The president says it's because of our "freedoms", the left says it's because of poverty or American Imperialism. Has anyone stopped to ask "them" why?
In this essay I will attempt to answer 3 questions.
- What freedom does Islam hate?
- Has Islam become the new Marxism?
- Is the analogy of Marxism = Violence wrong?
According to the Stray Reflection Weblog
"Islam emphatically rejects the metaphysical conception of the individual as a self determining being (the conception of man as God.) Islam insists that human fulfillment lies in a voluntary surrender (the word Islam means surrender) of the capacity of self determination."
What the Muslim world rejects then is the Western conception of man's primacy or place in the authentication of ends. What is now generally accepted among the Western elite [Most certainly among the Marxists] is Feuerbach's assertion that the true object of infinite value is Man and what he worships in God or Pure Reason is his species own essential powers. [my emphasis] For Islam, Reason can identify the means for achieving given ends "but it cannot provide a basis for valuing ends" only God can do that.
The religious motivation for this "hatred of our Freedoms" can be found just as easily among the Christian right-wing. Their deep suspicion of Reason goes well beyond the Ancient Islamics who could at least nurture a profound respect for science and reason.
So the right must find allies in the secular community, they prey upon the fears of the non-religious by instigating Islam as the new "enemy of the West" ala Marxism which cannot be placated because they are bent on our absolute destruction.
The New York Times is on board with this agenda proclaiming:
"like [Marxism], it [ Islam ] represents for many of its born-again adherents a transnational ideology tilting toward an eventual utopian vision, "Islam has replaced Marxism as the ideology of constenation," says Olivier Roy, a French scholar of European Islam. "When the left collapsed, the Islamists stepped in."
Ben Franklin Would Be Proud of the Violence in Marxism
It's believed by the vast majority of the populace that Marxism is a violent revolutionary dogma hell bent on the overthrow of the ruling class by whatever means possible. Is this a truly the approach Marx and his followers take?
Or is this rhetoric the technique of it's enemies, so called defenders of the constitution, who cast a potential adversary out from the realm of mainstream thought?
It should be noted by the defenders of American Liberty, that Marx was no more pro-violence than our founding fathers. "The Founding Fathers?" You might ask incredulously. Yes.
In a period of time just before Marx, the Founding Fathers thought it necessary to use violence to gain their freedom. Despite their push for a violent push to resolve conflict with violence we Americas founding fathers are rarely taken to task. It's not like one could think of a counter example to America's Independence that did not require the use of terror.
Perhaps there was another vast wilderness that was exploited by Royalty. Taxation with no representation. A land that used a constructive dialog, consisting of a piecemeal democratic reform, and were still able to obtain their ends.--Oh yea, Canada.
We too often forget the historical nature of the claims Marx makes. In the days of the founding fathers and Karl Marx there were kings. And I am not talking Prince Charles, but real kings who had the power to raise armies, start wars, and have your head chopped off at a whim.
Democracy was in short supply in the early part of the 19th century, most of the masses could not vote: women, minorities, the poor and landless were pretty much on their own. This is also well before the time of Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Non-violence as an agent of change had never truly been seen on any vast scale like that. Marx was and has always been seen as a pragmatist, but did he insist that violence was the answer?
We know that in the case of England, Sweden and USA where he specifically addressed it, he thought Socialism could be won without a violent hand. (He thought Russia would likely turn violent because of the Tsars.) Marx also thought it was more likely that the ruling classes would be driven to start the fight if they felt provoked "and if we are not so crazy as to ourselves be driven to street fighting in order to please them, then in the end there is nothing left for them to do, but themselves break through this fatal legality."
The Right likes to paint Lenin as the rightful, standard bearer "the heir" to Marxism due to Lenin's insistence that his brand of state controlled command economies were based on Marx's principles.
But a case could be made that Kautsky is the true heir if self-proclamation is the standard. (The German and European Model of Reformists, New Dealers-Keynsians, the Welfare State proponents also shout their love of Marx.) Few among us would give up Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment benefits which sprang from the democratic impulses of these Marxists.
Of course few people have any constraint knowledge of Marx . If they are at all familiar with him, it is through reading the Communist Manifesto. The Manifesto though was a political programme that was commissioned by the Communist League and was not a theoretical text of Marx's. It should also be noted that nowhere in the Manifesto does Marx suggest that workers use terror, quite to the contrary, Marx proclaims that "the time for surprise attacks by small minorities is past."
It is difficult to conclude that Marx was hell bent on Violence and Terror, but was rather a man who lived and responded rationally in a time of crushing despotism. Marx himself was made victim countless times by tyrannical forces and championed democracy and the rights of the working people well before it was fashionable to the elites of his era.
