Soufflé of Doom or Élan of Hope

As even CNN begins to acknowledge that political correctness in the Army contributed to the 13(/14) deaths at Fort Hood, I recalled that friend and mentor, Gil Bailie, recently cited a New York Post story about terrorists in New York: They were filled with rage and wanted to take it out on what they considered the source of all problems in America - the Jews.

The naïveté of everyone educated in the sacred halls of multiculturalism "knows" that humans are not stained with Original Sin. I heard a PhD in Education bemoan not long ago the way that textbooks betray our ethnic and cultural bias in the way they refer, for example, to Native Americans as "savages". Of course, the sentiment not to victimize is admirable, but to ignore the fact that Native Americans were members of the fallen human race and, therefore, ipso facto, as savage as, say the Meso-American Aztecs and Mayans and Clockwork Orange urban youth of today's Paris and London, is as dangerous as a branch of the military ignoring the warning signs of a Army psychiatrist who emailed jihadists overseas to say he was looking forward to seeing them in Paradise and - by the way - when is it permissible to slaughter innocents?

The time is rapidly approaching when two things will become manifestly apparent: first, that those who become "filled with rage" are the problem. And, secondly, we cannot "pussy-foot" around them in feeble, limp-wristed attempts "not to offend" them, but rather call them accountable for their uncontrolled lack of impulse control and immature bent to violent and inappropriate tantrums.

True political correctness is recognizing where the true problem lies. René Girard's mimetic theory and the wisdom to "think with the Church" - sentire cum ecclesia - in discerning truth, goodness, and beauty, as well as disordered passions, fruits of the flesh, and egregious evil is the pathway to survival for humanity.

Anything less, including and inescapably a soufflé of multiculturalism and elitist naïveté, bode only doom.

What Apocalypse? - MSM

Jim Rutenberg of the NYT thinks that all those critics of Big-O are hemming and hawing now that the man is in direct line for the Oval Office, with a few notable exceptions promising ”intense” oversight.

The truly interesting feat to be carried out by the smarmy MSM will be how aptly they will paint the continued fraying of western civilization at its ragged edges and sizable tears. It will resemble, in my humble opinion, the jaunty adventures of the denizens of Terry Gilliams' prescient Brazil (1985), with its exurbite mavens ignoring a nearby terrorist bomb explosion a few tables away while they're "enjoying" their lunch.

I think I'll curl up with Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins. Wake me when 2012 comes round...

War on Terror & Girard

An interesting look at a recent editorial by James Carroll who attempts a Girardian exposition of the "war on terror" at Augean Stables. Is it really a "slaughter of innocents" or legitimate defense?

The Target of the Terrorists - London

Via Gerald Augustinus' ”The Cafeteria Is Closed”, Christopher Hitchens points out a disturbing fact about the non-bombings in London.