[ExI] riots again

[Joshua Job]

Stefano, I never meant to imply we should invade them to save them from
themselves. I'm a non-interventionist in my foreign policy--if you attack
us, we'll take you out by whatever means necessary, otherwise we'll leave
you alone. The US needs to stop bombing and invading everyone it sees, and
stop arranging coups, and stop messing around with the affairs of the rest
of the world. Then, we wouldn't have run into this whole mess of Islamic
terrorism in the first place.

The simple fact is that, whatever the historical reasons, the culture of
the West is better in terms of supporting human flourishing than that of
Muslim countries. I do not think the historical causes are important at
this point, except insofar as we can stop stirring the hornets nest by
minding our own business in our foreign policy. Why they are religious
extremists doesn't matter; what matters is that they are, and radical Islam
now poses a threat to Western civilization.

Trying to convert them with guns won't help, we need to convert them with
promises of wealth and gadgets and through the power of rational
argumentation and the spreading of Western culture, just like every other
culture in the world. Their extremism will die quickly as they get
wealthier and their people are exposed to the products of the West (other
than bullets and bombs). It's what ultimately took down Communism, it's
what is slowly destabilizing the Communists in China, and it is what will
take down radical Islam.
--Joshua Job.
On Sep 24, 2012 5:50 AM, "Stefano Vaj" <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 24 September 2012 01:58, Joshua Job <nanite1018 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Only the grossest moral relativism could put the horrific civil rights
> abuses
> > perpetrated in the Muslim world with high levels of public support by
> > Muslims living there with the actions of Western states in those
> countries.
> > The West is a superior culture, more supportive of human flourishing,
> than
> > the cultures of Muslim countries.
>
> I am an avowed moral relativist (I do not know about "gross"), and as
> such that I strongly oppose the islamisation of the society I live in,
> starting with the massive slave trade from defeated muslim countries,
> exactly because I have no reason to consider muslim "truth" and
> "values" as superior to mine.
>
> But the rhetoric of "superior cultures" and of the "burden of the
> white man" is exactly the worst that Islam has derived from western
> legacy, from the crusades and the colonisation on, and I really think
> the time has come to drop it altogether.
>
> Moreover, as a transhumanist, I am confident in change, diversity and
> self-determination.
>
> I am not deluded about the fact that conflicts of interests and
> Darwinian competition amongst different woldviews will ever cease, but
> eschatological ideas about an alleged moral duty of killing people to
> save them from themselves is a very slippery slope where we can easily
> find ourselves at the wrong end of the gun.
>
> --
> Stefano Vaj
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