Evidence of a world gone mad...

Caroline Glick writes a column in today's Jersusalem Post that reflects clearly a world gone mad with power...

Our World: Politically correct perfidy...Jerusalem Post, September 13, 2006...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1157913606853&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Caroline is a right-wing Israeli who essentially argues simultaneously against breaches of free speech for those who she favors and for breaches of free speech of those she opposes...when people Caroline disagrees with exercise their free speech they are "silencing" debate...when people Caroline agrees with are indicted -- wrongly, of course...I have a consistent standard...free speech for everyone -- they are subject to corrupt hypocrisy...

Carolyn's convoluted logic illustrates why free speech and freedom should be consistently defended for everyone...

But more serious is Carolyn's desire to see Iran confronted millitarily, economically, and any other way that Israel and her allies can force Iran to do their bidding...

But her objection to Harvard University hosting Iran's former more moderate/liberal President Mohammad Khatami for a discussion as an endorsement of his views...

Has the world gone completely mad?

Are we now, all of us, so completely convinced of our righteousness that we no longer see a need to engage one another and only to find the best way to force ourselves upon one another?

Are we all so lost in our arrogant assertions of self-righteousness that we must seek power instead of engagement?

As Caroline writes:

"Many argue that the only way to stop the Left's subversion and so win the war of ideas, is to attempt to co-opt its agenda from the inside. By this logic, champions of free speech, democracy and liberty should eagerly seek opportunities to speak at Harvard, or be the token "fascists" on panel discussions at Hebrew University.

Unfortunately, this view is wrong. Accepting the legitimacy of leftist institutions prolongs their power, expands their undeserved legitimacy and erodes the power of the message of those who defend liberty, free speech and democracy.

Rather than supporting the Left, those concerned about the protection of liberal values should work to expose the corruption of these institutions and build alternative institutions that can replace them."

Are we all so lost in our power-hunger and failures of conscience to listen and engage and learn from one another that we think that we have or ever will somehow reach an end-point where engagement will not longer be necessary? Where power can or ever will replace thought?

Have we all so thoroughly lost our minds with hostility and blame and dark fantasies of a world that always does our bidding or always agrees with us?

Most importantly, Caroline's argument makes so clear to me that either we accept her dark dystopia as our future...

Or we begin to take freedom far more seriously...

I can't think of anything more ugly than an assertion of self-righteous deservingness of power without any accountability to engaged thought...

Surely we have not gone so mad...

The only way out of the problems that democratic peoples face, right now, is taking freedom and democracy and thoughtful engagement far more seriously...

The idea that people can be led by power in lieu of thought is the most arrogant idea that humanity has ever devised...and the fact that it would find an audience at the start of the 20th Century, the new dawn after a century of force and power being the leading ideological thrust of such thoroughly evil regimes at Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and a million other autocratic rationalizations, is almost unfathomable to me given what a bloody, destructive, power-mad history that it has...

It just became eminently clear to me how important it is to stand for a world of honest, genuine, authentic respect for free and democratic thought and engagement...

Love,
Ben