I went to school with a couple of Saudis, one was actually a very minor princeling in the royal family. They were all intelligent and sophisticated men, well educated and quite reasonable, even liberal in their world views. They did not actually believe any of that fundamentalist Islamic Wahabi crap, but it was instrumental in keeping the monarchy in place.

Like with our own Conservatives here, the strict fundamentalist integration of traditional religious custom in civil life was just a technique to allow them to maintain and perpetuate the political and economic stranglehold their family/class had on their country. And like what is happening with the American Right and the TParty/Evangelicals, this ultra conservative world view has started to get out of control, go populist, and work against the interests of the Ruling Classes that originally got it rolling.

What we’re seeing in the Islamic World as well as in the USA is manifestations of the same phenomenon. Communist China had its Cultural Revolution, both the Muslim World and Conservative Americans are now having theirs.

This is nothing new. It happened in France during their 1789 Revolution, and in Russia too in 1917. Unlike the American and British Revolutions (which were bourgeois uprisings against an aristocracy and a monarchy), populist uprisings have a tendency to get out of hand, escape the control of their puppet masters and go in unexpected, even chaotic directions.

Everybody is concerned about Trump becoming President. It may turn out even worse if he doesn’t. His followers may lash out violently, not just fade away. They have been offered a glimpse of paradise and they will not be denied.

I see in the not too distant future an energy exporting America who will make middle eastern oil power a bad memory.
When that day comes, and soon it will, I am hoping a woman president will impose economic sanctions on the Saudis and other conservative islamic societies for the abuse of their women, gays and religious minorities.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/5cols/leading_images/951002.jpg

https://chemtrailsplanet.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/bush-kisses-saudi-prince.jpg?w=400

We have even gone to war to protect their interests and looked the other way at their barbaric executions and Sharia Law, and rampant misogyny and other outrages, not to mention all the political and religious trouble they have stirred up in the region. And we have covered for these guys, even after their involvement in 9/11, not because of “cultural relativism”, but for purely economic and strategic reasons. I understand it’s nothing personal, its strictly bu$ine$$. I guess that makes it all right.

You could say much the same about Libya, Egypt and, of course, Pakistan. Ben Affleck has no monopoly on contradictions. But at least he was sincere.

What I do believe is that the theme that Muslim-coddling Liberals have a great influence on our policy is exactly the kind of propaganda fascists like to spread so that they can exploit fear of Muslims for their own political purposes and to promote their own agenda; an agenda that has nothing to do with national security against terrorist attack, or even promoting modern humane values and democratic regimes in the middle east. Stoking domestic fear of foreign enemies and demonizing them as congenitally evil is a favorite tactic for fascists. I’m not saying America doesn’t have real foreign enemies, just that we shouldn’t let fascists decide who they are and what we need to do about them.

Liberals have been accused of being soft on crime.
They are condemned for being soft on Communism.
Now they are supposedly soft on terrorism.
They are attacked for promoting profligate fiscal policies, such as deficit spending and high taxes. They are supposedly against free enterprise and want to give money away to shiftless, lazy welfare cheats. They hate the middle class. They are said to not believe in family values and
that they are lazy, cowardly, indecisive, unpatriotic, anti-religious, sexually perverse and immoral. Liberals are supposedly opposed to self-reliance and hard work, ambition, competitiveness, freedom, and liberty. The latest slur is that they are making excuses for and covering up the crimes of Muslims for some unknown, probably traitorious reason.

I’m not saying its impossible for Liberals to be guilty of any of these misdemeanors, just that they are no more likely to be responsible for them than Conservatives are.

We have a Liberal President now, and he is waging war on radical Islam in general and ISIS in particular, real war, with real weapons as well as intelligence, finance and diplomacy. Now perhaps he could be doing a better job, that’s a matter for valid debate. But he is certainly not deliberately trying to help them or otherwise make things easier for them. And his policies are not guided by Ben Affleck, even if he refuses to say the words “Muslim Terrorists” in public. Personally, I think that is extremely wise on his part. I don’t want my CIC pissing off potential allies, alienating our own Muslim citizens, provoking redneck vengeance and bigotry against them and creating more Jihadists just to give the knuckle-draggers a warm fuzzy feeling.

I’m not picking on you, Buck. Its just that I’ve heard too many variants on this theme before and I’m quite familiar with it. Cultural relativism, as you have defined it, an irrational looking the other way when faced with barbarism, may indeed exist in people like Ben Affleck, but it simply is not a problem. It just doesn’t matter.

From their bases, the Saudi-trained imams propagated Wahhabism’s tenets: the supremacy of Sharia law as well as ideas of violent jihad and takfirism, which authorizes the killing of Muslims considered heretics for not following its interpretation of Islam.

Sure, there are cultural practices so abhorrent all civilized men must declare themselves in opposition to them. I believe I have, over and over again. The point is, just what do you have to say to satisfy the outrage of others? And at what point does one feel obliged to condemn the lives of others to satisfy one’s own sense of justice (much less that of anyone else)? Does piously declaring one’s indignation over and over again fulfill our moral obligations, or satisfy those who feel we do not protest loudly enough? This is especially the case when perhaps one lives in a glass house too, and has no business casting any stones, let alone the first one. When the time comes to kill or be killed, I’m sure I’ll show up when called. Just don’t expect me to be too gung-ho about it.

Sure, it was necessary, even essential, to go and dismantle the Fascist regimes, but we had our own crimes and genocides to answer for, against the Indians and the blacks. And look at our plucky and oh-so-virtuous allies! The English had their own execrable class system, they first conquered and oppressed the nations of the British Isles, slaughtering all resistance, and then built a global commercial Empire on the backs, wealth and labor of a billion conquered people in a thousand cultures. And our other allies in that noble Crusade, the Soviets, weren’t exactly blameless either. They cheerfully and systematically murdered more of their own people than the Nazis ever did.

Still, you do have to pick sides sometime, eventually, that goes without saying. So when we do, maybe we should do so with a little less sanctimonious self-righteousness and a bit more humility. The Aztecs and Incas were brutal, appalling cultures, but the violence the oh-so Christian Spaniards inflicted on them was absolutely breathtaking.

The Prime Directive is a noble concept, But Kirk and the Enterprise somehow manage to violate it in every episode. Maybe a little cultural relativism isn’t such a bad thing.