Crusader War College

Link: http://victorhanson.com/articles/thornton111206.html

Bruce Thornton notes the following in his article at Dr. Hanson's website:

The West’s condemnation of Israel’s accidental shelling of two Palestinian Arab houses that killed 18 people once more reveals the bizarre incoherence that addles our thinking. The jihadists for years have purposely used their own families as cover for attacks in order to create exactly what we are seeing now: Israel’s accidental killing of women and children while attempting to protect their own elicits from the West vehement condemnations that ignore the jihadists’ culpability in putting their own people at risk. Meanwhile, deliberate killing and shelling of Israelis is met with generic condemnations of the “cycle of violence,” usually delivered with an accusatory finger pointed at Israel.

The moral principle involved isn’t hard to understand. If I shoot at your wife and child while standing behind mine, it is my fault if my wife and child are killed when you try to defend yourself. There is no moral imperative that says I must value the lives of your family more than the lives of my own. Except for Israel, apparently. Only the Jews are required year after year to sacrifice their citizens and show “restraint” as the necessary preconditions for some mythic “peaceful solution.” Meanwhile there is no evidence that this “solution” is really what the majority of Palestinian Arabs and Muslim nations want more than they want the destruction of Israel.

The failure of the West to understand this moral calculus is perfectly understood by the jihadist terrorists. Indeed, that failure is precisely why terrorism is used.

An excellent read. This is most telling:

In other words, the jihadists are winning the psychological war because they know well the West’s core weakness: believing only in material life as the highest good, the West finds suffering intolerable, even that of an enemy who wants to destroy us.

Exactly. Only religion gives a human, and a society, the power to see beyond suffering to a greater good, while a materialist one possesses a stunted vision that cannot see beyond its own pain and discomfort. The west cannot "understand this moral calculus", because it has neutered morality to give the answers it wants to maximise its own comfort. This behavior is exemplified in Isaiah 30:8-11"

8 Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: 9 That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: 10 Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: 11 Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.

And in 2 Timothy 4:3-4:

3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

The article is worth a mention here as a defense of Israel in its own right. However, wihile I did not need Mr. Thornton to point out that the core belief of our current society is materialism, I have him to thank for pointing out, in passing and probably inadvertently, the logical consequences of such a belief on one's capability to morally reason. If the current world is all that there is, then pleasure is indeed the highest value, and anything that remotely indicates discomfort, pain, or difficulty, is thus logically viewed as evil. Just as the materialists in Ancient Judah demanded that the seers and prophets cease from prophesying that which was right, demanding that THEY, the seers and prophets, abandon the right way and participate in the erasure of God from their culture, so do the materialists in our culture, in the name of their highest value: pleasing themselves. As Paul predicted, they will not endure sound doctrine. In that maddened pursuit, morality ceases to be something that calls them to account, for that would be unpleasurable. Therefore, it MUST be rechanneled, reinterpreted, perverted, into something that DOES give pleasure.

Now, that last sentence does not mean that the secular hedonist/narcissist will have a morality that never condemns anything and anyone. The key thing to realize is that these people are demanding that morality give them pleasure. If that means being merciful and understanding to one's compatriots or some other designated "good guys", then the pronouncements will be correspondingly merciful and indulgent, and the resulting adulation from the spared and the approval of those sharing one's sentiments, will give the pleasure that is required. If that means denouncing, condemning, criticising, and demonising one's opponents, giving one pleasure in the process of tearing down the other while receiving applause from one's compatriot-hedonists, then the output of the morality will be adjusted to suit the circumstances.

What gives people pleasure is probably unknowable: observation of people's behavior seem to lead to the conclusion that the individuals themselves don't act as if they know what would really give them pleasure. However, unbound by an objective morality that would call them to account, they WILL act and moralize in such a manner as to maximize their pleasure. The relationship can obviously be indirect and obscure: if winning or victory gives one pleasure, the moralizing could be used to justify behaviours that would maximize one's chances of winning, as well as jusitfy why such behaviour should not lead to disqualification or condemnation, or does not merit disqualification or condemnation. If one loses, the moralizing would be pressed into the service of providing solace and comfort, justifying unsportsmanlike behaviour after the contest or leading someone to justify any attempt to reverse the results: There were no questions or lawsuits about the results of the 2006 election coming from the Democrats, or querelous and specious arguments against electronic voting THIS TIME AROUND. After all, the results were to their liking. It gave them pleasure, so no questions need be raised.

This is one of those bursts of insight provided by the commentary of another that makes the Internet the tremendous resource that it is. Again, my thanks to Mr. Thornton for an illuminating article that shed light on more than the author thought it would.