They have also see what is bad about their communities, abondon much of it, but still bring with them what are the best parts of their community. They may seek to replace what is bad in their culture with what is good in our culture, but it goes both ways. Asymilation goes both ways. We often preach tolerance, but I think that is less important than participation. We don’t have to like and accept all aspects of cultures, but we should be able to find ones that we can appreciate.

One of the reasons that I supported the runup to the Iraq war was that our culture was stagnating and I thought this was a big part of our economic problems. I knew the war would invigorate and bring new blood to our culture and also give our young workers (like my self), who had few prospects, experience and confidence and sense of achievement that would drive our economy further after the war ends. They would also bring back some aspects of other cultures, and exposure to other cultures will breed creativity.

Secondly, Mariana, Britain did declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, recognizing that the line had been crossed. The Blitz came months afterwards. The Soviet menace was recognized by Britain as well as the USA at a very early stage.

Europe, the UK, and the US must deal with cultural assimillation of immigrants from other lands and cultures. That begs the question, assimilate to what? For more, Lex Green (Chicago Boyz) has some thoughts to share….

I donīt carry no pistol
I donīt wear a false mustache
And youīll never see me carrying
Around a little black bag.
My real nameīs no secret
But from me it will never be told.
Iīm just known as Agent Double-O-Soul baby!
Agent Double-O-Soul.
They call me Double-O-Soul baby
Iīm Agent Double-O-Soul.

Mitch, as you know better than many, much like Agent Double-O-Soul, we ChicagoBoyz “can do the twine and the jerk” and cultivate “a reputation of beinī gentle but bold.” However no one is required to wear “strictly continental suits and high collared shirts.” Your attire is your own affair. Blog in a union suit, or Pajamas, if you want. (Has anyone produced a “Blog Naked” t-shirt yet?)

But, the moustache thing, no way.

Re decadent democracies: Napoleon famously dismissed the British as a nation of shopkeepers, and the would-be aristocrats of the South described the Union rank and file as “New York counter-jumpers” (shopkeepers again!). Maybe it’s the commercial mentality that makes the most of every bullet spent. The British were famous for their marksmanship by land and sea in the Napoleonic wars.

Yesterday, on the phone-ins, someone asked Joseph Ellis if the insurgents in Iraq were like the American Revolutionaries. He said yes. A little while later, the same question was posed to David McCullough. That was a deep insult to the Americans, he said; they wanted the right to free speech and a free press while the “insurgents” (in his words) want “enforced ignorance.” May I point out that Ellis is an academic and McCullough took the road considerably less traveled; he has made a living for himself out of writing books that are both scholarly and popular. I like Ellis-he writes well & his affection for these guys seems genuine. But I wonder if he really understands.

I think this has a grain of truth though. They only seem to be direct about problems when they’re staring them in the face. They keep their head in the sand for so long that they only fight back when their backs are up against the wall, when Nazis are bombing London, when the Pacific fleet is being devastated, etc. This attitude always produces catastrophe, and from where I stand, Europe is repeating the same exact behavior.

Wrong! I think this would be a better description:

“There was a national rebellion against Soviet intervention and the U.S. and Saudi Arabia rallied to support with billions of dollars and military training for the Islamists – particularly Gulbudin Hekmatyar who Afghans hated because he openly represented the Wahabi interest in Afghanistan and whom the U.S. special forces are currently on hunt for – in Afghanistan. The devastation, chaos, and anarchy left in the aftermath of the Soviet war opened the door for Pakistan – a U.S. client state – to turn Afghanistan into a vassal state and provide sanctury for INTERNATIONAL Islamists (what you and I call Islamofascists) who used the country as a base — Al-Qaida means the base in Arabic – against the U.S. The rape of Afghan culture and identity happened in open with the blessings of two other U.S. client states — UAE and Saudi Arabia.”

Shannon, I agree entirely. The external danger is the least of our problems. Even in a worst case situation, where the terrorists acquire nuclear weapons and destroy several of our major cities, we’d still win. We’d annihilate their entire civilization, if it came to that, God forbid. We won’t lose that part of the war. The big problem is the continual erosion of our freedoms if this drags on as a multi-generational struggle. To win that, we need to be able to assimilate people and make a clear case about what is good about our civilization and our country and our way of life. Trying to do that will lead to intense political struggles.

The militarists sees the martial virtues as the only virtues. They believe that the only reason a person or group refuses to fight is cowardice and that pacifistic beliefs are just rationalizations of their own weakness. Concessions are made only out of fear and never represent strength. Everything of value is accomplished by the sword.

It is almost impossible to negotiate with the militarist. They interpret any concession as arising from fear of the militarist power, (no matter weak that might be in real terms), and as evidence of their opponents lack of will. They respond to concessions by asking for more.

Once an individual or group has adopted the militaristic mindset their is little that others can do to influence them without the credible threat of violence. The great fault of the accommodationist is that they don’t understand that the militarist has a fundamentally different world view than they do. The accommodationist believes that the militarist only attacks because they feel threatened because that is the only conditions under which an accommodationist themselves would attack. They try to appear less threatening but to the militarist this looks like weakness which validates the militarist aggression to that point.

You can see this mindset quite clearly in Germany in both world wars, in imperial Japan and various Communist regimes. Attempts to negotiate solutions almost always resulted in more aggression. In the end, only counter-aggression works because it is all the militarist respects.

So, while timid support of our own culture invites attack from militarist of all types large and small, the true driver of violence is the internal dynamics of the militarist themselves.