Let me tell you the story of this strapping young man to my left. For those of you who may not recall, this is Timallah Macazid Veighiz. He was raised from an early age to hate America as a "great Satan" by his Islamic religion, which put no value on human life unless it was the life of a Muslim. His mother bought diaper wipes printed with the American flag on them just so she could use the Stars and Stripes to lift the defecate from her son's delicate buttocks.
Veighiz excelled at hating America in school, outdoing all his classmates in West Bank Elementary in the subject. So great was his contempt for this great nation that he drove his truck, laden with ammonium nitrate, all the way from the West Bank to Oklahoma City, where he blew it up in front of a Federal government building in what was the uncontestedly most brutal terrorist attack in the history of the United States, until more of his Muslim brethren one-upped him - ironically, mere months after he finally became a martyr for his faith - by flying planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
The only thing wrong with this picture is that it is mostly a lie...you probably noticed that. As it happens, Timothy McVeigh was born to an Irish Catholic family in New York, served in the U.S. Army, was a decorated veteran in Operation Desert Storm...the list goes on. Yes, he had a truck - not his pickup - full of fertilizer, which he used to blow up a Federal building in Oklahoma City, but that's about as much as Tim McVeigh and, say, Mohamed Atta have in common other than both being dead now.
Timothy McVeigh was a white guy, Catholic-turned-agnostic, libertarian and red meat-eating. Actually, he seems to have a lot in common with Lydia McGrew, who is an author over at What's Wrong with the World who is single-handedly making me question whether that blog is as good a read as I thought it was. There are still some fine authors over there, and if nothing else it is at least thought provoking. However, Lydia has managed to piss me off pretty effectively with what amounts to neo-conservative, nationalistic, and xenophobic idiocy not unlike that with which the Know-Nothings met immigrant Catholics way back in the day. Ironic, no?
You may recall that I harped on this topic last week. Well, since then I've read and heard a lot of idiocy on this matter and one or two others at the hands of people for whom I at one point held some respect. It could be that I'm disillusioned, and therefore pissed off at those who disillusioned me. Then again, maybe I'm just that special flavor of bored that makes me want to pick fights - not that I anticipate getting into a war with McGrew or Fr. John Zuhlsdorf or the brothers Archbold. I'm a small fish, and from what I can tell none of them can see past the fog of their own self-righteous buzz. I'm just warning you that it may be a week for epic rants.
Now, let me continue on the perhaps over-subtle tribute offered by the title of thise post and, at least in regard to Ms. McGrew, beg the following license:
Well allow me to retort.
What does a terrorist look like, Lydia? Do they always wear turbans? McVeigh didn't. Do they always hide behind the skirts of a religion? The Basque separatists don't seem to. Are they always from non-European stock? Well, there's the IRA and the Orangemen, so scratch that idea.
Got any more molds I can break? I've honestly lost count. The labels never mattered that much to me anyway, so I didn't bother to memorize them all.
I could go into Hannah Arendt, or maybe some Albert Camus, and maybe try to tackle the question from a metaphysical - i.e., the only actually productive - angle, but I honestly don't know that it would do any good. Not for Lydia, certainly, as I don't think her brain is equipped to handle concepts as large as "existential revolt"...she seems to have trouble even committing to the logical conclusion of the screed that she has been spouting - to whit, that as we deemed Japanese immigrants and their progeny to be a danger during World War II, so too should we treat Muslims during this "war" we are currently engaged in. (I'll take that whole "war" thing on a little later, in another post.)
This is the bottom line: Terrorism is a servant of evil, ultimately a force of chaos. Part of what that means is that if you try to build a box around it, to define it in any meaningful way, then it will take that box and slap you around with it - but not enough to actually do serious damage...That would be against the terrorist's M.O. Terrorism's greatest weapons are not bombs or planes or copies of the Koran. Rather, it is paranoia, distrust, and defensiveness. Write me off as an idealist if you will, but the moment we decided that "safety" meant I had to watch TSA gorillas pat down a 90-year-old, wheelchair-bound grandmother for hidden knitting needles was the moment that Osama bin Laden won.
I hold the firm conviction that Benjamin Franklin was a scumbag. Nevertheless, his quip about giving up freedom for security isn't wrong. If you want to give up the former for the latter, then you deserve neither and will probably lose both.
If you want to keep your government under control (again, another post I promised someone indirectly that I would write) and lead your life in freedom to better yourself, then you're going to have to square with the fact that some nutter is gone to go charging off the reservation and blow some folks up. If you can't handle that, and you don't mind your government treating you like a criminal without the slightest iota of probable cause, then have a nice life - but for the love of God, would you go found your own country?
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