re: #147 Thanos

There isn’t a clash of civilizations, but rather a clash with civilization - it’s being fought worldwide and in pretty much every religion and country by fundamentalists and last century Luddites. They are entrenched in rancid decaying ideologies and extremist interpretations of religion that made last century the bloodiest in all of human history. They work to uphold tradition, entrenched legacy industries that need to be mothballed, and monied tyrants. They think they can blind us with populist causes and scare mongering, but that fog is fading fast.

Islam is in a slow motion reform that will last at least the rest of the century — at times there will be extremists, and there will be violence, but as has proven true this first decade of the bright new millennium, most of the unfortunate victims of that violence will not be westerners, but rather Muslims. We see some of it now as people work for freedom in Libya, Iran, Syria, etc. etc.

Slow motion reform? I’m not so sure. I thought that would be true. I posted here many times of my hope for the Arab Spring, but I see none of it coming from the young Egyptian and Syrian Arabs. Not a bit of it. Just vile anti-Semitism.

Freedom and democracy doesn’t mean a damn thing if it excludes people. Actually that’s the definition of tyranny.