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Militant Islam and Us

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

The response by militant Islamists to the political cartoons about Muhammad is teaching us a lot about their mindset.  From their point of view, the way to deal with anyone who disagrees with them is by force.  If someone insults them or their religion, or even disagrees with them, they believe they have every right to kill that person.  From the point of view of people who have been raised in a society based on Christian ideals, in which peace, tolerance, and forgiveness are promoted, these radical Islamists seem to be totally barbaric and incapable of living in a civilized society.  Unfortunately, their uncivilized, force-based approach to the world has infiltrated our society much more than we would like to believe.

There are only two ways in which people can deal with each other – either based on voluntary association or based on force.  The United States was established as a country in which voluntary association was to be the norm, with force being reserved for a very narrow aspect of our lives, for things like self-defense and defense of property.  This made the United States a place in which people with a wide variety of lifestyles, ethnic backgrounds, and religious beliefs could coexist peacefully, make a home, and prosper.  Of course, we have had lapses in which our country has not lived up to its ideals, such as the institution of slavery, mobs murdering immigrants, and the like, but by and large, for the first hundred and fifty years of our history, the organized use of force against people was minimized.  Unfortunately, in the so-called “progressive” era, it was decided that voluntary associations among people were not creating the desired Utopia, so aggressive force needed to be used to mold people into what they should be.   

While our country was founded on some basic negative “rights”, such as the right to life, liberty and property, which were essentially the right to be left alone, the “progressives” brought us many new positive rights, such as the right to housing, food, medical care, and jobs.  Unfortunately, these newly-minted positive “rights” all require the use of force against innocent people.  After all, if you have the right to housing, then somebody must be forced to provide that housing.  If you have the right to medical care, then either health care providers must be enslaved or some people must be forced to pay for your medical care.  If you are entitled to a job, then somebody must be forced to hire you, and so forth.  The result has been an enormous volume of new laws and regulations, all involving the use of force against someone.  In this way, we gradually have been losing the voluntary nature of our society and have become more and more accepting of the use of force against innocent people.  Unfortunately, instead of bringing us the promised Utopia, it has brought us closer to the mentality of the radical Islamist street.

Further still, our government has decided to use force to control our minds, creating so-called “hate crimes” that provide increased penalties if you harm someone because you hate his race or his sexual orientation.  Government also uses force to indoctrinate our children in government schools into politically correct thinking about sex, race, religion, the environment, and so forth.  The laws have become so numerous that everyone who is living and breathing is violating some law, and it is just a matter of the discretion of government officials to decide whom they want to punish and when. 

While the use of force in the United States is much more subtle than the rioting and murdering of radical Islamist street, it is every bit as coercive, and it gradually erodes our previously respectful, tolerant society, converting it into a power-hungry society in which might makes right.  As power shifts from the people to the government, the government officials who wield that power become corrupted, as we have seen most recently with the Abramoff scandals.  Clearly, this willingness to use force has not brought the Utopia promised by the “progressives”.  I just wonder how long it will be before this willingness to use force in an attempt to reach Utopia will cause us to “progress” to the kind of barbaric, force-based society exhibited in the radical Islamist street.

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