Bob's Place

Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:

“We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don’t get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it.” ......................

.....................That’s quite a difference. Christ is saying go to the remotest parts of the world and persuade others of what you know to be the truth. Mohammed is saying fight all men until they submit to your truth: It’s not a plan for converting an existing empire (as Christianity did) but for establishing a new empire. Islam was born and spread as a warrior’s creed and, while that can be sedated, the intensity of anger of today’s western Muslims suggests that the Mohammedan fighter endures at the heart of their faith, albeit significantly augmented by greater firepower. Oh, come on, you say, what about the Spanish Inquisition? Well, for one thing, the Inquisition killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in an average year. But, in the larger sense, it’s easy to argue that, numbers aside, it was always an aberration and distortion of Christianity’s roots. It’s less clear that the jihad in its most violent form is a distortion of Mohammed’s message. With Islam, it’s the moderate variants of the Balkans, the Central Asian Stans and South Asia that are the aberration. And they’re all now fading. ...........................

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 9:31 AM |

And bad or dishonest reporting is destructive and unpatriotic (note that reporting bad news honestly is not, a distinction that dishonest media defenders sometimes try to elide). Can a free press survive if the public concludes that it's in the business of purveying politically motivated propaganda on behalf of civilization's enemies? And, if this kind of thing keeps up, will people be able to resist coming to such a conclusion? The press often responds to business scandals by noting that misbehavior by businessmen is likely to undermine support for free enterprise and lead to public demands for free enterprise. I fear that the same dynamic may lead to reduced support for a free press, and to demands for government regulation of reporting in wartime.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 11:36 AM |

Davis’ assumptions about right wing bigotry from Coulter et al. remain what they’ve always been – nothing but self-serving conclusions arrived at under the warm blanket of a false sense of moral superiority and comfortable ignorance.

I guess those old erroneous assumptions die hard, even for someone like Lanny Davis who claims to have seen the light.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 6:07 PM |