Supporting a totally debased culture *UPDATED*

One thing I have to give credit to Barack Obama for being is a complete pragmatist, even if that pragmatism operates to the exclusion of moral decency.  Witness his decision to jettison Israel entirely (something Elliott Abrams explains carefully here) in order to placate the Muslim world.  Many think that Obama’s affinity for the Muslim world has a lot to do with his upbringing, although that’s mere speculation.  (I wouldn’t doubt it, but it’s still speculative.)

Much more likely, though, because it’s been an oft expressed sentiment on the Left for years, is that Obama is animated by the pragmatic belief that the Muslim world hates us because we support Israel and, if we’d just stop that support, they’d stop hating us.  If this theory is correct, the benefits that would flow from sacrificing Israel would be obvious:  cheap oil and no suicide bombers.  If you’re goal driven, it’s a worthwhile experiment.  After all, Jews have died before and they’ll die again, but peace in the Middle East is a once in a lifetime experience.  (And who cares if its the kind of peace only Tacitus would recognize?  Atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.)

The problem with this type of bottom-line pragmatism is that you have to sell your soul to achieve it.  Aside from running the risk of exposing a liberal democratic nation to nuclear annihilation (or just good old-fashioned machete slaughter), you also find yourself sending almost a billion dollars in aid to people who espouse values you might find just a little bit, just a wee bit, antithetical to your own.  We know about the misogyny, the homophobia, the antisemitism, and the anti-Christianity that characterize the Muslim world.

(Thinking about it, we ought to find new words than ones I used to describe Middle Eastern Muslim culture.  In America, those words lack punch, because in practice, they involve saying mean things about woman or gays or Jews or Christians, or depriving them of jobs or housing or, very, very occasionally, physical attacks.  In the Muslim world, the word “misogyny” means women have no legal rights, suffer regular physical abuse, including genital mutilation, and are regular victims of honor killings; homophobia means that gays are tortured and executed; “antisemitism” means a cultural press for total genocide; and anti-Christianity means that Christians are dispossessed, expelled and killed.  You know a culture is bad when it demands a whole new vocabulary to be intelligible.  But as is often the case, I digress.)

But if you thought those were the only things that need change in a culture that Obama proposes become our ally against the Jews, you’re wrong.  At Brutally Honest, Rick exposes yet another stomach churning aspect of Muslim culture.

In the culture of alcohol and drug abuse, a well recognized person in the game of addiction is the enabler:

An enabler in most definitions is a person who through his or her actions allows someone else to achieve something. Most often the term enabler is associated with people who allow loved ones to behave in ways that are destructive. For example, an enabler wife of an alcoholic might continue to provide the husband with alcohol. A person might be an enabler of a gambler or compulsive spender by lending them money to get out of debt.

The West has always been a Muslim enabler, whether it’s by buying Muslim oil (which we admittedly have needed, especially because we refuse to produce our own), or by funding to the tune of billions of dollars the most corrupt, hate-filled governments on planet earth.  Barack Obama is taking it to a new level.  Voters need to look inside themselves and see whether they want to take a gamble on pragmatism that sees them supporting these same governments, or if they want to continue to exist on the side of greater truth and morality.  I know where I fall.  Sadly, I also know where my president falls.

UPDATERick cautions that the video to which he linked might not be as it seems.  Nevertheless, I stand by everything else I said, and the possibility that Rick’s video isn’t as bad as it looks doesn’t change the basic tenor of my post.

UPDATE II:  Today, it’s a story out of Sudan regarding the misogynistic cruelty committed in Islam’s name.  And just reflexively, I’ll ask:  Where’s NOW now?