Chewing the Fat

peak political correctness
Related…
http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/

Good discussion, especially the bit about a strong counter-narrative. “Cultural confidence”, as you put it.

But political correctness is all about tolerance…!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12011143/Student-driven-from-campus-after-speaking-out-against-rape-seminar.html

On that cultural confidence, or the lack thereof:

Barack Obama, in his first remarks about the slaughter [in Paris], did not mention Islam at all. The attack was, he said, not just an attack on Paris or the people of France but “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.” The trouble is, it is patent that the “values” to which Barack Obama gestures are anything but “universal.” On the contrary, they are Western, liberal values that are conspicuously not shared by much of the world. They are most flagrantly not shared by Islamic culture. Religious freedom, including the freedom of apostasy, freedom of speech, equality before the law and between the sexes: these are a few bedrock Western values that are neither preached nor practiced by the dominant currents of Islamic thought.

And,

A widely reproduced picture of the man who had dragged his piano, decorated with a peace symbol, to the Bataclan theatre, the primary site of the massacre, and then sang John Lennon’s single most emetic composition, “Imagine,” is not reassuring. As the commentator Mark Steyn acidly put it, “What kind of parochial solipsist would think that an appropriate response a day after mass murder?”

What kind indeed.

The existence of Henry the Fourth, the Protestant King of Catholic France who led a war against the Catholic League, then converted to Catholicism, then was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic, deals a heavy blow to the idea that the Wars of Reformation were essentially about denominations of faith rather than largely opportunistic power struggles with religious pretext.
There was also the case in England of Henry the Eighth first standing up so vehemently for Catholicism against Protestantism that the Pope declared him Defender of the (Catholic) Faith. Not ten years later Henry would make a complete turnabout, tell the Pope where to stick it, and lose his title and get excommunicated from Catholicism for this. But he liked the title, so in a petty snit he got Parliament to declare him Defender of the Faith again for his own Protestant church, the Anglicans.
Finally, I would mention the accounting from the Encyclopedia of Wars, where religious wars comprise ca 7 percent of recorded wars. Of those 7 percent, the majority were Islamic despite Islam’s late appearance and limited spread. “The Christians did it too, 500 years ago” is not only a red herring (we’re not living 500 years ago), it’s false.

I would not agree with Hal’s suggestion that religions follow a certain trajectory of development that somehow makes them especially dangerous 1500 years after their founding. His implication that in five hundred years time Islam will become as benign as Christianity seems right now is lacking evidence of a mechanism for this coming about. Islam has always had a blood-soaked history, and the resurgence of this in the post-WW2 seems more linked to the availability of finances from oil revenues combined with the suicidal lack of confidence by Western Civilization. A key difference between the religious memes of Christianity and Islam is that in Christianity the Bible is considered inspired by God but still the work of men, whereas in Islam the Qur’an is believed to be the literal word of their God Allah, unchanged and unchangeable. This allows reinterpretation of the Bible over time as philosophy and culture changed, but with an immutable Qur’an you cannot make any changes that affect behaviors proscribed or mandated on the faithful.

A small sample of the demands made by students during the recent protests on US campuses.
And hence the term Mao-lings.

https://www.google.com/search?q=hal+is+a+condescending+prat+who+thinks+google+searches+count+as+arguments
I quite like the first hit: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

> noting the very recurring insistence among rather a number of Christians that in Christianity the Bible is . . .believed to be the literal word of their God . . . , unchanged and unchangeable. < allan likes to kill the "infidel: and it says this where exactly in the new testament?