{"id":100,"date":"2002-10-17T16:51:00","date_gmt":"2002-10-17T21:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=100"},"modified":"2002-10-17T16:51:00","modified_gmt":"2002-10-17T21:51:00","slug":"draft-for-an-anti-idiotarian-manifesto-version-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Substantive changes from version 1 to 2 are <font color=\"red\">marked in red<\/font>; changes from 2 to 3 are <font color='blue'>marked in blue<\/font>.  I think the changes largely<br \/>\nspeak for themselves.  I will say that I think some of the criticisms<br \/>\nI received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population,<br \/>\nand that for appeal to a wider audience it <em>is<\/em> necessary to<br \/>\nexcoriate the Right a little harder than a lot of people here will be<br \/>\ncompletely comfortable with.<\/p>\n<p>I have removed the paragraph about profiling, not out of political<br \/>\ncorrectness but because I have been presented with good arguments that<br \/>\nprofiling is easy for terrorists to game against (and apparently they<br \/>\nhave often done so in Israel).<\/p>\n<p>It has been suggested that I should add the heroes of Flight 93 to<br \/>\nthe list of those we swear shall not have died in vain.  But they<br \/>\nhad already achieved that; they saved many lives and provided a<br \/>\nmoral example which shall not be forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations to the trivia spotters who identified &#8220;to be dealt<br \/>\nwith as wolves are&#8221; as a quote from H. Beam Piper&#8217;s <cite>Lord Kalvan<br \/>\nof Otherwhen<\/cite>.  Jerry Pournelle did, I believe, quote it in<br \/>\n<cite>Prince Of Sparta<\/cite>. I had always assumed Piper<br \/>\nwas referring to the Viking sentence of outlawry, in which the outlaw<br \/>\nwas declared a &#8220;wolf&#8217;s head&#8221;.  Apparently there is a 1703 historical<br \/>\ncite from the US as well.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>WHEREAS, the year since the terrible events of 9\/11 has exposed<br \/>\nthe vacuity and moral confusion of all too many of the thinkers,<br \/>\npoliticians, and activists operating within conventional political<br \/>\ncategories;<\/p>\n<p>WHEREAS, the Left has failed us by succumbing to reflexive<br \/>\nanti-Americanism; by apologizing for terrorist acts; by propounding<br \/>\nsqualid theories of moral equivalence; and by blaming the victims of<br \/>\nevil for the act of evil;<\/p>\n<p>WHEREAS, the Right has failed us by pushing `anti-terrorist&#8217;<br \/>\nmeasures which bid fair to be both ineffective and prejudicial to the<br \/>\ncentral liberties of a free society; and in some cases by rhetorically<br \/>\ndescending to almost the same level of <font color=\"red\">bigotry<\/font> as our enemies;<\/p>\n<p>WHEREAS, even many of the Libertarians from whom we expected more<br \/>\nintelligence have retreated into a petulant isolationism, refusing to<br \/>\nrecognize that, at this time, using the state to carry the war to<br \/>\nthe enemy <em>is<\/em> our only practical instrument of<br \/>\nself-defense;<\/p>\n<p>WE THEREFORE ASSERT the following convictions as the basis of<br \/>\nthe anti-idiotarian position:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<p>THAT Western civilization is threatened with the specter of mass death<br \/>\nperpetrated by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons placed in the<br \/>\nhands of terrorists by rogue states;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>THAT the terrorists who perpetrated the 9\/11 attack, and its lesser<br \/>\nsequels, are motivated by a combination of religious fanaticism and<br \/>\na smoldering resentment of the West&#8217;s success and Islam&#8217;s failures;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><font color='blue'>THAT the terrorists have declared and are<br \/>\npursuing a war not against the vices of Western civilization but<br \/>\nagainst its core virtues; against the freedom of thought and speech<br \/>\nand conscience, against the life of reason; against the equality of<br \/>\nwomen, against pluralism and tolerance; against, indeed, all the<br \/>\nqualities which separate civilized human beings from bestiality,<br \/>\nslavery, and fanaticism;<\/font><\/p>\n<p>THAT no adjustments of American or Western foreign policy, or<br \/>\nconcessions to the Palestinians, or actions taken against<br \/>\nglobalization, or efforts to alleviate world poverty,<br \/>\nare of more than incidental interest to these terrorists;<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>THAT, upon their own representation, they will not by dissuaded from<br \/>\ntheir violence by any surrender less extreme than the imposition of Islam<br \/>\nand shari&#8217;a law on the kaffir West;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>THAT, as said terrorists have demonstrated the willingness to use<br \/>\ncivilian airliners as flying bombs to kill thousands of innocent<br \/>\npeople, we would commit a vast crime of moral negligence if we<br \/>\nunderestimated their future malice <font color='red'>even<br \/>\n<em>without<\/em> weapons of mass destruction;<\/font><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>THAT they have sought, and on plausible evidence found, alliance<br \/>\nwith rogue states such as Iraq, <font color='red'>Iran,<\/font> and<br \/>\nNorth Korea; states that are known to have active programs working<br \/>\ntowards the development and delivery of weapons of mass destruction<br \/>\nthat would multiply the terrorists&#8217; ability to commit atrocities by a<br \/>\nthousandfold;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>THAT Saddam Hussein poses a particularly clear and present danger<br \/>\nin combination with them, a danger demonstrated by his known efforts<br \/>\nto develop nuclear weapons, his use of chemical weapons even on his<br \/>\nown population, his demonstrated willingness to commit aggression<br \/>\nagainst peaceful neighbors, and his known links to the Islamic terror<br \/>\nnetwork in Palestine and elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>RE AFFIRM that both the terrorists and their state<br \/>\nsponsors have made themselves outlaws from the moral community of man,<br \/>\nto be dealt with as <font color=\"red\">feral beasts<\/font> are.<\/p>\n<p>WE FURTHER AFFIRM that the `root cause&#8217; of Islamo-fascist terrorism<br \/>\nlies in the animating politico-religious ideas of fundamentalist Islam<br \/>\nand not in any signicant respect elsewhere, and that a central aim of<br \/>\nthe war against terror must be to displace, discredit, and destroy<br \/>\nthose animating ideas.<\/p>\n<p>WE REJECT, as a self-serving power grab by the least trustworthy<br \/>\nelements of our own side, the theory that terrorist depredations can<br \/>\nbe effectively prevented by further restrictions on the right of free<br \/>\nspeech, or the right of peacible assembly, or the right to bear<br \/>\narms in self-defense; and we strenuously oppose police-state measures<br \/>\nsuch as the imposition of national ID cards or airport-level<br \/>\nsurveillance of public areas;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"red\">IN GRAVE KNOWLEDGE that the state of war brings<br \/>\nout the worst in both individual human beings and societies, we reject<br \/>\nthe alternative of ceding to the world&#8217;s barbarians the exclusive<br \/>\nprivilege of force.<\/font><\/p>\n<p>WE SUPPORT the efforts of the United States of America, its allies,<br \/>\nand the West to hunt down and capture or kill individual members<br \/>\nof the <font color='red'>Islamo-fascist<\/font> terror network;<\/p>\n<p>WE SUPPORT speedy American and allied military action against the<br \/>\nrogue states that support terrorism, both as a means of alleviating<br \/>\nthe immediate threat and of deterring future state sponsorship of<br \/>\nterrorism by the threat of war to the knife.<\/p>\n<p><font color='red'>WE SUPPORT, in recognition of the fact that the<br \/>\nmilitary and police cannot be everywhere, efforts to meet the<br \/>\ndistributed threat with a distributed response; <\/font><font color='blue'>to arm airline pilots, and to recognize as well the<br \/>\nordinary citizen&#8217;s right and obligation to respond to terrorist<br \/>\naggression with effective force.<\/font><\/p>\n<p>WE SUPPORT, as an alternative greatly preferable to future<br \/>\nnuclear\/chemical\/biological blackmail of the West, the forcible <font color='blue'>overthrowing of the governments of Iraq and of other<br \/>\nnations that combine sponsorship of terrorism with the possession of<br \/>\nweapons of mass destruction; and the occupation of those<br \/>\nnations<\/font> until such time as the root causes of terrorism have<br \/>\nbeen eradicated from their societies.<\/p>\n<p>WE DEFINE IDIOTARIANISM as the species of delusion<br \/>\n<em>within<\/em> the moral community of mankind that gives<br \/>\naid and comfort to terrorists and dictators operating outside it.<\/p>\n<p>WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Left &#8212; the moral blindness that<br \/>\nrefuses to recognize that free markets, individual liberty, and<br \/>\nexperimental science have made the West a fundamentally better place<br \/>\nthan any culture in which jihad, &#8216;honor killings&#8217;, and female genital<br \/>\nmutilation are daily practices approved by a stultifying religion.<\/p>\n<p>WE REJECT the idiotarianism of the Right &#8212; whether it manifests as<br \/>\nhead-in-the-sand isolationism or as a <font color='red'>Christian-identity chauvinism that all but mirrors the<br \/>\nIslamo-fascist fanaticism of our enemies.<\/font><\/p>\n<p>WE ARE MEMBERS OF A CIVILIZATION, and we hold that civilization<br \/>\nto be worth defending. We have not sought war, but we will fight it<br \/>\nto the end.   We will fight for our civilization in our thoughts, in<br \/>\nour words, and in our deeds.<\/p>\n<p>WE HAVE AWAKENED.  We have seen the face of evil in the acts of the<br \/>\nBin Ladens and Husseins and Arafats of the world; we have seen through<br \/>\nthe lies and self-delusions of the idiotarians, who did so much both to<br \/>\nmake their evil possible before the fact and to deny and excuse it<br \/>\nafterwards.  We shall not flinch from our duty to confront that<br \/>\nevil.<\/p>\n<p>WE SHALL SHED the moral cowards and the appeasers and the<br \/>\napologists; and we shall fight the barbarians and fanatics, and we<br \/>\n<em>shall<\/em> defeat them. We shall defeat them in war, crushing<br \/>\ntheir dream of dominion; and we shall defeat them in peace, using our<br \/>\nwealth and freedoms to <font color='blue'>win<\/font> their women and<br \/>\nchildren to civilized ways, and ultimately wiping their diseased and<br \/>\nvirulent <font color='red'>ideologies<\/font> from the face of the<br \/>\nEarth.<\/p>\n<p>THIS WE SWEAR, on the graves of those who died at the World Trade<br \/>\nCenter; and those who died in the Sari Club in Bali; and those who<br \/>\ndied on U.S.S. Cole; and indeed on the graves of all the nameless<br \/>\nvictims in the Middle East itself who have been slaughtered by<br \/>\nterrorism and rogue states;<\/p>\n<p>YOU SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN.<\/p>\n<pre>\r\n\t\t\tEric S. Raymond\r\n\t\t\t16 October 2002\r\n\r\n\t\t\t____________________\r\n\t\t\t(your signature here)\r\n<\/pre>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enetation.co.uk\/comments.php?user=esr&amp;commentid=83141982\">Blogspot<br \/>\ncomments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Substantive changes from version 1 to 2 are marked in red; changes from 2 to 3 are marked in blue. I think the changes largely speak for themselves. I will say that I think some of the criticisms I received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population, and that for appeal to a wider&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=100\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 3)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}