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Culture, politics, science, philosophy. General manifesto ***** Immigration manifesto
Some journalists and editors should have a look in the mirror 31.01.2017. The New York Times' White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, who is also a CNN analyst, recently tweeted the following question, "Other than San Bernardino shootings, has there been a terrorist attack involving a non-US-born attacker since 9/11?". Other media personalities have posed posed similar questions or made statements along the same line. Kyle Shideler attempts to set the record straight in Here's A Short List Of Foreign-Born Terrorists Reporters Can't Believe Exist. Becoming ever more lawless 29.01.2017. Migrant youth gangs have turned Sweden's largest shopping centre, Nordstan in Gothenburg, into a "no-go zone" as they intimidate police, harass girls and deal drugs openly. Thus reports the Sunday Express in Lawless Sweden: Violent migrant youths turn shopping centre into 'no-go zone'. See also these recent articles:
How did it happen? 27.01.2017. The following article by Brendan O'Neill in The Spectator is so short and to the point that I quote it in its entirety. Trump! How did this happen?:
Quoted from The Spectator. What could possibly be more scary? 27.01.2017. So today's the day. Any minute now Donald J Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States of America. Hair Force One is about to land. And it will be a historic moment. Not because Trump is the saviour of the 'forgotten' men and women of America, as he put it outside the Lincoln Memorial last night. Nor because he's some sort of white-supremacist counter-revolutionary about to awake an army of goose-stepping pussy grabbers, as his more vociferous critics would have it. But because, in plumping for Trump, the electorate dealt a blow to technocracy, to a narrow, elitist status quo, to a caste of people who openly revile them, and who are now in open revolt against them. The word 'unprecedented' is chucked around a lot in relation to Trump. And indeed he is. Thus begins Tom Slater his article What's scarier than Trump? The elit revolt against him. He later continues:
Read the entire article in Spiked. Leading a European war against free speech? 27.01.2017. The elites and intellectuals are apparently now counted among the German minorities in need of protection. Toward the end of last year, Germany experienced a previously unheard-of boycott campaign – funded by the German government, no less -- against several websites, such as the popular "Axis of Good" ("Achse des Guten"). The website, critical of the government, was suddenly accused of "right-wing populism". The German government's efforts at thought control seem to have begun with the victory of Donald J. Trump in the US presidential election -- that seems to set the "establishment" off. Germany's foreign minister and the probable future federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier -- one of the first to travel to Iran after the removal of sanctions there to kowtow to the Ayatollahs -- called America's future president a "hate preacher". Germany's newspapers were suddenly littered with apocalyptic predictions and anti-American fulminations. Thus begins Stefan Frank his article Germany's New 'Ministry of Truth' War against Free Speech (italics in original):
Read the entire article (with lots of embedded links to further reading) at Gatestone Institute. Moving in the direction of totalitarianism 23.01.2017 (updated 27.01.2017). Officials in Germany's Interior Ministry are urging Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière to establish a "Defense Center against Disinformation" (Abwehrzentrum gegen Desinformation) to combat what they call "political disinformation," a euphemism for "fake news." "The acceptance of a post-truth age would amount to political capitulation," the officials told Maizière in a memo, which also disclosed that the bureaucrats at the Interior Ministry are eager to see "authentic political communication" remain "defining for the 21st century." One wonders whether by "authentic political communication," the officials of the Interior Ministry are referring to the way German authorities scrambled to cover up the mass sexual attacks on women on New Year's Eve a year ago in Cologne? At the time, German police first claimed, surreally, on the morning of January 1, 2016, that the situation on New Year's Eve had been "relaxed." Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers later dryly admitted, "This initial statement was incorrect." Alternatively, perhaps they are referring to the decision of Germany's public broadcaster, ZDF, not to report on the attacks until four days after they had occurred? Even a former government official, Hans-Peter Friedrich, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Interior Minister from 2011 to 2013, accused the media at the time of imposing a "news blackout" and operating a "code of silence" over negative news about immigrants. How is that for "authentic political communication"? Thus writes Judith Bergman in her article on Germany's New Propaganda Bureau, highlights of which include:
Read the entire article at Gatestone Institute. See also:
Connected to Daesh/ISIL? 08.01.2017. At least five people have been killed in an attack at Fort Lauderdale airport by a gunman who had reportedly previously told the FBI he was being forced to fight for ISIL. Esteban Santiago, a 26-year-old who had been treated for mental health issues, opened fire inside the baggage area of the busy airport and was taken into custody at the scene. He was carrying military ID and was wearing a Star Wars t-shirt. On Friday night law enforcement officials reportedly said that in November last year, Santiago had told the FBI in Anchorage that voices in his head were forcing him to join and fight for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). Officials said he was not on a watchlist of people suspected of Islamist radicalisation. Continue reading in The Telegraph. See also The Daily Mail: #1 and #2. Should reconsider their ways 03.01.2017. What on earth is going on in the Western democracies? From the rise of Donald Trump in the United States and an assortment of right-wing parties across Europe through the June 23 Brexit vote, many on the Left have the sense that something dangerous and ugly is spreading: right-wing populism, seen as the Zika virus of politics. Something has gotten into "those people" that makes them vote in ways that seem—to their critics—likely to harm their own material interests, at least if their leaders follow through in implementing isolationist policies that slow economic growth. Thus writes Jonathan Haidt in the introduction to his July 2016 article When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism - And how moral psychology can help explain and reduce tensions between the two (links in original):
Continue reading in The American Interest. Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and professor in the Business and Society Program at New York University—Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.
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Norsk stoff - Norwegian material
Norske og skandinaviske lesere vil kunne finne stoff på norsk her.
Quotes
A liberal nationalist can reasonably argue that the debate over immigration policy in Europe is not a case of what is moral versus what is base, but a case of two clashing moral visions, incommensurate (à la Isaiah Berlin). The trick, from this point of view, is figuring out how to balance reasonable concerns about the integrity of one's own community with the obligation to welcome strangers, particularly strangers in dire need. Jonathan Haidt, When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism - And how moral psychology can help explain and reduce tensions between the two, The American Interest, Volume 12, Number 1, July 2016
We have the problem that we are too close to the government. The topics we cover are determined by the government. But many of the topics the government wants to prevent us from reporting about are more important than the topics they want us to cover... We must report in such a way that serves Europe [the European Union] and the common good, as it pleases Mrs. Merkel. There are written instructions ... today we are not allowed to say anything negative about the refugees. This is government journalism, and this leads to a situation in which the public loses their trust in us. This is scandalous. Retired public media personality Wolfgang Herles, in an interview with the German public radio, Deutschlandfunk, 26.01.2016, quoted by Soeren Kern at Gatestone Institute
In this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire. Oxford Dictionaries, example of use, post-truth
Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief Oxford Dictionaries, defining «post-truth», Word of the Year 2016
If you are a citizen of the world, then you are a citizen of nowhere. Theresa May, quoted by Rod Liddle in The Spectator, 15.10.2016
To reach the unification with God, to the degree this is possible in this life, a continuous exertion is required, or, specifically, an unceasing vigil to preserve the integrity of the inward man, so «the unity between heart and spirit» might withstand the assaults of the enemy and the irrational inclinations of the fallen nature. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, page 16
Sin is a disease of the will which is deceived, and takes a mere shadow of the good for the good itself. Gregory of Nyssa (circa 335 - 395), quoted by Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, page 128
The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), Russian poet and author
Our whiteness is that poisonous sky right before it rains, the color of shame. Eve Ensler, It's time for white people to reckon with racism, The Guardian, 11.07.2016
A sizable portion of the establishment liberal commentariat in the West has completely lost the ability to engage with any sort of dissent from its orthodoxies or even understand those who disagree. They are capable of nothing beyond adopting the smuggest, most self-satisfied posture, then spouting clichés to dismiss their critics as ignorant, benighted bigots. Like the people of the West who bomb Muslim countries and then express confusion that anyone wants to attack them back, the most simple-minded of these establishment media liberals are constantly enraged that the people they endlessly malign as ignorant haters refuse to vest them with the respect and credibility to which they are naturally entitled. Glenn Greenwald, Brexit Is Only the Latest Proof of the Insularity and Failure of Western Establishment Institutions, The Intercept, 25.06.2016
We will need to grapple with this question: Why do so many European Muslims not feel European? Iyad El-Baghdadi, These terrorists are not «foreigners» from «out there», Aftenposten, 22.03.2016
We must accept that refugees are more criminal. Chancellor Angela Merkel, statement on TV, January 2016
We live in a time when men, driven by mediocre, ferocious ideologies, are becoming used to being ashamed of everything. Ashamed of themselves, ashamed to be happy, to love and to create…. So we have to feel guilty. We are being dragged before the secular confessional, the worst of all. Albert Camus, Actuelles, Écrits politiques (1948), quoted in The Tyranny of Guilt, by Pascal Bruckner
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the carrier of the plague. Often attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero (107-44 BCE), but spoken in 1965 by Florida Supreme Court Justice Millard F. Caldwell (1897-1984), inspired by Cicero
My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free. Robin Morgan, key radical feminist member of the American Women’s Movement, quoted by IFNM
This is not ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It is all about Islam. Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary, commenting on the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, quoted by Rod Liddle, The Islamic world is rioting – and not for free speech, The Spectator, 24.01.2015
So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill. From the concluding words of 138 Muslim scholars in their open letter to Christians, A Common Word between Us and You, 2007
A man who arbitrarily imprisons me or confiscates my property is a tyrant. Institutions and general ways of thinking that destroy the social institutions and relationships that make me what I am; that attack the family and abolish gender distinctions, communal ties, and traditional moral standards; that drive religion out of public life and tell private associations what members to choose and why - these are also tyrannical. James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 129-130
The recognition of ethnic and similar distinctions is regarded as extraordinarily dangerous. Those who would abolish them envision no problems should they succeed, as though they served no function and without them people would find nothing to fight over. It should be clear, however, that it is not universal human tendencies like ethnocentrism that are dangerous, but the failure to integrate them with other aspects of life and to restrain them by other considerations. The lessons of the events following the collapse of communism is that the attempt to create a utopia based on eradication of a fundamental impulse - even greed, which some have called the root of all evil - is supremely destructive. James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 228
The post-liberal future may look rather like post-Soviet Russia, only with less common culture and more varied and numerous Chechens. James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 255
Christianity succeeded because pagan Roman religion failed to provide a sense of spiritual upliftment. Islam succeeded because the Eastern churches were spiritually debilitated by centuries of bitter polemic. New religious movements in the West succeed by offering techniques of meditation and alternative therapies which seem absent from established religions as they are presently formulated. Islam, wherever it degenerates into a primal scream of panic about one’s situation in the world, will certainly be replaced by any other religion that offers sakina. Abdal-Hakim Murad, Muslim loyalty and belonging - some reflections on the psychosocial background, January 2003
Those of us who want reform [of Islam] are muted by [Muslim] extremists, as well as the liberals who betray us in the name of multiculturalism. ISIS paints a horrific picture, so I understand the knee-jerk reaction to deny any link. Most Muslims choose to interpret scripture in a peaceful way, but that doesn’t mean the raw material isn’t there for those who choose the path of violence. That material must be addressed. Eiynah (a Pakistani-Canadian blogger/illustrator who writes about sexuality in Pakistan), An open letter to Ben Affleck, Pakistan Today, 25.10.2014
We can’t go forward without looking backwards. President Obama, commenting on past human rights abuses in Indonesia, When presidential sermons collide, Salon, 25.03.2010
I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards. President Obama, commenting on past human rights abuses in the USA, When presidential sermons collide, Salon, 25.03.2010
There are two fundamentally different conceptions of science – one that is scientific and one that is not. In the first, science properly deals with reality, mostly in its physical manifestations. It tries to understand the things that are - what they are, how they work and why, in terms of efficient causes. Science is not metaphysics, but, in order to work, it must assume that things have ends. Otherwise, what would be the point of investigating them, and how would one go about doing it? It is not science that gives to things their ends; those exist already as part of themselves. Science works with the already existing ends in Nature to held bring them about, to fulfill them. Science is not so much the mastery of Nature as an alliance with it. To succeed, it must work with Nature, not against it. This is particularly true in practical sciences. You cannot heal people if you do not know what health is. As Dr. Leon Kass said, ‘The doctor is the cooperative ally of nature, not its master.’ Robert R. Reilly, quoted by SydneyTrads
We Muslims must admit there are challenging Koranic passages that require reinterpretation today. Let us use existing tools of exegesis, such as specificity, restriction, abrogation and metaphor. Vacuous literalism as an interpretive method must be abandoned. It is bankrupt. Only by rejecting vacuous literalism are we able to condemn, in principle, ISIS-style slavery, beheading, lashing, amputation and other medieval practices forever (all of which are in the Quran). This is a struggle within Islam. Reformers either win, and get religion-neutral politics, or lose, and get ISIL-style theocracy. Help us, defend us, donate, or spread the word. But don't just stand by and watch. We cannot do this alone. Maajid Nawaz, Facebook, 17.09.2014
When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You're only telling the world you fear what he might say. From Game of Thrones
I prefer religious collaboration, discovering common ground, and so forth, rather than outward competition. I think, essentially, that the real rival to each of us is not each other any longer, but is the spirit of nihilism, negation, global capitalism, all of that stuff. That's what we should really be debating. Timothy Winter (a.k.a. Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad), being interviewed by Dale Tuggy about the former's chapter The Trinity is Incoherent in the 2013 collection edited by J.P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, Debating Christian Theism
There is a lot of Islam in the West but very few Muslims, and there are a lot of Muslims in the East but very little Islam. Muhammad Asad, quoted by Kristiane Backer in her book From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life
Ubi caritas et amor, ibi Deus est. Old Catholic hymn (where charity and love are, there is God)
Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.
People often ask me by what standards they should measure the knowledge and qualifications of someone from whom they should accept counsel on matters of Islamic law. While this is a complex matter, at a minimum such a person should have received at least twenty years of formal training in Islamic law, should be intimately knowledgeable of the local culture, and should have a balanced, humanistic view. Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 108
For moderates [i.e., moderate Muslims, as opposed to puritans/extremists], this would be impossible. God is moral and ethical, in the sense that God shares with human beings an objective standard for goodness, morality, and beauty. Civilizing the earth does not mean constructing buildings or paving roads. It means striving to spread on the earth the Divine attributes such as justice, mercy, compassion, goodness, and beauty. In doing so, human beings spread Divinity itself upon the earth. [...] The more the earth is permeated with justice, mercy, compassion, and beauty, the nearer the earth is to the Divine ideal. Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 129-130
Muslims must set an example for the rest of humanity in their diligence and persistence in seeking the perfection of Divinity. If Muslims fail in setting an example for humanity in their fidelity to justice, mercy, compassion, and beauty, then Muslims have failed God. In moderate thought, God is too great to be embodied in a code of law. The [Shari'a] law helps Muslims in the quest for Godliness, but Godliness cannot be equated to the law. The ultimate objective of the law is to achieve goodness, which includes justice, mercy, and compassion, and the technicalities of the law cannot be allowed to subvert the objectives of the law. Therefore, if the application of the law produces injustice, suffering, and misery, this means that the law is not serving its purposes. In this situation, the law is corrupting the earth instead of civilizing it. In short, if the application of the law results in injustice, suffering, or misery, then the law must be reinterpreted, suspended, or reconstructed, depending on the law in question. Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 131 (italics in original)
I must say that in my opinion the truly sad reality is that the puritan ideology of the state will only lead to considerable bloodshed without the puritans ever finding their utopia with its just despot. As some of the classical jurists used to say, justice and despotism are two opposites, and the two will never meet without one killing the other. After much suffering, the puritans are bound to wake up and realize that while they dreamed in clouds of their utopia, on this earth they only managed to create a nightmare. Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 199-200
Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life. Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can't Buy - the moral limits of markets, page 203
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously. Edith Stein, Jewish philosopher who converted to the Roman Catholic Church and became a Discalced Carmelite nun
We have seen the future, and it has failed already. James Kalb, Against Inclusiveness, page 154
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations. Anonymous
Based on the evidence of the past four centuries and the state of contemporary philosophy, the rational conclusion is that reason alone has failed as a means by which to discover or devise the truth about the nature of reality, morality, what human beings should care about, and how they should live. Despite high hopes for its success since the seventeenth century, modern philosophy has foundered in its central ambition. It sought universal, rationally demonstrable truth, but has produced instead an open-ended welter of preferential, ultimately arbitrary truth claims. Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 379
Modern reason in its two most influential expressions is therefore a schizophrenically mixed bag: philosophy has dramatically failed, but science has spectacularly succeeded. One consequence is that the ever-expanding technological capacities afforded by scientific advances are set within an increasingly rancorous culture of moral disagreement and political contestation. If not necessarily a failure of modernity per se, this fact certainly contributes to its volatility and potential for man-made catastrophes on scales inconceivable in the preindustrial world. Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 380
And perhaps some religious truth claims really are true, and maybe their rejection helps to explain both why Western history has unfolded as it has in the past half millennium and why modernity is now failing. Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 383
Our Manifesto |
HonestThinking is dedicated and committed to the art of thinking honestly. Yet honest thinking is not the same as true thinking, for it is possible to think honestly, but be mistaken. For the same reason, honest thinking is not identical with objective thinking either. Honest thinking is striving to get things right. This involves being truthful about whatever one publishes, but just as importantly, it involves an uncompromising dedication never to suppress relevant data, even when data collides with dearly held prejudices. Such an approach may sometimes cause hurtful revisions in one’s belief system. That’s what HonestThinking is all about! Read the entire manifesto.
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Please send e-mail to postmaster at honestThinking.org (replacing ' at ' with '@') if you would like to tip us about a web resource that we should link to, or if you wish to submit an article for publication here. Quality contributions are welcome from anyone.
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| Multicultural societies – respect for Muslims and Islam |
The current European immigration and integration policy is profoundly disrespectful of both Muslims and Islam, because it is built on the tacit assumption that the Muslims will become like us. One claims to have respect for Islam and for Muslims, but one also expects Muslims to give up their orthodox faith when they come here. At the same time one is assuming that Islam will be reformed and modernized as soon as the Muslims become integrated and understand and appreciate how superior our Western culture is compared to their own. This is cultural shauvinism and arrogance indeed! The unspoken premise for this scenario is that Western socities are superior to Islam. Read more.
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| Threats against democracy and human rights |
Human rights and democracy are under pressure. One threat comes from the Western world, in the form of lack of or dishonest thinking. There exists a peculiar Western "tolerance" which is so "tolerant" that it even tolerates totalitarian or anti-democratic ideologies. A tacit assumption underlying such an attitude is that all cultures, world views, and religions are really equally good. As a consequence of this assumption one is cut off from the possibility of critically examining the above mentioned ideologies. Read more.
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