Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Lex, I tried, I really did – to disagree with him yet find the brilliance. It’s there – I can see it, glimpses of it. And I did agree wholeheartedly with the mid-portion, particularly this, when talking about the burgeoning “Islamism” of the West:
“What they have in common is this: they are all abnormally interested in violent death. ”
BUT that whole opening third was completely unnecessary. His final conclusions about September 11th are interesting, but it’s as if he can’t help himself in his “America bashing” and all the B.S. about the illogical nature of how we write our dates, or the American propensity for acronyms. He slaps us while he defends us, is what I’m saying.
Why is that necessary? Sweet jebus we are talking about September 11th here, not some randomly selected date that Americans chose to make a national holiday…have some respect Mr. Amis.
Yeah, I thought the lead-in about abbreviations was literary affectation which detracted from the real content. The piece is being discused at Dean’s World, and several people there just sort of gave up on it before they got through the whole thing.
Good article, Thanks. Reading Mr. Amis reminded me of the apparent contrast (and surprisingly candid Dutchman’s comment below) in a snippet an Israeli friend passed on from this:
MORE THAN four years after Iran’s nuclear ambitions became clear, and after being repeatedly led around by the nose, European nations are still unable to agree on more than symbolic sanctions. Even the threat of nuclear-armed mullahs sitting athwart the Straits of Hormuz (through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes) cannot spur them to action.
Young Europeans have chosen flight over fighting. Emigration from prosperous Germany and Holland exceeds immigration. A young Dutch writer, responding to the advice of German author Henryk Broder to flee to Australia, spoke for many when he wrote: “I am not a warrior, but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.” His only reaction to the loss of his country: “a feeling of sadness.”
That passivity in the face of threat is directly linked to Europe’s loss of religious belief. Those who view themselves as nothing more than sophisticated, pleasure-seeking animals, whose life has no purpose outside itself and ends with death, consider nothing worth dying for and war to be an invariably irrational option.
Martin Amis has a permanent free pass from me for having conceived and written Time’s Arrow.
Maybe the 20th century has served to teach the Europeans a kind of “learned helplessness” in which they would sooner be led to slaughter than to defend themselves.
[...] Lex was right about this–the first few paras are odd, but Martin Amis has a worthwhile column on 9/11. [...]