dafydd/sachi @ Big Lizards:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.” George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, chapter 3.
One would imagine that to “know your enemy” is common sense, and nobody would gainsay it. If we’re ignorant of whom we’re fighting, how can we hope to out-think, surprise, resist, and defeat him?
Knowledge is our most powerful weapon: knowledge of strategy and tactics; of how to maintain supply lines and other logistical necessities; of actionable intel on what the enemy is going to do next; of how to transport combat units quickly hither and thither; and of course, knowledge of who the enemy is (so we know who to attack), how he fights (so we know what signs to look for), and how he thinks (so we understand what the enemy will do even before he himself knows.
One would imagine. But under President Barack “Ve knew nussink, nussink!” Obama, our military is systematically purging that valuable weapon of knowledge, word by word and concept by concept, from our military, intelligence, and political agencies… and all in the name of sensitivity and political correctness.
This Orwellian loss of language, like the “Newspeak” of Nineteen Eighty Four, has one obvious and ominous consequence. Since language evolved, human beings have learned to think primarily in terms of words; so when all the words that describe an idea are banned, it becomes impossible even to think it, because we have no verbal hook to hang it on.
That is precisely what the Obamunists have done… and now it even has its human face. Meet LTC Matthew Dooley, a West Point graduate and decorated combat veteran… a once and perhaps future instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College at the National Defense University, teaching such courses as “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.”
His courses were popular among students and colleagues. Nevertheless, Dooley was relieved of his position NDU. He and his course was adjudged “unprofessional” and “against our values,” by no less a personage than Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Chillingly, this is no isolated case; it has become Department of Defense policy to remove from training materials and even military-university textbooks and course outlines any word or concept that is declared objectionable by Moslem in general or even by Islamists in particular.
In October 2011, a cohort of Islamic and Islamist individuals and organizations — including a number of radical Islamist groups, including unindicted co-conspiratorsin the Holy Land Foundation trial — the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, and the Islamic Society of North America, ISNA — jointly signed a letter to a number of federal, state, and local agencies, including the Pentagon, Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, and local law-enforcement. The Islamist letter complains about supposedly offensive, bigotted, and religiously discriminatory documents and training courses, and its authors demand that the Obama administration purge all such material.
The letter was taken seriously by the administration, which responded, as instructed, with a sweeping purge of all military training documents. Page after page of materials were ruthlessly cut from the curricula of training and education courses, simply because the passages contained certain expressions that angered radical Islamsts and their co-dependents. Much of the purge was less surgical and more like an overwrought lumberjack. Sometimes, every single word that could describe a concept was rejected, leaving the concept itself inarticulable.
The purge policy did not arise from a vacuum; oddly, it began under the administration of George W. Bush… and initially was a misguided effort, not to shelter Moslem terrorism, but rather to avoid glorifying, aggrandizing, and popularizing radical Islamists.
In April of 2008, the Bush administration sent a global memo to American embassies; the memo listed specific words that should not be used, such as “jihadist” (holy war or struggle) and “mujahedeen” (holy warriors, warriors for God):
For CAIR and the rest of the Islamists around the earth Obama is proving to be the best USEFUL IDIOT they have ever encountered.
For thinking people, periods of history where open expressions were criminalized found that satire, parody, esoterica and other forms of sideways expression gained popularity.
Jonathan Swift comes to mind.
Petronius during the Roman era.
Voltaire, too.
Sad for it to be needed but it is there IF we need it.
Study up!
It is very possible that western civilization will fall.
For to long we codled and allowed malcontents and self haters to gain traction in our world.
They have gained positions of power and have deemed western civilization unworthy to continue. They have then went about flooding us with peoples unwilling to culturally assimilate. Suicide.
@Nan G: And who is the most useful idiot for the right-wing?
Apparently the right-wing has co-opted “1984”, as well as the Gadsden Flag (Don’t Tread on Me), from the 60’s Radical Left—I wish they would at least try to be original.
We have responded in the wrong way.
Defiance would be the best response. Just throw it in their faces.
Recently the Washington Post ran an article on the assassination attempt of a 14 year old girl in Pakistan who had criticized the Taliban. The same day there were several letters critical of the advertising equating Islamist extremists to barbarians.
If we cannot discuss their barbarian actions, we have already lost.
Admiral Dempsey should be removed from the Military and sent to Iran where he can live out his days defending Islam.
So should Zippy. I think he would like Iran.
@Liberal1 (Objectivity):
I would suggest that the “60’s radical left” didn’t have a clue to the meanings of either the book, or the flag, when they co-opted them for themselves, Lib1.
It is clear, now, that the book 1984 was written about our future under an oppressive, centralized, all-powerful government. That same kind of government that the “60’s radical left” has been pining for since they tie-dyed their first shirts.
It is also clear, and has been since it’s inception, that the Gadsden flag is a symbol of American values and virtues. Those same values and virtues are in direct opposition to what that “60’s radical left” has given us, politically, over time.
@Liberal1 (Objectivity):
Folks like you. Your posts help us convert people to our side. Keep up the good work.