How has it happened that the most unlikely persons are speaking on what is apparently the most volatile of subjects? It is doubly surprising because there is a powerful reluctance within the organizational culture of Christian churches to voice any criticism of another religion. The statements by Pope Benedict XVI, Lord Carey and Cardinal Pell are really near-despairing expedients to fill the aching void left by Western cultural and political leaders -- a vacuum which has emboldened militant Islamic preachers to cross boundaries they would have respected until recently. This erasure of cultural borders caused by the near total desertion of the frontier by the so-called opinion-leaders has invited the most reckless elements of Islam across and raised the risk of real clash of civilizations. As Lord Carey put it: "We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times". It is a time made perilous not only by the absence of moderate voices within Islam but by the even more conspicuous absence of any leadership among Western politicians. It is a failure which will sooner or later lead to what military historians call a "meeting engagement" in which two forces, each possessed of its own momentum, blunder into each other with catastrophic results. A false kind of tolerance has abolished the fence between the piggery and mosque, the adult video store and the cathedral, the flaming match and the stick of dynamite and called it progress. It is no such thing. It is called stupidity.
The stupidity of which Wretchard speaks comes in all shapes and sizes, a veritable spectrum that extends from the willful blindness on the part of Western leadership and media; to the passive, uncritical and morally bankrupt minions who nod sagely at any idiocy as they desperately try to maintain a world view that ignores reality as its founding principle.
Both ends of this spectrum of stupidity are incapable of responding in any appropriate manner to the deeply despicable and nauseatingly hypocritical speech the lying President of Iran delivered at the UN last night.
It was so breathtakingly duplicitous, that I could barely listen to the translation and 45 minutes into it had to turn it off. I would have sooner looked at a piece of vile pornography than continue to listen to him.
Only in a world that values nothing would there not be instantaneous outrage at the lies, deceptions and self-serving tripe offered for world consumption by a man who clearly has no conscience and enjoys lying and distorting for the fun of it. How could such a man be given the world stage to spew forth his lies, let alone be feted and honored for them? How could most--if not all--of the rest of the world swallow whole the protestations of sincerity and victimhood? How could it be conveniently forgotten what his real intentions and attitudes are even for a moment as he coyly presents himself as a simple man of peace and brotherhood?
Nat Hentoff has to remind us that this is Ahmadinejad the lord high executioner, from the land of institutionalized barbarity; and the religion of paranoid delusions:
On . . . June 29, 2006, a court in the Islamic Republic of Iran sentenced Malak Ghorbany, a 34-year-old mother of two, to a brutal death by stoning after finding her guilty of adultery. . . . Two men who were found guilty of murder in the same court were only given jail sentences of six years. . . . The size of the stones used during the execution are required to be . . . not so large that they would kill a woman too quickly, nor so small that they would fail to cause serious injury or pain . — A letter, unanswered, to George W. Bush from John Whitehead, head of the Rutherford Institute, one of the nation's premier civil liberties organizations. The part about the stones is from Article 104 of the Iranian penal code.
How dare this man speak about:
“Reform …justice … peace …virtue …dignity … brotherhood … the Prophet Moses … the Prophet Jesus … the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).”
How dare the world-- even for a moment-- allow itself to bask in the treasured hope that reality does not exist, and that there are no consequences for appeasing evil.
How has it come to pass that the stupid and the willfully blind are once again so unwilling to confront the true malignancy that threatens world peace; even as they forcefully denounce anyone who exposes their delusions?
Ahmadinejad and his puppetmasters have no political nuance; nor do they have one whit of tolerance or brotherhood or virtue. His performance is only the cynical manipulation of stupid people to achieve his fanatical ends.
In this goal, Ahmadinejad--like all the megalomaniacal tyrants in history before him--is able to count on the entire spectrum of human stupidity that is willing and eager to embrace pseudoreality and suspend judgement and critical thinking if means they can temporarily feel good about themselves.
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