Bruce S. Thornton om Ibn Warraq’s nye bog

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Culture Matters

Ibn Warraq’s eloquent defense of Western civilization

3 February 2012 – Bruce S. Thornton

Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy, by Ibn Warraq

Occasionally, the mainstream media will let slip something that reveals the incoherence of multiculturalist orthodoxy. Not long ago, the New York Times reported on an Indian casino in California that had begun purging its rolls of members deemed insufficiently Indian. At the end of the story, an official from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, himself an Indian, remarked: “The tribe has historically had the ability to remove people. Tolerance is a European thing brought to the country. We never tolerated things. We turned our back on people.”

Mere HER i City Journal.

Opdatering 8. februar 2012:

What Makes the West the Best

by Robert Spencer – February 2, 2012

One principal reason why the Islamic jihad is advancing with such confidence around the world today is because its chief competitor, the West, has lost its nerve. The iron and unquestionable dogma of multiculturalism has eaten away at its self-confidence and left only a relativism that walks to the brink of excusing genocide. Instead of defending its principles of liberal democracy and attempting to convince the Islamic world of their virtue and utility, the U.S. and Europe appear to stand for no principle more noble or compelling than majority rule. If, in any given country, a regime takes power dedicated to implementing a vision for society that is absolutely opposed to basic notions of human dignity and human rights, that’s fine with Washington and Brussels, as long as the majority voted for it.

And so the U.S. intervened military in Iraq and Afghanistan only to oversee the adoption of constitutions in both countries that enshrine Sharia as the highest law of the land. This was tantamount to tacit U.S. approval for stonings, amputations, restrictions on the freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, and the institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, since all of this is mandated under Sharia. Anything else, particularly any defense of the humane values of Judeo-Christian and/or Catholic civilization such as was once mounted against the Communist bloc on Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America, would have been seen as ethnocentric and parochial.

Mere HER i Crisis Magazine.

A Muslim Apostate Sings the West’s Praises

By Pamela Geller – February 5, 2012

It’s hard to describe a New Yorker’s deep and passionate love for our great city.  For me, it is like the love I have for a cherished family member.  New York defines me.  I have never wanted to be or live anywhere else.  I have lived here all my life, and still it thrills me.  It is everything possible in life, in love, in work, in play…full of endless possibilities.  Ayn Rand summed it up when she wrote in The Fountainhead:

Mere HER i The American Thinker.

Andre kilder: Jihad Watch,

Bruce Thornton om bildungsfilistre

Corrupt Language Breeds Bad History and Bad Policy

Advancing a Free Society

by Bruce S. Thornton – May 24, 2011

As the history of communism and fascism both illustrate, modern political tyranny has relied on fabricated history to legitimize its claims and actions, and such history in turn relies on the debasement of language. Nowhere is this axiom more evident than in the conflict between Israel and the Arabs — so much so that, as Obama’s recent remarks about Israel show, the false history and its false vocabulary are now taken for reality and made the basis of policy.

Start with the use of “borders” to describe what is in fact the armistice line marking the farthest advance of the five Arab armies that invaded Israel in 1948. That line is not an international “border” in the strict sense of a line dividing one sovereign state from another. The territory in question was never a state. Once a state is established, then the international border will be settled by negotiations. As Israeli ambassador Dore Gold points out, UN resolution 242, as well as later agreements such as the 1993 Oslo Accords, preserves this “flexibility for creating new borders.”

Mere HER i Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers. Og en til:

The Teacher of Fools

Posted by Bruce Thornton on May 30th, 2011

In Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, an Athenian ambassador refutes the Spartans’ claim that they are going to war with Athens on the principle of justice: “Calculations of interest have made you take up the cry of justice––a consideration which no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his ambition when he had a chance of gaining anything by might.” Thucydides presents here a permanent truth of interstate conflict: when force will not get a people what they want, they will often cloak their ambitions in lofty principles like justice in order to gain sympathy, buy time, and win allies.

Mere HER i FrontPageMagazine.

Audio: Bruce Thornton & Michael Medved

Fra American Conservative University den 25. maj 2011:

The Wages of Appeasement – Michael Medved talks to author

The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama’s America by Bruce S. Thornton

Synopsis of the book – Wages of Appeasement explores the reasons why a powerful state gives in to aggressors. It tells the story of three historical examples of appeasement: the greek city-states of the fourth century b.c., which lost their freedom to Philip II of Macedon; England in the twenties and thirties, and the failure to stop Germany’s aggression that led to World War II; and America’s current war against Islamic jihad and the 30-year failure to counter Iran’s attacks on the U.S. The inherent weaknesses of democracies and their bad habit of pursuing short-term interests at the expense of long-term security play a role in appeasement. But more important are the bad ideas people indulge, from idealized views of human nature to utopian notions like pacifism or disarmament. But especially important is the notion that diplomatic engagement and international institutions like the u.n. can resolve conflict and deter an aggressor––the delusion currently driving the Obama foreign policy in the middle east. Wages of Appeasement combines narrative history and cultural analysis to show how ideas can have dangerous and deadly consequences.

Biography-  Bruce S. Thornton is a past national fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of eight previous books and numerous essays on western culture and its roots.

Startes HER – åbner Windows Media Player. Varighed 37½ minut.

Video: Bruce Thornton om appeasement

Fra 16. maj 2011 – optaget i Skirball Cultural Center i Los Angeles USA - Bruce S. Thornton taler om appeasement op gennem historien og sammenligner med situationen i dag. Der er Q&A og en af spørgerne er Jamie Glazov fra FrontPageMagazine:

Is Obama our Chamberlain? The Wages of Appeasement

Desuden dette interview:

The Wages of Appeasement

by Mark Tapson on May 13th, 2011

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who famously returned from a Berlin conference with Hitler and announced appeasement in our time, may be history’s poster boy for political impotence and naïveté. But in the new book, The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama’s America, Bruce S. Thornton notes that the temptation to placate an enemy seeking one’s destruction is “as old as conflict itself.”

The book assesses three notable examples of societies’ futile, disastrous responses to the aggression of determined enemies: the Greek city-states threatened by the shrewd Philip II of Macedon, England confronted by Hitler, and now the West’s clash of civilizations with “a renascent Islamic jihad and its most powerful state sponsor, Iran.” Its message couldn’t be more timely and vital.

Mere HER i FrontPageMagazine.

Video: Bruce S. Thornton om terror, Iran, Israel, USA og mere

Fra Newsmax TV:

Historian Thornton: Obama Appeasing Terrorists, Iran

April 11, 2011 — Iran is waging war against the United States, but President Barack Obama is pandering to the terror-sponsoring state, says historian Bruce Thornton. Obama’s shifting foreign policy away from Israel and toward the Middle East is a “disastrous move,” Thornton says.

Forskelle mellem USA og Europa

Længere essay her om skrækkelige EU, hug til venstrefløjen og lidt amerikansk selvros. Bruce Thornton skriver, at muhammedtegningerne blev offentliggjort af en “Dutch newspaper”. Bruce Thornton har nu bedt Heritage Foundation om at rette fejlen, skriver Thornton i en email til Veritas Universalis:

America the Delusional? Overcoming Our European Temptation

March 7, 2011 by Bruce Thornton

Abstract: Once a colossus dominating the globe, Europe today is a doddering convalescent plagued by economic sclerosis, unaffordable entitlements, an impending demographic collapse, and a large unassimilated Muslim population. In addition, the EU’s reliance on soft power has left it unable to project global power and fulfill its promise to be an important player in world affairs. Yet in spite of all of these failures and systemic problems, many in America remain infatuated with the European Union’s promise of cradle-to-grave welfare and post-national multilateralism and multiculturalism. In this essay, Bruce Thornton first shows that, merely on practical grounds, many of these EU ideals have been ineffective if not dangerous. He then demonstrates that the EU model is predicated on philosophical assumptions about human nature and the human good that are diametrically opposed to those that underlay the American Founding. Thus, for America to become more like Europe, America must become less like America.

The worldwide Great Recession that began in 2008 has taken much of the bloom off the European Union rose. These days, the enthusiastic pronouncements of recent years, when the EU was touted as a “bold new experiment in living,” one “leading the way into a new era,”[1] sound premature if not delusional. Equally premature have been the prophecies of Europe’s future dominance in the “New European Century,”[2] or the prognostications that the “the twenty-first century might yet belong to Europe,”[3] or the argument that “the European way is the best hope in an insecure age.”[4]

Mere HER hos Heritage Foudation.

Bruce S. Thornton anmelder desuden en ny bog i City Journal. Bogen hedder: The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy Against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends, by Daniel J. Mahoney:

Protecting Democracy from Friend and Foe

Daniel Mahoney examines the many distortions of the liberal ideal.

By Bruce S. Thornton – 4 March 2011 

Across the political spectrum, the recent popular uprisings in the Arab world have inspired hymns to democratic freedom. Whether liberals who once scorned President Bush’s “freedom agenda,” or neoconservatives asserting its vindication, many are celebrating history’s apparent progress toward its destined political fulfillment in democracy and freedom, even in the recalcitrant Middle East.

Mere HER i City Journal.

Opdatering: nu er artiklen rettet.

Video: Bruce S. Thornton om appeasement

Hoover Institution har uploadet disse vidoer henover nogle dage – den sidste del er 1 time gammel. Nyt interview med Bruce Thornton om appeasement som fænomen op gennem historien og frem til vore dage:

Appeasement with Bruce Thornton

Bruce Thornton, author of The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama’s America, discusses, with Hoover fellow Peter Robinson, the ageless human impulse to appease one’s aggressors.

Bruce Thornton discusses the motivations of the appeasers who opened the door for Adolf Hitler.

Bruce Thornton discusses the thinking of Neville Chamberlain, the great appeaser of the twentieth century.

Bruce Thornton discusses losing the Vietnam War.

Bruce Thornton discusses how appeasement continues to make us weak in the eyes of our terrorist enemies.

Bruce Thornton om julekrigen, global opvarmning og ytringsfrihed

Anatomy of a Media Bias

Nothing’s more closed than a colonized mind

by Bruce Thornton – January 5, 2011

One of the pleasures of reading the New York Times is spotting the myriad ways liberal ideology shapes stories and presents as fact what is a debatable supposition. Global warming, for example, is a “crisis” about which the Times has already made up its mind. Rather than a contested theory rife with qualifications, reservations, and counter-evidence, for the Times the notion that rising global temperatures are caused by increases in human-generated CO2 is settled science brooking no dissent.

A recent Times article about the late Charles Keeling, the scientist who developed a technique for measuring CO2 in the atmosphere, illustrates how the way stories are written reinforces a narrative that owes as much to politics and ideology as it does to science. A perfect example of this phenomenon is the following paragraph from the Keeling profile: “But as action [to reduce CO2 emissions] began to seem more likely, the political debate intensified, with fossil-fuel industries mobilizing to fight emission-curbing measures. Climate-change contrarians increased their attack on the science, taking advantage of the Internet to distribute their views outside the usual scientific channels.”

Mere HER i Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers eller her hos RightNetwork.com.

Wars of Religion

by Bruce S. Thornton – December 30, 2010

This holiday season we have pretty much been spared the usual peevish cranks campaigning against any public celebration of Christmas. The attacks on public crèches, school pageants, Christmas music, and even the greeting “Merry Christmas” have been few this year. Yet we shouldn’t think that this means we’ve turned a corner and the battle against Christmas has been won.

Those battles have always been skirmishes in the larger war against the presence of religion in the public square, a war which faith has been losing for several decades to the forces of radical secularization.

This struggle has little to do with frequency of churchgoing or the belief in God professed to pollsters, the usual evidence trotted out to claim that the United States is a religious nation. The secularists are content to let Christianity live on as a source of private therapeutic solace and comforting holiday rituals, one of many such options ranging from Wicca to Scientology. What the anti-religion battalions are aiming at is the eradication of religion from our public culture and political discourse.

Mere HER i Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers eller her hos RightNetwork.com.

Allerede de gamle grækere… Den næste artikel handler om ytringsfrihed i antikken. En kort smagsprøve:

“No Labels,” No Democracy“

“Free speech” doesn’t mean “Play nice, children.”

Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers HER eller her hos RightNetwork.com.

Bruce S. Thornton om Newspeak og sværdets religion

Whitewashing Islam

“Who Controls the Past Controls the Future”

By Bruce S. Thornton – October 27, 2010

In 1984 George Orwell described how the abandonment of belief in objective truth makes possible a politicized history that legitimizes tyrannical power:

“If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death . . . . And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”

The danger Orwell describes does not just afflict totalitarian societies in which the organs of information are controlled by the state. Free peoples too must watch out for the manipulation of historical fact in the service of ideology. The techniques may be subtler and more insidious than the crude propaganda that typified the Soviet Union, or that can still be found in the state-run media of North Korea or Cuba. Yet the distortion of history through mythic historical narratives continues to shape policies that ultimately abet the aggression of our enemies.

Mere HER hos Victor Davis Hanson, der har Thorntons artikel på sin hjemmeside eller her hos RightNetWork.

Bruce Thornton om humanitærpopulister

Man kan få artiklen læst højt inde på City Journals hjemmeside:

Policies Based on Illusion

The West fails to imagine that its adversaries might have different values.

By Bruce S. Thornton – 23 September 2010

The great historian of Soviet Russia, Robert Conquest, once wrote something about the dangers of naïve diplomacy that I’m reminded of daily. “We are still faced with the absolutely crucial problem of making the intellectual and imaginative effort not to project our ideas of common sense or natural motivation onto the products of totally different cultures,” Conquest observed. “The central point is less that people misunderstand other people, or that cultures misunderstand other cultures, than that they have no notion that this may be the case. They assume that the light of their own parochial common sense is enough. And they frame policies based on illusions. Yet how profound is this difference between political psychologies and between the motivations of different political traditions, and how deep-set and how persistent these attitudes are!”

Mere HER i City Journal.