Peikoff on the Ground Zero Mosque

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Tony,

I have no issue there. I have been ranting against the Patriot Act since the beginning.

People often misunderstand what that problem is. They imagine that people who oppose it are against taking extraordinary measures for emergency times like attacks.

That's not the case, though. That would be silly and a total black-out on identifying the nature of threats.

The fact is that we have something in place for this. You get a warrant from a judge. What the Patriot Act does is replace the system of checks and balances for making important rights decisions--like when to breach someone's rights due to reasonable suspicion of danger.

Our system without the Patriot Act places that decision under the examination of several people from competing power sources, the Executive and the Judiciary. The Patriot Act places it all in the hands of one person--and this person essentially becomes a benevolent dictator.

The USA has a defense structure easily capable of defending us--even where agility is an issue--without putting all the power in the hands of one man.

People who long for this basically want a king to take care of them so no one will attack them. That's a weird way to put it, but if you look at the essentials involved, I don't see a difference.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

blackhorse,

You are starting to get there. Now all you have to realize is that "Islamic doctrine" which is a hodgepodge when you look at the different Muslim communities, and "Islamist doctrine," which is a lot more unified, are two different things.

When you look just at Islam, you will see a variety of things running from the good to the bad, as with any religion. When you look at Islamism, you will see not only Islam, but also a connection to Nazism in some manner in all cases. At least in all cases I have been aware of. I have yet to find one where this is not true.

Now look at where Nazism and Islamism line up: violent antisemitism, world conquest as a primary political goal, secret police, misinformation and manipulative propaganda, staging violent events under false pretenses to influence public opinion. There's more, but that should be enough to notice a pattern.

Why do you ignore this?

I'm serious. I'm curious. Why do you ignore it?

PS - Yes, I sometimes read Jihad Watch, Little Green Footballs, Atlas Shrugs and even some more hardline sites.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a question for you folks who think Islam brainwashes volition out of people.

You will often read people who preach that also say that the leaders are never the ones who strap bombs on themselves.

OK.

So which is it? Does Islam brainwash or not?

If it does, why are the leaders immune to the brainwashing?

Ask the bigot-preacher that one: What makes one person immune and another not? What makes one person become a suicide bomber and another avoid such brainwashing?

I predict you will not get a coherent answer. I know the answer, but I seriously doubt any of them do.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Here's a question for you folks who think Islam brainwashes volition out of people.

You will often read people who preach that also say that the leaders are never the ones who strap bombs on themselves.

OK.

So which is it? Does Islam brainwash or not?

If it does, why are the leaders immune to the brainwashing?

Ask the bigot-preacher that one: What makes one person immune and another not? What makes one person become a suicide bomber and another avoid such brainwashing?

I predict you will not get a coherent answer. I know the answer, but I seriously doubt any of them do.

Michael

Could it be that some of the Leaders are cynically making use of the gullibility of the most devout followers? That happens in every religion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Of course. That was not my question.

My question was what makes them immune to the brainwashing? They grew up in the same culture as the brainwashed. They were children once. They did not spring into existence fully formed as manipulators.

What do they have that others don't?

Hell, I doubt even you know the answer.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

He went on to point out that children born and raised in Muslim environments literally become Muslims for life and their ability of volition is crushed.

Mike R,

Do you really believe that everyone raised in the Islamic religion becomes a Manchurian candidate or a zombie?

Where did Islam acquire a special power to separate children from their free will? A power that Christianity and Hinduism and all the other big religions lack? A power that Communists and the Nazis longed for, but never got?

I'm sorry, but Ed Cline has become one hateful specimen. He's bidding to become the ARIan counterpart to Lindsay Perigo.

So long as those raised in Muslim environments are able to get information about other points of view without being punished for it, and, should they choose to question or reject the religion, are subject neither to execution for apostasy nor "honor killing" by clan members, all will be well.

And I don't see why you are attached to USA PATRIOT (just the Orwellian acronym on the thing should give you the creeps). Most of the content of the act was not a reaction to 9/11. It was a wish list of powers long craved by various Federal agencies, which sprang into action when they saw an opening to get what they wanted. Besides, as a ridiculously long bill, larded with nasty little catches and special-interest provisions, that Congresscritters didn't read before voting, it is the direct ancestor of Porkulus, ObamaReidPelosiCare, and the bill that guarantees Too Big to Fail status.

Robert C

[James Heaps-Nelson]

He went on to point out that children born and raised in Muslim environments literally become Muslims for life and their ability of volition is crushed.

Mike R,

Do you really believe that everyone raised in the Islamic religion becomes a Manchurian candidate or a zombie?

Where did Islam acquire a special power to separate children from their free will? A power that Christianity and Hinduism and all the other big religions lack? A power that Communists and the Nazis longed for, but never got?

I'm sorry, but Ed Cline has become one hateful specimen. He's bidding to become the ARIan counterpart to Lindsay Perigo.

So long as those raised in Muslim environments are able to get information about other points of view without being punished for it, and, should they choose to question or reject the religion, are subject neither to execution for apostasy nor "honor killing" by clan members, all will be well.

And I don't see why you are attached to USA PATRIOT (just the Orwellian acronym on the thing should give you the creeps). Most of the content of the act was not a reaction to 9/11. It was a wish list of powers long craved by various Federal agencies, which sprang into action when they saw an opening to get what they wanted. Besides, as a ridiculously long bill, larded with nasty little catches and special-interest provisions, that Congresscritters didn't read before voting, it is the direct ancestor of Porkulus, ObamaReidPelosiCare, and the bill that guarantees Too Big to Fail status.

Robert C

Robert,

The problem with this is that Islam is correlated with languages, Arabic and Farsi, that do not have widespread book publication. I think Arabic has something like 40,000 books published. Also, there is a prevalent pragmatism about human rights that is also highly prevalent in China and Latin America. I think a large majority of Muslims consider terrorism not their problem.

I agree with you about the Patriot Act. It's an odious bill that harkens back to WW2 Japanese internment camps. There is always some "emergency" that justifies the abrogation of freedom.

Jim

[Robert Campbell]

Jim H-N,

Do you know of any campaigns to translate secular books into Arabic and Farsi?

There's a cause I'll be happy to contribute to, monetarily.

Robert C

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

Of course. That was not my question.

My question was what makes them immune to the brainwashing? They grew up in the same culture as the brainwashed. They were children once. They did not spring into existence fully formed as manipulators.

What do they have that others don't?

Hell, I doubt even you know the answer.

Michael

For the wicked, the opportunity to do mischief is what motivates them. An authoritarian structure like (Islam - and some other religions) attracts the Power Trippers like honey attracts ants. That is why there are so many Very Bad People found at the apex of religious and governmental power structures. Power attracts the wicked.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Jim H-N,

Do you know of any campaigns to translate secular books into Arabic and Farsi?

There's a cause I'll be happy to contribute to, monetarily.

Robert C

Robert,

I don't know of any. Here is a good article documenting the problem: http://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/2009/08/10/a-note-on-arabic-literacy-and-translation/

According to the article, only 330 books are translated from English to Arabic each year.

Jim

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

For the wicked, the opportunity to do mischief is what motivates them. An authoritarian structure like (Islam - and some other religions) attracts the Power Trippers like honey attracts ants. That is why there are so many Very Bad People found at the apex of religious and governmental power structures. Power attracts the wicked.

Bob,

This begs the question.

Your "wicked" grew up in the same culture as the brainwashed. They didn't just become "attracted" from somewhere else.

So if Islam is a tool for brainwashing all Muslims until they are zombies (as per Cline), what made them (your "wicked") immune to the brainwashing?

They had every opportunity to be brainwashed into zombies (as per Cline) as everyone else did.

Maybe you think they were inherently wicked children with special powers?

Michael

[sbeaulieu]

So if Islam is a tool for brainwashing all Muslims until they are zombies (as per Cline), what made them (your "wicked") immune to the brainwashing?

Michael,

The only ingredient that I see missing in those that are brainwashed is "truth", with some (not all) having been let in on that truth. Circumstances/experiences dictate what the empowered will do with the truth.

~ Shane

[anthony]

Meanwhile, over at SoloP, something quite heroic is going on. Leonid is single-handed against a wolf pack in his insistence that we are not at war with an entire religion.

He is taking major flak.

It beats me how otherwise staunch O'ists can desert their independence of mind, their reason, and descend to a collectivist mindset, when there's a whiff of fear-cum-hatred in the air.

("There is nothing to fear but fear itself.")

Tony

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shane,

That is very close. That presupposes, though, that some people will "let in" others. That's not what always happens.

I will write more in depth about this later. But basically it involves implanting embedded commands. Brainwashing, right?

Have you noticed that Islamist suicide bombers and terrorists come from all economic and cultural levels? Not just the poor people? Although the majority seems to come from the poor. There's a reason. It basically boils down to this: If you know you are being hypnotized, you can resist it if you choose. If you don't know you are vulnerable. That isn't 100% the case, since there are degrees of inherent vulnerability from what I have been able to see and read about, but it is enough of the case to be pertinent.

Of course, nobody would ever think Mohammad was trained in hypnosis. All he did was do things that worked and others followed him.

Here is the short version. If you open the Qur'an to any chapter, you will see it start with a long incantation to Allah. This serves as pacing in hypnosis. The idea is to bypass the critical faculty by deflecting focus and by inducing you to subconsciously judge that the person in front of you is an accurate source of information.

Pacing is one of the ways to do this. You repeat a bunch of statements or observations that the other person knows or believes to be true and pretty soon his critical faculty gets bored.

In the case of the Qur'an, Allah is great--and illustrations of this--is the message hammered over and over in the incantation part. Yawn. Nothing new for Muslims. It's the same old same old. So the critical faculty drifts to focus on something else while leaving the auto-pilot subconscious door open to new knowledge coming from that same source. That is, so long as the general outline of the new information is right. If something suddenly really odd arises, the person will snap out of it and his critical faculty focuses back.

Notice that all of the known suicide terrorists have spent long hours memorizing the Qur'an. But most importantly, they usually have had mentors around when they have done their recitations. The mentors transfer the authority of the Qur'an to themselves in the minds of their victims (by praying along with them, etc.) and implant all kinds of stuff in their minds after things get rolling. These minds are in a proper state for receiving embedded commands and their critical faculties are duly on hold. Their critical attention is even deflected musing over promises of future benefits and stories.

The mentors already know that the incantations put people in a trance-like state. (I don't know what they call it, so I am using my own terms.) They have either learned this on their own or they have been taught it, probably by observing others. And they know that they themselves can resist this trance-like state just by being aware of it. So they do.

There is another element. Any hypnotist worth his salt will tell you that the subconscious mind does not grok time too well and that past and future mean very little. (Think of your own dreams to see what I mean.) Thus suggestions made in the present tense are far more powerful for embedding commands.

(In Internet marketing they get cute with this and even disguise it. For example, "By now" becomes "Buy now" in the minds of the target. I.e., "By now, you have seen what this product can do." This can be embedded with a double message: "Buy now. You have seen what this product can do.")

Guess what? The Qur'an is the only holy book I know of that is all in the present tense. It is a book of pacing and leading (the technical hypnosis terms) without equal if used in a certain manner.

There are some other points that I will elaborate on later, but this is why you don't get too many suicide bombers in other cultures. Where they do exist (say, like in Japan during WWII), look for the mental pacing exercises and the trusted mentors hanging around after the trance is underway.

Much more coming on this later.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shane,

To add to the above, here is what a trance feels like.

Have you ever gotten lost in your thoughts and simply forgotten what you were doing? Say, you are walking to a place and get lost in your thoughts and walk right past it? That is a common experience we all have had at one time or another. That is what a trance--where your critical faculty turns off--feels like. Of course, this is not a trance induced by the pacing I mentioned above, and it is more intense than most of those kinds of trances. But the feeling is similar.

Now here is where you can be prompted to receive false information and act on it. Have you ever been in an elevator, gotten lost in your thoughts, and gotten off on the wrong floor because all (or most) of the other passengers got off? That is also common. Here you are in a trance and the people around you give you--through their acts--the information that this is the floor where you need to get off. So your unconscious mind simply accepts that as true and off you go.

Those are the feelings on a basic level.

There is a point I want to stress. The things I have mentioned here and the above post only scratch the surface. For example, when a person encounters sudden confusion, this also deflects his critical faculty long enough for another person to embed a command in his subconscious. (This is called pattern interrupt.) And embedded commands only work on a deep level after a lot of repeating.

I want to elaborate on all this, but I will wait to write a more serious work later--with sources.

There is one HUGE difference you can notice with suicide bombers as opposed to the lovely Muslim people who are peaceful. Their mentors--or the type of attention their mentors give to them during and after prayers. It's like night and day. Those leftover Nazi-oriented mentors are pure evil.

Another point. When Objectivist people (or even conservatives) try to claim that Islam is more evil idea-wise than, say, Christianity, they get hard-pressed to say what those ideas are. They have their litany of jihad, where they conveniently blank out how it is mostly used by Muslims as a personal exercise in self-discipline, or others like taqiyyah (deception), which they take out of context and use as an excuse to call all Muslims liars sight unseen. But even granting their lopsided interpretations (which I do not), those are behaviors, not philosophical ideas.

Take a look at the grounds. Do both Islam and Christianity propose an all powerful God? Yes. Afterlife? Yes. Myths and stories? Yes--very similar ones with many overlapping--and many improbable. Divine inspiration of the authors? Yes.

And on and on it goes. Similarity after similarity. None of this explains why suicide bombers arise in one but not the other.

Brainwashing by evil Jew-hating bastards through repeated hypnosis does.

This happens in Islam, not in Christianity, because there are easy tools to use for this purpose in Islamic stuff. This means that an evil mentor uses the hypnotic elements in Islam (ones that either are not in Christian rituals and literature or are very weak) for political manipulation instead of intensifying worship. Those monsters know exactly what they are doing. And it has nothing to do with religious ideas.

Once again, this does not presuppose that hypnosis as a formal technique existed in ancient times. It only means that the Islamic rituals and literature that have been handed down through the centuries have the some of the same fundamental characteristics as modern hypnosis.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Meanwhile, over at SoloP, something quite heroic is going on. Leonid is single-handed against a wolf pack in his insistence that we are not at war with an entire religion.

He is taking major flak.

Tony,

I have seen that. My opinion of Leonid is improving.

It's kind of amusing to watch, given his own arguments over here. But let him learn from experience that collectivist oversimplified thinking devoted to hatred is no fun to argue against. And let him observe the pack and how they get poisoned by this.

Give him time. I think he will come to his own conclusions.

Michael

[sbeaulieu]

Michael,

Thanks for the information regarding the Qur'an. I did not realize it had the present tense usage. That's pretty smart in keeping a book of that age consistent and relevant to the reader. Dangerous, too, when used as you mention.

I also realize I was being a bit simplistic throwing truth out as the answer, but I do believe that's the seed of it. Clearly, where you're going is definitely in the branches ;)

~ Shane

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Shane,

That is very close. That presupposes, though, that some people will "let in" others. That's not what always happens.

I will write more in depth about this later. But basically it involves implanting embedded commands. Brainwashing, right?

Have you noticed that Islamist suicide bombers and terrorists come from all economic and cultural levels? Not just the poor people? Although the majority seems to come from the poor. There's a reason. It basically boils down to this: If you know you are being hypnotized, you can resist it if you choose. If you don't know you are vulnerable. That isn't 100% the case, since there are degrees of inherent vulnerability from what I have been able to see and read about, but it is enough of the case to be pertinent.

Of course, nobody would ever think Mohammad was trained in hypnosis. All he did was do things that worked and others followed him.

Here is the short version. If you open the Qur'an to any chapter, you will see it start with a long incantation to Allah. This serves as pacing in hypnosis. The idea is to bypass the critical faculty by deflecting focus and by inducing you to subconsciously judge that the person in front of you is an accurate source of information.

Pacing is one of the ways to do this. You repeat a bunch of statements or observations that the other person knows or believes to be true and pretty soon his critical faculty gets bored.

In the case of the Qur'an, Allah is great--and illustrations of this--is the message hammered over and over in the incantation part. Yawn. Nothing new for Muslims. It's the same old same old. So the critical faculty drifts to focus on something else while leaving the auto-pilot subconscious door open to new knowledge coming from that same source. That is, so long as the general outline of the new information is right. If something suddenly really odd arises, the person will snap out of it and his critical faculty focuses back.

Notice that all of the known suicide terrorists have spent long hours memorizing the Qur'an. But most importantly, they usually have had mentors around when they have done their recitations. The mentors transfer the authority of the Qur'an to themselves in the minds of their victims (by praying along with them, etc.) and implant all kinds of stuff in their minds after things get rolling. These minds are in a proper state for receiving embedded commands and their critical faculties are duly on hold. Their critical attention is even deflected musing over promises of future benefits and stories.

The mentors already know that the incantations put people in a trance-like state. (I don't know what they call it, so I am using my own terms.) They have either learned this on their own or they have been taught it, probably by observing others. And they know that they themselves can resist this trance-like state just by being aware of it. So they do.

There is another element. Any hypnotist worth his salt will tell you that the subconscious mind does not grok time too well and that past and future mean very little. (Think of your own dreams to see what I mean.) Thus suggestions made in the present tense are far more powerful for embedding commands.

(In Internet marketing they get cute with this and even disguise it. For example, "By now" becomes "Buy now" in the minds of the target. I.e., "By now, you have seen what this product can do." This can be embedded with a double message: "Buy now. You have seen what this product can do.")

Guess what? The Qur'an is the only holy book I know of that is all in the present tense. It is a book of pacing and leading (the technical hypnosis terms) without equal if used in a certain manner.

There are some other points that I will elaborate on later, but this is why you don't get too many suicide bombers in other cultures. Where they do exist (say, like in Japan during WWII), look for the mental pacing exercises and the trusted mentors hanging around after the trance is underway.

Much more coming on this later.

Michael

Michael,

Islam seems to be a mix in style of Western and Eastern religions. Eastern religions such as various branches of Mahayana Buddhism incorporate various meditative and hypnotic modalities. The Lotus Sutra is not all in the present tense, but a significant fraction of it are soliloquys and poetry that are. I think the main difference in Islam is the text. Buddhism is explicitly nonviolent. Some of the virulence of Islamism can be explained by Nazi remnants, but Islamic civilization has been spread mostly by the sword for much of its history.

Islamic adherents have clashed with Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and others. I don't think that recurring theme can be wished away.

Jim

[sbeaulieu]

There is one HUGE difference you can notice with suicide bombers as opposed to the lovely Muslim people who are peaceful. Their mentors--or the type of attention their mentors give to them during and after prayers. It's like night and day. Those leftover Nazi-oriented mentors are pure evil.

Is this a deliniating marker for suicide attacks? That is, did Nazis have a direct link to terrorist usage of suicide bombing? If so, how did they convince Muslims? The only reason I ask is I haven't heard or read much of any similar techniques used by the Nazis during WWII.

Another point. When Objectivist people (or even conservatives) try to claim that Islam is more evil idea-wise than, say, Christianity, they get hard-pressed to say what those ideas are. They have their litany of jihad, where they conveniently blank out how it is mostly used by Muslims as a personal exercise in self-discipline, or others like taqiyyah (deception), which they take out of context and use as an excuse to call all Muslims liars sight unseen. But even granting their lopsided interpretations (which I do not), those are behaviors, not philosophical ideas.

The problem here comes to, using your words, interpretation. This will never go away. I really wish we could "round table" all the authors of the holy books and ask them what they meant. Written words are very easy to take out of context, and extremely difficult to assign tone, inflection, pauses...all cues to pinpoint the intended message.

And on and on it goes. Similarity after similarity. None of this explains why suicide bombers arise in one but not the other.

I'd be interested to know the origins...going to have a look around on this one.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Islamic adherents have clashed with Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and others. I don't think that recurring theme can be wished away.

Jim,

Nor do I wish to.

My point is that the message goes in deep with the hypnosis-like rituals. If the Islamic denomination or community or mentor (like Sufi, for example of a denomination) seeks emphasis on the peaceful and spiritual parts, the deep message will be peace and spirituality and this will be reflected in the people. If the more violent parts in the Qur'an are the embedded messages during the trances, obviously the person's behavior will reflect that.

I believe that most embedded messages for your everyday normal Muslim are mixed with a very strong emphasis on the peaceful part--normal affairs of everyday living. And, I only speculate here, but I believe that boredom often sets in instead of a trance, thus no message at all gets embedded during those times.

My main concern is about those mentors of ill will and what they say to the vulnerable during the times they are vulnerable.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Is this a deliniating marker for suicide attacks? That is, did Nazis have a direct link to terrorist usage of suicide bombing? If so, how did they convince Muslims? The only reason I ask is I haven't heard or read much of any similar techniques used by the Nazis during WWII.

Shane,

Muslim suicide bombing like we know it today is a recent thing. The technique is not derived from Nazism. The Nazi part is the raw evil intelligent enough to recognize a great opportunity to do more evil and develop it as cannon fodder (or bomb fodder to be more precise). One hallmark of Nazism was nasty experiments where human life was expendable.

And just to be clear, I don't think pure Nazism exists anymore in the Muslim world. Nazism is a seminal influence, not a formal ideology. The ideas got transmitted and wedded to Islam in Islamism, but not the forms.

Michael

[blackhorse]

Objectivist Living should change its name to Libertarian Living.-it would be appropriate to the prevalent philosophy here.

[blackhorse]

The tolerance that many posters here extend to muslims is not be reciprocated, esp. if it was a muslim dominated nation. If anyone here had to live (if they even could) in a muslim nation- that they would be forced to see its tyrannical oppression and be very much in fear for their lives. The USA is not a muslim dominated nation so trying to use the American muslims defense doesn't work. Europe is infested with islamic pockets that want to practice shari'a and other muslims laws independent of the secular government law. I am all for the battle of idea's, but it is a losing battle against a religion that demands submission to specific laws, traditions, and beliefs. Believe me, if I thought there was a muslim nation I felt safe living in I would be the first to admit it and to admit I was incorrect about the religion.

Edited August 13, 2010 by blackhorse

[Philip Coates]

> Objectivist Living should change its name to Libertarian Living.-it would be appropriate to the prevalent philosophy here.

Blackhorse, I wouldn't put it exactly that way. But I've been reading posts here for a very long time and I'd say there is a tendency for those who disagree with at least parts or or don't fully understand Objectivism to be the majority posting frequently.

But the disagreements go deeper than political philosophy, they extend to the more fundamental branches as well.

I am at the point where I don't even argue with those who say "there is a big hole in the philosophy" any more: too many mistakes, too many misunderstandings, not enough interest in thoroughly going back and understanding Objectivism on their part.

[James Heaps-Nelson]

The tolerance that many posters here extend to muslims is not be reciprocated, esp. if it was a muslim dominated nation. If anyone here had to live (if they even could) in a muslim nation- that they would be forced to see its tyrannical oppression and be very much in fear for their lives. The USA is not a muslim dominated nation so trying to use the American muslims defense doesn't work. Europe is infested with islamic pockets that want to practice shari'a and other muslims laws independent of the secular government law. I am all for the battle of idea's, but it is a losing battle against a religion that demands submission to specific laws, traditions, and beliefs. Believe me, if I thought there was a muslim nation I felt safe living in I would be the first to admit it and to admit I was incorrect about the religion.

Blackhorse,

I believe that Europe is being infested by Islamic pockets partly because many of the immigrants are from North Africa and strife-ridden areas where Islam is violent and fundamentalist. However, can you really say you wouldn't feel safe in Turkey, United Arab Emirates or Malaysia? Islamic countries are a mixed bag. I'd feel much safer traveling to those countries than to Mexico, Colombia or Russia.

Jim