From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Dec 08 2004 - 14:10:18 GMT
Dear Wim,
It seems to me your solution to terrorism is to offer terrorists Dutch
style socialism whereby money is forcibly extracted from the pockets of
the productive citizens of the world to pay off killers in the hope that
in so doing, the killers will renounce their decapitating ways and become
model world citizens. I find no historical evidence that large scale
redistribution of wealth assures peace any better than encouraging and
rewarding the productive members of society by means of a free market
system. Be that as it may, your position reminds me of Pirsig's disbelief
in Chap. 24 of Lila of how modern intellectuals took the side of
biological values against social values, not realizing or admitting that
the only way to defeat the biological values of terrorism that threaten
society is with soldiers and guns. He summed it up this way:
"The fight to sustain social codes isn't a war of blacks vs. whites or
Hispanics vs. blacks, or poor people vs. rich people or even stupid people
against intelligent people, or any other of all the other possible
cultural confrontations. It's war of society against patterns of reason
and patterns of biology that have been set loose by the mistakes of this
century." (Lila, 24)
Space doesn't permit citing all of Pirsig's arguments against appeasing
biological terrorism, but a reading of Chapter 24 will reveal what I
believe to be true--thanks to Pirsig's opening my eyes to reality..
As for the UN and Global Courts -- well, one look at the Iraq oil for food
scandal is enough to convince me that trusting international politicians
to do the right thing would be disastrous.
It will be interesting to see other comments on your proposals.
Best,
Platt
> Dear Platt,
>
> I hoped Sam would also feel called to reply to my comments (23 Nov 2004
> 08:30:46 +0100) on the Dutch experience with tolerance and the need for
> intolerance of intolerance. He asked for them first, after all. But he
> doesn't seem to be inspired. You replied 24 Nov 2004 09:12:49 -0500: 'I
> disagree ... with your proposed solution to the general problem of
> accommodating radical Muslim goals to the values of Western civilization.
> ... In essence this approach seems to be little more than giving into
> blackmail, i.e., the tactic of employing biological violence or the threat
> of violence to obtain the product of another's work, livelihood and
> well-being. It amounts to knuckling under to terrorist demands, a policy
> doomed to breed more terrorism specifically, and encourage more crime
> generally.'
>
> No, I didn't propose to give in to terrorism, i.e. to let them change Dutch
> society into something like Afghanistan under the Taliban. I proposed to
> give them something they didn't ask for: a social security system and a
> welfare state, if necessary on a global level. Decent respected
> middle-class life may be more tempting than an uncertain harem of houris in
> heaven. Offer them the American Way of Life, if you want, but make sure
> that it is attainable for them. So don't limit e.g. import of textiles from
> Pakistan, leaving workless textile workers no solace but radical Koran
> schools.
>
> And what's wrong with developing towards a global constitutional state
> (with checks and balances, of course) in which humanitarian intervention
> backed by the UN Security Council and/or Global Court of Justice develops
> into a kind of global (instead of national) security system? That's
> certainly not what rogues like Sadam Hussein, the Iranian ayatollahs and
> North-Korean Kim Jong-Il were/are blackmailing us for... There's no
> alternative for it really. Iraq could be conquered (but not pacified) by an
> almost unilateral war effort. Iran and Noth-Korea are a size too big ever
> for a superpower like the US to do so. To really pacify even weaker
> countries like Iraq and Afghanistan you need a carrot (global welfare
> state) as well as a stick (military capacity/global police force).
>
> With friendly greetings,
>
> Wim
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