09-13-2016, 02:07 PM
With American extremists in charge, radical Islamic extremists might be the smaller problem. Moderate Muslims, the sorts who believe that Jeffersonian democracy is compatible with Islam, will be. Such is the Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia, largely, and what prevails among Muslims in India.
The extremists who cut off the heads of anyone not toeing their religious line in the name of Daesh can be dealt with decisively because what they practice is not Islam but instead fascistic tyranny. But if America should go very bad, then it will be the moderate Muslims who defeat us... and judge us. If we are fortunate we will find that the moderate Muslims will judge our worst -- our violent fascists -- and find the pretensions to Christianity wanting, much like we Americans found the pretended Christianity of Nazis insufficient. Had they been truly Christian, then maybe they would never have herded those Jews to the shooting pits or gas chambers, they would have never mistreated prisoners of war, or they would have never murdered the mentally disabled.
The extremists who cut off the heads of anyone not toeing their religious line in the name of Daesh can be dealt with decisively because what they practice is not Islam but instead fascistic tyranny. But if America should go very bad, then it will be the moderate Muslims who defeat us... and judge us. If we are fortunate we will find that the moderate Muslims will judge our worst -- our violent fascists -- and find the pretensions to Christianity wanting, much like we Americans found the pretended Christianity of Nazis insufficient. Had they been truly Christian, then maybe they would never have herded those Jews to the shooting pits or gas chambers, they would have never mistreated prisoners of war, or they would have never murdered the mentally disabled.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.