Two phrases in need of elimination

(See also the follow-up to this article, entitled “A cornucopia of reminders.”)

This is from the Times of India

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday expressed deep shock over the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, saying that the incident is a “reminder” of the common dangers faced in the sub-continent.

“The manner of her going is a reminder of the common dangers that our region faces from cowardly acts of terrorism and of the need to eradicate this dangerous threat,” he said in a statement from Goa.

Is there not something deeply wrong with a culture in which, when mass murder occurs, political leaders and pundits immediately describe it as a “reminder“—as though the most important thing about a monstrous crime is not that it’s a monstrous crime, but that it leads us to a thought process about some other issue? This is the abstract and unreal mind-set of liberalism, which, as we can see, has taken root in India as well as in the West.

Another word that ought to be dropped in these circumstances is “cowardly.” Obviously, there is nothing cowardly about a Muslim being willing to die in the act of killing his enemies, which according to the Koran is the holiest act a Muslim can perform. The recourse to the word “cowardly” is another symptom of liberalism. Liberal politicians don’t want to call the perpetrators of these crimes “enemies” or “evil,” since liberalism prohibits the recognition of the existence of enemies and evil. So they call them “cowardly,” which makes the speaker sound tough and determined, when in fact he is only being absurd.

One of the most characteristic things about liberalism is the moral poverty it inflicts on those who follow it.

* * *

Calling a terrorist act a “reminder” is similar to saying that people are “shocked” by its occurrence—liberals, as I’ve often noted, are constantly being “shocked” by a reality they refuse to recognize. Both phrases suggest that people don’t really believe that terrorism exists, so they require the “reminder” to “shock” them back into the realization that it does. The subtext is: this event forces us once again (for the nth time) to think about this problem that we don’t want to think about, or rather it forces us to declare how important it is for us to think about this problem that we don’t want to think about.

By contrast, a society that actually recognized and was facing the reality of jihadism and terrorism would not speak of a terrorist act as a reminder, because it would already be involved in opposing the jihadists and making war against them. Do you think that when the Japanese sank a U.S. destroyer in the Pacific in 1943, American leaders and journalists said that this was a “reminder” of the fact that we were in a war?

- end of initial entry -

Ben writes:

LA wrote:

Calling a terrorist act a “reminder” is similar to saying that people are “shocked” by its occurrence—liberals, as I’ve often noted, are constantly being “shocked” by a reality they refuse to recognize. Both phrases suggest that people don’t really believe that terrorism exists, so they require the “reminder” to “shock” them back into the realization that it does.

See the first comment posted under this article:

GothicGOP:

Stunned.. I am just stunned. It is a glaring reminder that while our country has massive problems… we should all be greatful that we don’t have to deal with attacks such as these on a daily basis. The path Pakistan goes down now is one that frightens me, and I think it’s more important than ever to stamp out terrorism, because as demonstrated over the last several years… no one is safe as long as extremism in ANY form is able to run rampant.

Point proven.

LA replies:

How can he be stunned? A massive suicide explosion narrowly missed killing Bhutto on October 18 when she returned to Pakistan, killing 136 people and injuring 450.

It’s the same thing over and over. No matter how many terrorist attacks there are, people are always stunned by the next one that comes along.

Jeremy G. writes:

Being “shocked” allows liberals to maintain in their own minds the false belief that there is no important difference between Muslims and non-Muslims. Liberals don’t have the power to hide these savage acts from the public (like they hide the reality of black on white savagery). Liberals adamantly refuse to notice a trend or a correlation between particular people and violent acts (if they are perpetrated by non-whites). That would be discrimination or would provide a basis for discrimination. I suppose the more savage the act, and the more difficult it is to blame the act on whites (your first law of majority-minority relations), the more shocked liberals have to be to compensate. If a white person were to blow up a crowd of blacks (or even if a noose was found hanging somewhere on a university campus), the liberals would be on the offensive. But what can liberals do in the face of non-white savagery? They can either blame whites or be “shocked.”

LA replies:

Right. So the “I’m shocked” syndrome can never come to an end, as long as liberalism rules. It is the way liberals deal with a reality that contradicts liberal beliefs.

In fact Jeremy has come up with another variation on the law of majority-minority relations: the more familiar, frequent, and routine minority violence becomes, the more liberals must be shocked by it.

Alan S. writes:

Jeremy G. is right in his assessment of liberal reaction to the Bhutto assassination. Left liberals will be “shocked” over the Bhutto assassination. While right liberals/libertarians/Paul supporters will blame America, which is a variation of blaming whites, for the assassination.

LA replies:

I’m not sure. It seems to me rather that right-liberals and the more moderate left-liberals will be “shocked,” while harder-line left-liberals, paleo-libertarians, and Paul supporters will blame America.

Tim W. writes:

No matter how “shocked” people are by the Bhutto assassination, they’ll forget about it all too soon.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s, the topic of Pearl Harbor still came up for discussion from time to time around the dinner table or at the local barber shop. A quarter of a century after the fact, people were still angry over it, even though the Japanese were by then our allies.

But I noticed that within just a few weeks of 9/11, a large portion of the population was willing to just forget about it. Bring up 9/11 today in mixed company and you’ll likely insult someone, or at least bore them. I have to believe that’s a sign that we live in a morally unhealthy society.

LA replies:

Granted the phenomenon you’re talking about, and that it has its roots in a lack of true values, let me take the other side of the question:

When our own government is not really pursuing the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack, how can you expect the average American still to care about that attack, six years later?

Paul K. writes:

I don’t follow Pakistani politics, but I have been aware of Benazir Bhutto for at least 15 years, and her death saddens me. Not just for its geopolitical implications, but because of her intelligence, dignity, courage, and beauty (stunning beauty, in her youth). I wasn’t particularly moved when Princess Diana died—though beautiful, she was too vain and frivolous to have much respect for. But Bhutto seemed like a wholly remarkable person and the world has few of those to spare.

Perhaps if I knew more about her my impression would be different.

LA replies:

(Paul K.’s comment spurred me to put together a new post summing up the New York Times’ coverage of Bhutto.)

She was only 35 when she first became prime minister of Pakistan in 1988, which was pretty remarkable. But both her terms as PM were so stormy it’s not clear she accomplished much of anything. It’s also hard to see that she could have accomplished much if she had become PM a third time, in much worse circumstances.

She certainly showed great courage in campaigning under the threat of death as she did.

This is from an interesting New York Times article about her life:

The combined bombing and shooting attack that killed her as she left a political rally, standing through the open roof of her car to greet milling crowds of supporters, came as Ms. Bhutto staged a series of mass meetings across Pakistan. She did that despite her aides’ appeals for caution in the wake of a double suicide bombing that narrowly failed to kill her on the night of her return from exile in October. That attack, which killed more than 130 people, came as she drove from the airport in Karachi to her home on the city’s seafront, and provoked a characteristic response.

“We will continue to meet the public,” she said as she visited survivors of the bombings at a Karachi hospital. “We will not be deterred.”

When asked to explain the courage—or stubbornness, as some of her critics saw it—that she displayed at critical junctures in her political career, Ms. Bhutto often referred to the example she said had been set by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was a charismatic and often demagogic politician who was president and prime minister from 1971 to 1977, before being hanged in April 1979 on charges of having ordered the murder of a minor political opponent….

Under house arrest at the time, Ms. Bhutto was allowed to visit her father before his execution at Rawalpindi’s central prison, only a short distance from the site of the rally where she was killed nearly three decades later. In a BBC interview in the 1990s, she said seeing her father preparing to die steeled her for her own political career, which some biographers have suggested was driven, in part, by a determination to avenge him by outmaneuvering the generals.

David B. writes:

Your post about the Indian Prime Minister’s comment about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto “reminded” me of how many times I have seen that phrase used by a liberal. For example, the Simpson criminal trial verdict prompted liberals to say that “it was a reminder of the anger blacks have for the brutal mistreatment they have received from the police.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 27, 2007 06:31 PM | Send