Once again, BN manages to turn black into white, night into day, and smart into stupid. Lauryn Oates clearly is not discussing “stabilitarians” (dumb word), but about activists, specifically supposed “progressive” activists, the “get Canada out of Afghanistan” who justify their stance with the kind of cultural relativism she describes. They aren’t conservative, centrists or moderates.

This boy needs some consciousness-raising – as in (from memory) ch. 2 of ‘The God Delusion,’ and also the traditional sort.

David Amies

But most of the time, a government’s professed long-term intentions are totally at odds with / subordinate to their actual intentions. And you can’t figure what they’re up to until all the historical records are out, 50 years later. These kinds of intentions, the kind for which there’s no evidence, forces us to be stuck with terms like “invasion” and “occupation” that can only be used historically or pejoratively, and not Here And Now. And if you try to use that kind of language anyway, you get called a conspiracy theorist or worse — often, rightly. It’s a perfect epistemic trap.

So that’s why I set the bar low. But I don’t set it too low, which is why I think your formulation works pretty well to make my point. NATO’s presence in Afghanistan qualifies as an occupation under both of your senses, but especially in the occupation of Berlin sense, because the Taliban and both entrenched and resilient in the South.

1-”when i reduced you to a spiteful concession” — in your own mind, no doubt. In reality, I didn’t “concede” anything. You would see it that way, of course.

2-I don’t agree with you “on all substantial issues.” That’s your conceit. Most of the time I barely understand you. I do note, however, that whenever the subject of universal human rights comes up, you have something negative to say about it. That’s all I wanted to say, and all I’m going to say. Argue with yourself.

Though you’ll have to do a sight better than the last time, when I reduced you to a spiteful concession and merely verbal disagreements, by your own reckoning. http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/not-to-be-missed/ One wonders if you reserve this venom for everyone with who you claim to agree with on all substantial issues.

But it also means that Westerners shouldn’t forget the challenges their own culture still faces. Something like honor killings is not unknown in our countries, it simply has other names. The man who kills his wife or girlfriend, sometimes also her children, because he thinks she cuckolded him is alas a too frequent feature in the news. And it doesn’t help if we think it’s “only” psychological, individual problems. This way, nothing will ever change.

But there are plenty of serious-minded people who advocate for something like that, or worse. You will find State’s Rights advocates who press for autonomy in just this way, and who expect applause. Pick your favorite issue of religious injustice, we’ll find it in the headlines — sects denying blood transfusions for children, for example, because evidently we’re supposed to respect their silly and cruel beliefs over and above the value of human life. The only difference is that the so-called multiculturalists abuse the language of tolerance in such a way that we slide further towards illiberalism, while the older form of conservatism reviled the language of tolerance in order to slide into the aformentioned bog.

Steve, I think that’s a project worth pursuing. But if we want to hear that argument, we will have to wait for a different article than this one.

You’re not criticizing theories, you’re grinding an axe against people you don’t like.

That’s bullshit.

It is a theory in certain cultures that a woman does not have the value of a man. It’s probably not a coincidence that most of these cultures come from regions that just happen to be Islamic theocracies.

It is not axe grinding to point this out.

It is the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty to pretend that this sort of institutionalized misogyny does not have cultural and religious roots.