as a Welfare State Limited-Libertarian. Where does that fit into your scheme of things political? Lawrence: I am speaking here about Liberals who believe in Liberal Democracy but may also believe in the ACLU and don't want to do anything "unconstitutional." MOI: That would be me. Lawrence: I'm usually impatient with those people as well, because they are not very quick about sensing danger to our nation. In an earlier era they didn't believe there was a "Communist Menace." Along with Truman they thought the concern about a "fifth-column" Communist activity in the U.S. was a "red Herring." Now that the Cold War is over and the KGB has opened its archives to scholars we know that there was indeed a secret Communist activity in the U.S. They were busily at work passing military and scientific secrets back to Moscow. There really was a Communist menace. MOI: There's a possibility that you might disagree with me here, but I think that McCarthy and HUAC were a great deal more of a danger to the US than the Communist Party could have ever have hoped to be. There are those who need an ever present danger. Something uncomplicated to stand up for. Joining the battle against an implacable foe is just such a mission, an ersatz one, to be sure, but it gives meaning to an otherwise dull, stale, flat and unprofitable life, as that old ham Hamlet deemed his existence -- until he started hearing voices demanding vengeance. And suddenly he knew why he had be born. Lawrence: Our Liberal ideology didn't save us. Blind luck did. MOI: Well, thank God you didn't say Reagan did. Lawrence: We were at the "brink" as John Foster Dulles said. MOI: Ah, good old Dulles -- the Domino Theory man. 10 years of war in Vietnam. 50,000 + Americans killed, Lyndon Johnson knew it was a stupid, hopeless war, but lacked the courage to be a true man and stand against the silly gunslinger manliness of American culture at that time. Richard Nixon, with his "secret plan to end the war", oversaw the death of half those 50,000 Americans. And don't forget the 1? 2? 3? million Vietnamese killed until Gerald Ford -- probably the bravest president we've ever had -- declared the war over and sent helicopters in to get us out. Lawrence: And the reason we were at the Brink and the reason we "played chicken with nuclear war" was that Americans-turned-Soviet spies gave the Soviets our military and scientific secrets. I don't believe we should poo-poo that earlier danger. We should learn from it. MOI: Germany was working on the bomb before we were. The science is not a mystery, the engineering and technology and the resources seem to have been and still are the major obstacles for most nations. I find it naive to believe that most industrialized nations of the world will not acquire nuclear weapons in the near future. And as scary as that thought is, perhaps it's best. MAD has work for the larger nations of the world. But what of countries like Somalia? They too will have nuclear weapons some day. What of miniaturization and terrorism? I have no answer. Lawrence H. seems to think that jack-booted Americans marching over the earth can stop all this. I have my doubts. Why are some Muslims Islamist militants? Why are some Americans gung-ho militarists? I don't know. Injured psychologies? Ignorance? Feelings of hopelessness? It's a large catalog. So far civilization has always won these battles. I don't believe that becoming uncivilized in defense of Civilization will further our goals. Some seem to disagree with me. Mike Geary