Jihad Watch has the latest statement from our self-described "virtuous" opponents in Iraq. This is from a leader of the Ansar al-Sunnah group, the ones who recently set off a suicide bomb inside a mess hall tent, coupled with a mortar attack from a civilian area that was timed to kill rescue and aid workers responding to the blast.
Along the way, he offers a description of how he sees us:
Cowboys, drowning in sin, corruption and pornography.This, naturally enough, put me in the mind of the famous (and probably, the only) musical starring Clint Eastwood, Paint Your Wagon. It details the rise and fall of a frontier settlement among gold miners. It's a rollicking and tongue-in-cheek portrayal, but it actually has a number of the details right: for example, women being so rare on the frontier. In one scene, men rush in droves to see one, and one of the miners offers fifty dollars in gold dust to hold her baby for a few minutes. In fact, I've seen an illustration from a newspaper of the day, which accompanied a story describing how men would offer gifts of up to a hundred dollars' worth of gold dust just out of gratitude for the sight of a woman.
The movie examines the life of "cowboys, drowning in sin, corruption, and pornography." A review of some quotes from the movie will give you the notion: everything from drunkeness, prostitution, gambling and thievery, to the corruption of family values. Indeed, one of the main plot lines is about a pair of partners, played by Eastwood and Lee Marvin, who both marry the same woman, at the same time. "You show me in them commandments where it says a woman cain't have two husbands," Marvin says. (Actually, there proves to be a real theological question here, as a Googling of "polygamy" and "Bible" will demonstrate. People come down solidly on both sides of the matter, those opposed citing the fact that the singular tense is used in certain relevant passages, while those in favor point to the rules for taking a second wife in Exodus, and the parable of the five virgins).
It is a comedy, not intended to be a source of serious conclusions about life or anything else. The movie, made in 1969, still takes pains to wind up all of its threads in a way that confirm traditional morality. Not so the extras who made it: "Hippies were big on authentic Western costume and could supply their own wardrobe right down to the guns (yes, these hippies were armed to the teeth). They came with wives, kids, big dogs and bigger trucks and settled in for the summer, fall, winter, spring, and...I believe...a second summer. Everything you see in this movie is REAL...the poker game in the background, the French whores (imported from Paris, and yes, they plied their trade on the set and in hotels in Baker), the antiques, the long hair and handlebar moustaches. The opium den and bootleg liquor. All real and functioning."
Where did they go, these extras of 1969? American society, though condemned by Ansar al-Sunnah, has not become awash in such things as compared to the late Sixties. If anything, the opposite has occurred: the hippies got old, most of them took what used to be called "straight jobs," and they raised "straight" children. The price of human freedom has not been high: in return for not suppressing the radicals of 1969 with the religious violence favored by the Islamist, what have we suffered?
Something, surely; I expect readers will provide answers, and indeed I can think of a few myself, though also some benefits. On balance, I think we are to the good for this transaction. Human liberty has costs, but they are not so very high when you consider the alternatives. It also has benefits, which prove to be pure profit.
That train of thought proves to be a call for genuine tolerance. That call puts me diametrically opposed to Ansar al-Sunnah: and using that as my landmark, the principles of land navigation suggest to me that I'm right where I should be.
UPDATE: Given the snow, I've had a little time to think quietly while I clear the road and drive with shovel and broom. The metaphor of land navigation is good, but not complete. You really need two navigational points to be sure of your location, and this is only one.
The other navigational point has to be excessive secularization. If complete intolerance of religious variance is one point, the other has to be complete intolerance of religious expression. If one point is a demand for conformity to one view of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, or the like, the other must be a demand for a rejection of all such things.
The middle ground -- a tolerant, but vibrant and religious, society -- is surely the right place to be. It's a happy thing that America's traditions reach their best expressions in just that place.
And in taking those navigational measurements, I find a third beacon unsuspected, right in the center of the place I seek to inhabit. It is joy. The movie I started with is an expression of glee almost from beginning to end. There is nothing of joy in the scorn of Ansar al-Sunnah, nor in the raving of atheists who list the Vatican as a 'hate site.' This is the ground on which we can be happiest. Happy, all of us, even the psychotic and the radical atheist, who find their highest joy in railing against the rest of us.
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