• About
  • Photography

The Bully Pulpit

~ (n): An office or position that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue.

The Bully Pulpit

Tag Archives: civilization

Mark Steyn: A Joke Is a Small Thing, but It’s Our Societal Glue

09 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by jrbenjamin in Speeches

≈ Comments Off on Mark Steyn: A Joke Is a Small Thing, but It’s Our Societal Glue

Tags

Blasphemy, Charb, Charlie Hebdo, civilization, Copenhagen, Ezra Levant, free expression, Free Speech, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Speech, Islam, Mark Steyn, speech, terror, Terrorism

12 Dead In French Magazine Shooting

“You know, a cartoon is a small thing. It’s not The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

It’s not a big work. People get a pencil, they do a little sketch, and it’s in the paper the next day, and they forget about it. It’s a funny thing. It makes you laugh.

And the joke is an important signifier of society. A joke is a small thing, but it’s part of the societal glue. It’s what holds us together. Jokes are about recognition. When you tell a joke, people understand the social norms that are being mocked in it…

Now we live in a world though, where they don’t just end your career. These people are so serious about jokes — cartoons, gags — that they want to kill you for it.

And the correct attitude of all those people who intervened, all the politicians who spoke up and said ‘I deplore the offense that was given by this cartoon’ is completely wrong.

You should just say, ‘Look, we’re in a free society and we don’t regulate jokes here.’ […]

My friend Ezra Levant once observed that one day the Danish cartoon crisis would be seen as a more critical event than the attacks of September 11th.

He was wrong, obviously, in terms of the comparative death tolls, but he was absolutely right in what each revealed about the state of Western civilization in the 21st century.

In the long run, the ostensibly trivial matter of some not-terribly-good drawings in an obscure newspaper… will prove to be a more important signifier of the collapse of Western civilization than a direct, violent assault on the citadels of American power in Washington and New York.

Because if you provoke on the scale of 9/11, even Western civilization in its present decayed state will feel obliged to respond.

So yes, if they blow up St. Peters, if they blow up the Eiffel Tower, then yes, they’ll get a response.

But the cartoon crisis confirmed to our enemies that at heart we don’t really believe in ourselves anymore. That we won’t defend our core liberties, and that you can steal them from us one little bit at a time.”

__________

Pulled from the inimitable Mark Steyn’s recent speech in Copenhagen to mark the decade anniversary of the Danish cartoon crisis. As a wise man recently noted, “It used to be that they came for the Jews first. Now it’s the cartoonists. Then the Jews.” Quite surreal, that.

I highly encourage you to check out Steyn’s speech below (and buy Charb’s newly minted, posthumously published book). Steyn is a truly first rate orator. If the pulled text gives you the sense that this is another dour, Doomsday-Is-Here rant about Western Civilization’s imminent collapse, then it’s giving off the wrong impression. Steyn is utterly hilarious, astonishingly articulate, and always fun to listen to. I think he’s the best raconteur and pure talker out there since Hitchens passed. For a sample, you can start here. Also, you can keep up with his daily output of writing — mostly on this topic, though also about his jazz cat album — at his website, steynonline.com.

Continue on:

  • John Podhoretz and Jonah Goldberg riff on why defending freedom of speech often means defending controversial speakers
  • Salman talks about why it’s normal to be offended sometimes
  • Douglas Murray discusses why we have to defend liberty at home first

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Sam Harris: The Meaning of the Paris Attacks

16 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Essay, Politics, Religion

≈ Comments Off on Sam Harris: The Meaning of the Paris Attacks

Tags

Charlie Hebdo, civilization, Daesh, France, interview, ISIL, ISIS, Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Jihadis, Jihadism, Lawrence O'Donnell, Maajid Nawaz, morality, Paris, Paris Attacks, Podcast, religion, Sam Harris, Still Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon, terror, Terrorism, The Last Word, violence

Paris Terror Attacks

“This is the big story of our time, and it is an incredibly boring one. Let the boredom of this just sink into your bones: realize that for the rest of your life, you’re going to be reading and hearing about, and otherwise witnessing, hopefully not firsthand, the lunacy and attendant atrocities of jihadists.

Please pay attention to the recurrent shrieks of Allahu Akbar. This is the cat call from the Middle Ages, or from Middle Earth, that we will have to live with for the rest of our lives. So this fight against jihadism — this is a generational fight. This is something we are doing for our children, ultimately, and for our children’s children.

We have a war of ideas that we have to wage, and win, and unfortunately we have to wage it and win it with ourselves first. And again, this requires an admission that there is such a war of ideas to be waged and won.

We have grown so effete as a civilization as to imagine that we have no enemies — or if we do, that they are only of our own making… It is not mere wartime propaganda that we will one day look back on with embarrassment to call ISIS a death cult. To call them barbarians. To call them savages. To use dehumanizing language.

They are scarcely human in their aspirations. The world they want to build entails the destruction of everything we value, and are right to value. And by “we” I mean civilized humanity, including all the Muslims who are just as horrified…

We have a project that’s universal, that transcends culture; that unites everyone who loves art and science and reason generally, who wants to cure disease, who wants to raise each new generation to be more educated than the last. And this common project is under assault…

And unfortunately, most of us have to keep convincing ourselves that evil exists, that not all people want the same things, and that some people are wrong in how they want to live and the world they want to build. And if we can’t convince ourselves of this once and for all, well then we’ll have to wait to be convinced by further acts of savagery of the sort we just saw in Paris. Why wait?”

__________

Comments from Sam Harris on the preface to his newly republished essay “Still Sleepwalking toward Armageddon”.

You’ll find more of Sam’s takes on these issues in his newest book, coauthored with Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance. I was lucky enough to meet Maajid two weeks ago in Washington and can enthusiastically recommend this quick, clarifying read. Watch Sam and Maajid talk about the roots of their conversation and the conclusions they’ve made in the following clip from The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell:


The photograph was taken this weekend as mourners gathered at The Place de la République in Paris.

More for the Francophiles:

  • The ultimate poem about the city of lights: “In Paris with You” by James Fenton
  • Meet Napoleon Bonaparte
  • A few of the best words from some indomitable Frenchmen: Jules Renard, Blaise Pascal, Edmond de Goncourt, Alexis de Tocqueville, Albert Camus

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

What Good Is Art in the Face of 21st Century Terrorism?

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Interview, Philosophy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal, civilization, Clive James, Edmund Burke, Edmund Wilson, humanism, interview, Islamic Terror, Martin Amis, PBS, Russian Revolution, Terrorism, Western Civilization

Charlie Hebdo

Bill Moyers: This barbarism we see today, the rise of radical elements of Islam. What good is humanism against it?

Clive James: Well, the constant message of my book is that you must pursue humanism for its own sake. A utilitarian view won’t work. You’ve got to know and love these things for its own sake.

There’s no guarantee that civilization will continue. It’s always shown fairly robust signs of being able to overcome any kind of totalitarian organization. The interesting thing about World War II was that the Nazis were quite well organized and the Japanese were quite well organized — compared with, say, the U.S. and Britain at the start of the war, which weren’t organized at all. I mean, the U.S. had a smaller armed forces than Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s.

But within a very short time the democracies organized themselves better. There’s something about the creative force of liberal democracy which gives you hope that it can overcome any challenge including terrorism.

I’m sure terrorism can punch very large holes in western civilization and probably will. Let’s be fatalistic: yeah, it’s very hard to stop a bomber who’s ready to kill himself — very hard. But there’s every reason to think that civilization is simply too strong to be brought down by terrorist activity. But I don’t want to foist on you any false hopes; and it would be a false hope to say that if you learn enough, if you love Botticelli enough, if you listen to Beethoven enough then the enemy will retreat. It’s not going to happen.

Clive James 2

__________

Clive James and Bill Moyers, talking on Bill Moyers Journal on August 3rd, 2007.

More:

  • A century ago, Joseph Conrad theorized that terrorists have two defining traits
  • Martin Amis on 21st century terrorism and the male psyche
  • Salman Rushdie on the banality of life under Islamic totalitarianism

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Can Civilization Survive Without God?

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, History, Politics, Religion, War

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Can Civilization Survive Without God?, civilization, God, Law, Mogadishu, Peter Hitchens, Pew Forum, religion, society, Soviet Union

Peter Hitchens

The following is a transcription of Peter Hitchens’s brilliant response to the question: Can civilization survive without God?

__________

Thank you. The question, first of all, is what civilization might be. I doubt whether we can agree on that very quickly, since we probably can’t even agree on how to spell it on either side of the Atlantic. I would really like to start by explaining what it isn’t and to recount some experiences of mine in places where it had ceased to be.

The first one, picture me, if you will, in a blue suit and polished leather shoes sitting on top of a pile of cargo in a retired Soviet aircraft — rather, Soviet aircraft which ought to have been retired — landing at Mogadishu Airport one winter’s afternoon shortly before sunset. I won’t explain quite how stupid I had been to get myself into this position, but I was working at that time for a daily newspaper which had accepted a suggestion of mine, unexpectedly, that I should go to Mogadishu just before the U.S. Marines arrived, as they thought, to rescue the Somalis from famine and chaos.

Arriving at Mogadishu Airport is an experience some of you may have had and some of you may not. What I can tell you is this: There is no passport control. There is no baggage reclaim. In fact, as you land, sitting on top of the baggage, it slides the length of the aircraft as the brakes go on, which has made me take aircraft safety precautions with a total lack of seriousness ever since. It’s rather enjoyable, actually, when the baggage slides down the whole length of the plane.

You’re met at the end of the runway by a man from The Associated Press who is collecting all the water and supplies for his bureau, and by about 15 young men with AK-47s, who approach you and say, do you want a bodyguard? And you turn to the man from The Associated Press and you say, do I want a bodyguard? And he says, yes you do. If you don’t have a bodyguard, you’ll be dead and stripped by morning.

So we hire, myself and my colleague, John Downing, we hire one of these — in fact, two of these bodyguards — and a car with no upholstery, and we drive into Mogadishu just in time to see the departing ranks of the gangs and tribal formations which are supposed to be driven away by the arrival of the U.S. Marines. They are, in fact, going. They’re going into the sunset with their machine guns and their bandannas — they look like heavily armed rock stars — because they know that there is no point in being there when the Marines arrive, and they intend to come back later and do whatever it is they do.

We circle around, looking for some time for somewhere to spend the night. And only by great good fortune, because departing around a corner, my colleague sees somebody he knows from Sarajevo, do we find anywhere to spend the night. We are allowed into a compound which has been rented by some German television people, who share with us their camel stew and allow us to sleep on their concrete floor. I go to sleep listening that evening to the cries of dying people and the chatter of gunfire outside and hearing, in effect, what would have happened to me if I hadn’t found my way into the German compound.

The following day I find people to take me round; we’re nearly murdered on one occasion because my interpreter is from the wrong tribe. I see a scene of complete desolation. Every building has bullet holes, or indeed, shell holes in it. The main street is completely stripped bare of every feature of modern civilization. It’s just a stretch of mud with potholes in it with loping persons on it carrying weapons and no guarantee that they won’t use them on you. All the physical features of civilization and all the, as it were, intangible features of civilization — civility, safety, the ability to rely on your neighbor, the passing person, for any kind of kindness or consideration — have gone.

Eventually, with great relief, I got out of Mogadishu and I got home and was shown a few weeks afterwards a photograph of the same street which I had seen on that evening and on the following morning. Mogadishu having been an Italian colony, the street scene was actually rather Roman: pleasantly dressed people strolling along well-kept sidewalks, expensive cars gliding up and down a smooth road, telephone kiosks, pavement cafes.

The distance between that and what I saw was approximately 20 years, and it came to me and it has stayed with me ever since, whenever I walk down a pleasant street in Oxford, where I live, or indeed roam around Dupont Circle here in Washington, D.C. or any major civilized city, this is not permanent. This is not here automatically. It is not in the air we breathe or the water we drink. It is as a result of certain unusual conditions which do not always exist and which have come about only for a very short period of time in a very limited number of places, and which even having been established, can come to an end.

This experience came on top of two years living in what, when I arrived, was the capital city of the Soviet Union and what, when I left, was the capital city of the Russian Federation. And there I also saw a very curious civilization which was not a civilization. That is to say, there was very little civility on the street between people. I was always struck by this. I would go down into what we’re always told in the tourist manuals is the magnificent Moscow Metro.

Because of the horrendously ruthless climate, the stations are guarded by very heavy wooden swing doors, or were in those days, and I would hold them open for people as they came into the stations behind me, and they would step back with a look of mistrust on their faces, as if I was playing a sort of joke on them. They were completely unused to the idea that anyone might do this. There wasn’t even that level of consideration. Nobody in any kind of public dealing would trust you. Almost everything had to be obtained through whispered threats and bribes…

How has this decline in civilization come about? Well, I think it has come about at least partly — and I’m not a single-cause person — but at least partly because there is no longer in the hearts of the English people the restraint of the Christian religion, which used to prevent this sort of behavior.

I think it would be completely idle to imagine that the two things were unconnected. I haven’t come here to say that civilization’s impossible without religion or indeed without Christianity. There are non-Christian civilizations. There are civilized countries which aren’t really based upon religion at all, such as Japan, which I think any visitor there will agree is an intensely civilized place.

But the extraordinary combination, which you in this country and I in mine used to enjoy and may for some time continue to, of liberty and order seems to me only to occur where people take into their hearts the very, very powerful messages of self-restraint without mutual advantage, which is central to the Christian religion…

Peter Hitchens in Giza

__________

Read the rest of Peter’s answer as well as the entire discussion at the Pew Forum on the motion Can Civilization Survive Without God?.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Today’s Top Pages

  • Einstein's Daily Routine
    Einstein's Daily Routine
  • Sam Harris: Why I Decided to Have Children
    Sam Harris: Why I Decided to Have Children
  • "Going" by Philip Larkin
    "Going" by Philip Larkin
  • "Coming" by Philip Larkin
    "Coming" by Philip Larkin
  • Three Words Ben Franklin Crossed out of the Declaration of Independence
    Three Words Ben Franklin Crossed out of the Declaration of Independence

Enter your email address to follow The Bully Pulpit - you'll receive notifications of new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Recent Posts

  • The Other Side of Feynman
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald on Succeeding Early in Life
  • The Man Who Most Believed in Himself
  • What ’60s Colleges Did Right
  • Dostoyevsky’s Example of a Good Kid

Archives

  • April 2018 (2)
  • March 2018 (2)
  • February 2018 (3)
  • January 2018 (3)
  • December 2017 (1)
  • November 2017 (3)
  • October 2017 (2)
  • September 2017 (2)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • July 2017 (2)
  • June 2017 (2)
  • May 2017 (2)
  • April 2017 (2)
  • March 2017 (1)
  • February 2017 (1)
  • January 2017 (1)
  • December 2016 (2)
  • November 2016 (1)
  • October 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • June 2016 (2)
  • May 2016 (1)
  • April 2016 (1)
  • March 2016 (2)
  • February 2016 (1)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (4)
  • November 2015 (8)
  • October 2015 (7)
  • September 2015 (11)
  • August 2015 (10)
  • July 2015 (7)
  • June 2015 (12)
  • May 2015 (7)
  • April 2015 (17)
  • March 2015 (23)
  • February 2015 (17)
  • January 2015 (22)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (17)
  • October 2014 (13)
  • September 2014 (9)
  • August 2014 (2)
  • July 2014 (1)
  • June 2014 (20)
  • May 2014 (17)
  • April 2014 (24)
  • March 2014 (19)
  • February 2014 (12)
  • January 2014 (21)
  • December 2013 (13)
  • November 2013 (15)
  • October 2013 (9)
  • September 2013 (10)
  • August 2013 (17)
  • July 2013 (28)
  • June 2013 (28)
  • May 2013 (23)
  • April 2013 (22)
  • March 2013 (12)
  • February 2013 (21)
  • January 2013 (21)
  • December 2012 (9)
  • November 2012 (18)
  • October 2012 (22)
  • September 2012 (28)

Categories

  • Biography (51)
  • Current Events (47)
  • Debate (7)
  • Essay (10)
  • Film (10)
  • Freedom (40)
  • History (122)
  • Humor (15)
  • Interview (71)
  • Journalism (16)
  • Literature (82)
  • Music (1)
  • Original (1)
  • Personal (3)
  • Philosophy (87)
  • Photography (4)
  • Poetry (114)
  • Political Philosophy (41)
  • Politics (108)
  • Psychology (35)
  • Religion (74)
  • Science (27)
  • Speeches (52)
  • Sports (12)
  • War (57)
  • Writing (11)

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: